Hey, buddy, what's up to chase? Welcome to the chase terms live show here on CreativeLive going to get right into today's episode with you. Today's guest is Dave asprey. You're not familiar with Dave's work. He's the founder and chairman of bulletproof 360. If you've ever heard a Bulletproof Coffee where you mix butter and some oil into coffee and drink it and have a lot of energy. He is the founder of that among many other things. He's a best-selling author.
Most of the Webby award-winning podcast bulletproof radio. He's been on the Today Show Nightline CNN all sorts of different media outlets and he's got a couple books superhuman the bulletproof plan to age backwards the bulletproof diet lose up to a pound a day headstrong the bulletproof plan to activate your brain energy. And today we're talking about a couple new things one his latest book how to fast this way burn fat. He'll inflammation and eat like the high-performing human. You were meant to be a little more backstory.
On Dave. So anyone who's a biohacker like Dave is always ahead of the curve saying things that seem controversial and Dave has been one of these guys for a long time so much of the work that he's done in and around diet nutrition had a change what the chemistry of your body are things that I personally have tried friends of mine and fasting is one of those things now, there's so many myths
it's that we address in his in our conversation today things that are featured in the book some fast or some myths like that fasting is just about food that fasting is dangerous for the body that fasting equals dieting a lot of those myths are ones that I believe are toxic and our culture one of the reasons that I wanted to have Dave on the shows because I personally have had experienced the benefits of different types of fasting.
And we do for those who are curious go into that all kinds of different how to exercise while fasting how to hack your sleep for increased energy how fasting drives mental Clarity and and can help you live longer. These are facts. Anyway, my hope is that you will listen to Dave's rather eloquent explication on the merits of fasting and why it's gotten a bad rap more.
Gently encourage you to copy of his book. But without further Ado. I want to introduce Dave asprey to show gamer warm Round of Applause from wherever you're on the internet and let's kick it off with my conversation with Dave asprey. You know something Maya Angelou said it better than anyone I've ever heard. She said creativity is an infinite resource the more you use the more you have and that rings so true to me which is why I wrote a book to address all of the experiences that I've had with creativity or rather the most
Important ones that I think can contribute very meaningfully to your life. That's right. It's a book. It's called creative calling and I would love to hear what you think. If you haven't heard of it, then you've been living under a rock because I've been talking about it for one year now hit the national bestsellers list as soon as it came out the very first week and I believe that it can help you improve your career your hobby and most importantly your life. If you are unfamiliar with the book it's available anywhere books are sold, of course all the
Big box stores, but if you can get it from an independent that would mean a lot to me and so I'm going to go all the way and get to the episode but want to say thanks, and don't forget to check out creative calling.
Dave thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to the
show. I'm happy to be here Jason.
It's been awhile. We were just reminiscing before we started recording that it's been a good five plus years since we got to spend a little bit of time together you in the creative life Studios. I think either in see was that Seattle or San
Francisco and San Francisco San Francisco real early days that one. Yeah first thing.
Yeah, you were early on our health and wellness universe and I still refer to that you've done a lot of amazing.
Work in the space of biohacking self-improvement and that is what I want to have you on the show for and we talked about this also before we join I hate saying that over and over for the people who are like wait a minute you
keep saying the things I never got to hear
and just pretend like I wasn't there Chase. So let's go back to
The premise of your new book is around fasting. But before we get to the premise of your new book, I'm curious of how you ended up at fasting as a book worthy topic because as someone who's been hacking your biology for a decade or more presumably you could choose a lot of things to focus on so fasting now what your 10 plus years into your journey as a renowned biohacker, and of course
Spend some time there, but presumably there were a lot of Adventures and Misadventures prior to now so take us through a short history of how you landed where you are right now and all of the different things that you focused on to get to where you are,
right? I used to weigh 300 pounds in my mid-20s and I had all the diseases of Aging like pre diabetes arthritis in my knees since I was a
teenager cognitive dysfunction high risk of stroke and heart attack and then like went to the doctor the way you're supposed to and it couldn't do anything. Like I we don't know try to eat healthy and exercise my guys. I work out an hour and a half a day six days a week. I did it for 18 months straight. I'm still a 46 inch waist you got anything else for me like you're lying have some old Putra. No, no, and no you're fired and I just realized I'm going to have to hack this myself. So I started doing the things that were supposed to work.
Was a raw vegan for quite a while and man you want to break your biology do that. I you know, I tried the Atkins very early on Zone Diet all kinds of things and I found I could lose 50 pounds relatively easily. The other 50 was a hard work it took 10 years and it culminated in me saying, you know, keto doesn't work.
If you just dookie do then the proof of that is the number of people at a low carb conference who have lost half the weight they have to lose and they can't lose the rest. So they're like, oh it's because 8 16 grams of carbs instead of 15, and no that's not it and the same things that vegans going. My hair's falling out. I don't feel good. I'm angry all the time. It's because I'm not vegan enough, you know, I have to eat more spinach and I've been both of those guys. Okay, so I can I have license to say that and also the guys what I'm still fat instead of work out enough. Let me just over.
Exercise so I ended up spending a million dollars. I travel around the world. I learned meditation from the Masters. I tried it all and I've written a successful book on anti-aging people have lost a million pounds on the bulletproof diet and probably and then some started a company that's going to be pretty well-known called bulletproof and a neuroscience company focused on meditation. And what I realized is that in my the initial focus of my blog and my first big book I'd
Talked about intermittent fasting and I talked about keto and if you look at like the Google Trends after that like I think those helped to plant seeds for people but intermittent fasting was a part of it and my whole point was look not having breakfast. Sometimes is really good for you and you can do this Bulletproof Coffee thing. And if you have never heard of Bulletproof Coffee, it's grass-fed butter coffee beans without mold and MCT oil and you blend them together and have it for breakfast and I've present the evidence. Hey, you're still getting the benefits of fasting but you don't feel like I used to I boogly bitchy if I don't
And then you're yelling at people right? And so like we have lives and we can't all be healthy influencers who you know, I'm just gonna you know, drink my kills smoothie which makes my joints hurt and you know, just kind of look cool and then do whatever like we have jobs and we have families and we have stuff to do. So, I wanted to get the health benefits. I wanted the cognitive performance benefits, but during the week. I just don't really have time to be tired and what I found over the last I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of
Readers and followers and things is that people don't understand fasting and people don't understand ketose. I'm disturbed it that, you know keto at all costs thing. You need to cycle it. Like I said because I did the not cycling thing and hurt my biology there just like I do the vegan thing. So fasting is has reached that point where now it's generally accepted problem is
There are
lots of books on fasting
and the instruction manual look something like this. Don't eat for a while their book done. Okay,
that's very strong
hard. Right and then you can say ah, no, I'm gonna write another book. I'm gonna go to PubMed. I'm going to search for fasting and PubMed to the directory of most of the medical research. You can look at its nicely organized. So now I'm going to put up like four thousand links to fasting studies and say fasting is good for you there now skip breakfast and you're in a fasting book, and I'm not
Looking to put fingers at my many colleagues who are promoting fasting and doctors know that it's good fasting is as important as sleeping as important as eating it. I just didn't want to write another book like that. So what I did is I looked at the evolutionary psychology. I looked at the psychology looks the personal development and I talked about the first time I did it for day fast, which was in 2008 say before fasting was cool. I hired a shaman to drop me off in a cave outside Sedona, so
I could experience my fear of loneliness and my fear of starving because as a 300-pound guy who's learned that you have to eat six times a day or we will go into starvation mode. I realize I'm actually afraid of being hungry. I don't like acting like a jerk when I'm hungry and I realized I don't like being alone and I would do almost anything so to not be alone. So I'm okay put me in a cave then I got no food. I got no people I'm gonna have to just deal with it head-on, but the psychological side of this it's a big deal. So this is a book about how to actually fast instead of how to know that fasting is good for you and then not
It fasting itself is not about just not eating it's about going without and you can fast from almost anything going too fast from carbs is called the keto diet you want fast from alcohol is called abstinence you want to fast from are it's called intermittent hypoxic training and breath work. And yes, I do that too brief periods of not having what your body is screaming at you that you need will make you profoundly stronger you can fast from water. It's called a dry fast. And when you do that it changes your cell biology all of these are real.
Real yet. We're somehow obsessed with oh my goodness. I just have to skip breakfast or I have to go multiple days and I have to kind of self flagellate.
Most people men or women who do fasting are going to feel great after the first couple days when they figure it out like I can do this intermittent fasting and there's I'm never having breakfast again and Chase. I can't I was going to happen in two months. The men are going to be like my hair is getting thin. I don't sleep very well and I don't have a kickstand when I wake up and the women at about four to six weeks are going to be saying I don't sleep well and my hormones are off and I don't feel
I
did my hair is thinning so the same thing happens with keto you have to cycle. And so the idea is how do you just approach fasting? So there's no pain no fear and how do you hack the hard parts of fasting so you don't have to feel the pain when you have other stuff to do in your life and the book has three big hacks for fasting as well as all the mindset and the idea of a spiritual fast in it
that journey to getting to that. First of all, the book is fantastic. So congratulations. I haven't you read many of those books about fasting that you so speak.
and I find there's a general avoidance of the psychology part of it, which is one of the things I valued that you took head on but I want to retrace a couple of those steps because it's
Being 300 pounds and having a 46 inch waist has has its drawbacks and I want to understand a little bit about presumably were you were in enough pain that that caused you to take action. So that is the that is what is it something as a mother and mention necessity is the mother of invention. Yep, but there are people out there who don't weigh 300 pounds and for whom might be listening.
Right now saying yeah, that's cool. I mean I like eating or I like fill in the blank. I don't like going hungry or living in a cave. So to those people who see themselves as mostly healthy or ish close enough. What what would you tell them because you had a you had a problem that you needed to solve my belief is that most people don't understand the difference between needing.
To solve a problem and optimizing their performance or their health or their well-being. So I'm hoping to you can sort of articulate a little bit from you know, maybe your your position is needing to versus someone who is perhaps unaware because I think there's a lot of people listening or watching right now who maybe had that point of view
what I told myself when I was 270 pounds and I'd been a biotics pretty much once a month for 15 years because of chronic
Infections and I'd had all these health problems as I look in the mirror and I would tell myself and believe it. Yeah, I'm pretty healthy got a few things to work on but really the voice in my head is like make sure you get paid work on your job. And can you get laid sorry. That's the Human Condition. That's what the boys knew. I was going to say you notice never going to say no one wakes up in the morning and says today I want to optimize my health. No one on earth optimizing your health is a stupid idea.
Here's why is it ever number one on your honey-do list? No, it never will be. You know, it's number one on your list you want power and you want control and if you wake up and say today I want enough energy which is power to do whatever I call on my body to do you can wake up and you can sign up for that. The only people want to wake up healthier people are desperately ill and I did get that desperately. I want had fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome and toxic mold poisoning.
Lyme disease and the long
list of crap that can happen to you. If you don't know what you're doing or if you're just unlucky or if you have bad genes or maybe all of those in my case. So now you don't want to optimize your health you want to have the power to do what you want to do today and doing what you want to do today include eating stuff. And you do have the power to do that. You can choose to do it later. So it'll work better and to reproduce and to not die of things that are scary. In fact, a lot of the framework and fastest way is around evolutionary priorities into
Vision making that happens outside of your brain and most of us don't understand our our cells run an operating system for life. And it's one that's so compact. It runs in a single cell low bacteria floating around out there a mold Spore a a cactus they all run this and so do we but it runs inside ourselves not in our brain and it goes something like this if something might be scary run away from kill or hide from
It's fear and all life has to respond to things that might kill it. Otherwise, the species will end and plants cover themselves and toxins and spikes and bark and we think our way out of it and you know mold might make a poison, right? So everyone has its own defense system, but that's how it works and you put 10 times more energy into that than it probably warrants because most of the time it's not a threat but it might be and your dumb little cells not you are deciding whether it's a threat if you decide as a threat yourselves a listen, but they'll
Decide for you long before you have a chance and if that's fear the next f word is food because everyone's died of famines every species on Earth. So that means eat everything and this is why fasting is so hard because there's a little voice that comes from inside a quadrillion ancient bacteria has studied throughout your body going eat the cookie and your input in fasting and they're like, I don't even know if fasting is weird. I'm done bacteria eat the cookie and you go through this arguing thing and eventually I'll just
Half a cookie and then you like why am I such a bad person? You're not a bad person. What happened? There is exactly the same thing as if you lean against a hot stove and you pull your hand away a good thing. I pulled my hand away before I got burnt. You didn't pull your hand away. Someone else pulled your hand away and you noticed that you pull your hand away and then you took credit for it. Well the same thing happens when you eat the damn cookie, and then you take credit for reading the cookie that you didn't want to eat because it wasn't you who made you eat it. It was another thing running inside of you that is out.
Side of your brain and you could have caught yourself and you could have burned willpower in order to say no, but guess who controls will power the same bacteria because those are the bacteria that make energy they're called mitochondria. So that's kind of interesting where we have fear and we have food what else does life have to do to stay alive for both create but it's also an f word. I'm looking for Joe stock. I'm infertility. Good goddamn. All right, we can go there so sorry, okay.
To me. I might have done that before so that the idea there though is okay. So if you're 10 times extra effort on fear five times on food three times on fucking well, okay, what's left after that? Well, there is a final f word and this is why fasting is so important the final f word that all life does is friend and once your basic needs are met you will form a community. And if you're a bacteria you make a biofilm or you make yogurt or kombucha.
And if you're a cactus you make a cactus tribe, whatever Cactus grown. I don't know and if you're a human you make a community and you specialize and you support each other. We are wired to do this inside our cells to keep our species alive. It is fundamental to Being Human that you want to help other people. But if you're all the time afraid and all the time hungry, you will not do this and we have this Loop inside of us that says, oh my God, I'm hungry if I'm hungry I might die. So we just went from 5 x 2 10 x because dying is a fear thing.
If I'm going to die, then I won't get to reproduce so we might as well throw that 3x on there and that's why it hunger is such a trigger and that's why we feel like such jerks when we eat the cookie, but the ways too fast are sit down and do a spiritual fast the way did in the cave and say alright. I'm just going to deal with the feelings. I'm going to think about it. But since there's no food here. I can't sabotage myself, or you could say I'm going to do this in a structured setting but most people for the first time aren't going to go for days if there's food in the house because that
Part of them is going to just kind of make them do it and then you'll convince yourself. It's a really good idea to break my fast only 47 hours into into it and Raph you take the bite like God damn it. I can tell you've done this enough times. Well, that is a personal growth path and it is valuable and it is good and I talked about how to do that. But for most of us, did you want to have way more energy than you're used to having? Did you want to get younger? Did you want to just feel younger? Did you want to feel like every time you push down the accelerator you could go faster instead of being pegged and it's already
And you saw the rest of the day? Well, that's why intermittent fasting is important the definition of biohacking that's that I put in the dictionary. It's a new word in our language since I did my first CreativeLive. It's at least the definition that I first wrote is the Art and Science of changing the environment around you and inside of you so that you have full control of your own biology. Well what if you did stuff so that you just didn't feel hungry then you could intermittent fast and you wouldn't care and the cookie wouldn't ask you to
You eat it. You wouldn't trigger hunger which wouldn't trigger fear, which wouldn't trigger a lack of reproduction and then you could just go about your morning and not be hypoglycemia itchy and not have all the other stress and ultimately you get more done you feel better and it's easier and that's missing from the conversations around fasting. There's like do it because it's good for you do it because of the science. Yes, all that is true, but you're still not going to do it because your mitochondria don't understand science. They understand environment. I'm going to tell you to change your environment. So the fasting is
easier.
So to my original question and to dovetail and make sure I'm getting this right. The reason that people ought to care about our conversation today is because of fill in the blank
because you want energy and you want control you don't want to optimize your health you want enough power to do everything you love you want to power to have sex until you fall over dead. You want enough power to have the best career you want.
The power to change the world and all of the above. It's about how you feel and nothing else.
I love the you know you talk about in the book. I think in the listing your molecular your molecules and listing your molecules or and listing and look sillas and listing your molecular machines. For example, that's the psychology and bringing those things on board. I'll what I love about the way that your phrasing this is
If you're watching this right now, there is you have direct access to this benefit. I personally don't know and I don't have any experience of fasting in line with the way that you have talked about it before and what you've written in this book and not feeling marginally if not significantly better. I also believe that this path.
Many of us on our desire to be on whether it's self improvement betterment. I think the way you phrase it is is really appropriate is wanting the power to control your your life and do the things that you want to be able to do
do you
believe and you know, this goes back to why you wrote the book is the information that is widely available on these subjects. Is it largely?
Wrong and you're trying to fix it or is it just is just too much of it and you're trying to condense it and give it to us in a way that you know, I'm fascinated with the Y. So this is you see me digging into why you wrote the book and because there is a ton of information out there if you think about like, why did I start CreativeLive because there's all kinds of stuff you can find information, but you want to go to a trusted source and as someone who's done so much of the stuff to yourself and and you know done the science.
And as you said that lived through a shaman dropping off in a cave in the desert is it you know was the goal here too, you know, just give someone 10 cards that can turn over when they're trying to go through this.
It's that's not the goal. You're an author to you know, that your hourly rate for writing books is it's a terrible deal is right there. I'm sure you write a book because you have to write the book. Yep, or because you have something that you think is worth thousands of hours of your time.
We're to readers time because honestly, I think I could make coffee as a barista and one of my coffee shops and probably equal to hourly rate. So the why of the book isn't economic and should have two hundred million dollars my podcast. It's not about being better. No, no my fourth New York Times bestseller. It's about making a difference and there's plenty of books with the science of fasting. So the reason I wrote this is that there's plenty of rational reasons for fasting and I go over some of them in the book, especially some unknown ones.
But it's wired. Why is everyone doing it? Why haven't we built this into our our society? We haven't done it not because of the science. We haven't done it because of those three F words and because those things are in control so much and I'm shining a light right on them and saying here's how to get around it and getting around it isn't just understanding. It's actually just changing it so you don't get the signals so you can do some stuff at the start of a fast that dramatically improves your likelihood of
succeeding and completing the fast and there's other things you could during a fast that makes it more impactful like taking the right supplements not taking the wrong supplements. So it was more about how to actually do a fast instead of here's the reasons. You should do it in the types of fast. That's easy. Just Google it. It's not even actually use DuckDuckGo. Google doesn't even give you any good info about anything anymore. It just adds but when you when you go out there and you say that's what it's about. It's how to do it easily and without effort.
You wanted the effort for your own personal growth?
All right,
I'm crazy. That's why ultimately I think that's part of you know, what we in a culture that gives us things what we want when we need them and quickly, you know, I think that's a very virtuous reason for wanting to help someone because there's a lot of pain and there's a lot of lack of awareness and there's a lot of you can give people the tools and especially like you said, it's a bad hourly rate. But so you've written this book cut to the chase here.
There's a line in there that says fasting is like a Swiss army knife an incredibly impactful tool that has far more use than just weight loss through fasting you realize self control and self control leads to you making better decisions about the air you breathe the food you eat and the content you
consume are you
stating that fasting has is fundamental.
Or is it so is it a must-have or is it a nice to have
it is a must-have like sleeping?
Okay going
well it if you you can go through your life without doing it you will die sooner. You will get metabolic diseases your risk of dying of all-cause mortality goes up, but
Okay, death is a big deal. What if you just running it, maybe three quarters of your possible power for most of your life because you never figure this out like wait a minute. So it's not about life. It's about what can you do? Can you think at the end of the day? Do you have enough power to be nice to your kids after driving an hour Home in traffic or are you just blown out? This comes down to n equation? How many electrons could you take from air and food?
Few of them. Did you waste and then how do you show up in the world? And you can do a lot better when you know how to do some fasting. In fact, one of the things that happens when you know how to fast is that voice in your head worrying about food actually stops. I found a study that's in fast this way fifteen to fifty percent of the thoughts in your head during the day are about what you're going to eat next.
What if there weren't any of those what would you do with 15 to 50 percent more capacity for
thinking
that's why fasting is important. If you want to show up in the world as yourself stop thinking so much about
food.
I will confess something. So I hit the gym yesterday morning. I have a little home gym here and my trainer that I used to go to this gym. I now see her remotely and historically probably through a story that I have told myself rather than science, but that I needed to eat before working out so I had energy and I'm trying to put myself in a
Vulnerable position here because I think there's probably a lot of people who think like me and then I was like, wait a minute. I'm reading Dave's book. I'm talking to Dave this week. I'm going to not eat because I had stopped the night before at about 6:30, which is pretty early dinner for me, but it did that and my training session was at eight and I woke up and was I found myself a little bit paranoid like oh my
My gosh I'm going to have a bad. I'm gonna have a bad workout because I'm not going into my workout prepared. I did have coffee. It's a good call and then I had my workout on my workout was harder than normal and it was so hard. In fact that I didn't have room in my psychology to say gosh. Why is this hard? However, my energy level was extremely high and when I finished working
My working out the thought of eating did
not cross my mind until 12:45. Wow, look at you
and but here's the question as someone who is in the middle of working through the work that you're doing or have done for us in this book and have played with intermittent fasting seen some benefits. Why
have why do I still that? I know intellectually have all that internal psychobabble about not eating and yet when I did it almost accidentally almost forgetting that I had such a great experience. I had such a great workout and didn't feel hungry. I felt very naturally hungry at 12:45 walk me through you know, what what happened
go back.
Detective asked free. Please go back and tell me
what's going love it that you tried this working out fasted especially for I'm guessing as a strength workout. Yes, so it's perfect. There's something called mtor that you might have heard of and I reference this and I think all of my books and this is what your body uses to put on muscle and if it's chronically elevated it also triggers cancer. So when you want to build muscle what you do is you suppress mtor.
And then you when you release mtor it comes springing back and there's three things we know of that suppress mtor, which will cause the spike you're seeking and one of them is fasting one of them is coffee and one of them is exercise. So what you did is what I call in some of my books tripling down or triple stacking on mtor. So you basically compress it all the way and then when you ate that's what
The Surge of MTAR so you probably got more benefits from your workout when you had lunch because you did everything you could to keep it suppress the reason you felt so good after your workout is that workouts naturally increase opiates and adrenaline so you suppress your hunger after the workout because you worked out because the yeah, I got myself some journalism opiates and by the time they were off like okay I could eat when you ate where you just ravenous or was it normal hunger it was pretty normal
hunger. Yeah, there's no longer and it's supposed to be
yeah, and it was a
Again, as someone who has intermittent fasted as a part of is a curiosity for myself because so many of my friends like you and others are I have been advocating it never really sort of hopped on the train when reading the book, you know you Advocate working out fastest. I haven't done that before or and actually not not having not done it but it actually have fear around it because I don't want to Bonk.
And waste my time so gosh, give it a whirl. And is this something now? This is the this is the final question in my sort of trotting out my own experience here. This is just again yesterday.
was this just because this all
was just like ecology was I expecting this and then it happened or do you believe deeply that? I'm just a product of my biology and
and I was ready to have this be successful because I'll tell you I'm gonna short-circuit my own question here. I was prepared for it to suck.
I was going to say I don't think this is a case of placebo Place teams about 31 percent, but you were very curious about it, but you didn't have an expectation of an outcome
and it weirdly I forgot like that's the part that was strange too because I had forgot that I didn't eat, you know, the I was focused on the work out and then I went right from working out to a thing. I had a lot of energy and I was literally like like like well 45 I was like wow.
Wait a minute. This is these are my first calories aside from some coffee. And so that's available to me at all times is what you're
saying it is but that doesn't mean you should do it at all times. That's where I want to go next you use an aura ring.
Or some kind of sleep tracker of any sort and I'd be going on there. Okay, cool. There he goes, right? All right. So yeah, you you know your Readiness score. So if you to woken up that morning and and I got to terrible sleep last night. I'm really kind of blown out. You should have skipped the strength workout and you should have had some breakfast with protein and fat like today. I'm going to do a yoga class. It's all good. Yeah, you don't need to put yourself out because fasting is a stressor. It's just it's a good stress for unless you already have enough stress look, you know if you broke up with someone the night before you
Fire the night before you know, your life's on fire or you've got you know, the beginnings of a cold maybe you just don't need a fast and go hit the gym really hard. You actually be kind to yourself. And this is the other reason I wrote fastest way is I am seeing men and women burn themselves out on fasting because they feel so good. It's like know at least a couple times a week have some breakfast already like have breakfast with friends have some bacon like you'll be fine. You know how some eggs or Heck if you have to have some gluten free waffles.
It's fine. You don't even have to be Quito. In fact, you don't want to be key to all the time. But fasting is a tool that is free. It saves you time. And when you do it, at least some of the time it profoundly changes the energy you have the rest of the day and in the rest of your life
and it'll likely give you many more additional years of feeling good before you at the end man. That's a good Roi. Yeah. I like you talk about Roi and business and the ROI of
This is power Health, you know feeling good thinking well, and I also appreciate what I'd like to go into an in just a moment is how this is different for for women. But before we do that you have articulated in lots of different places and listen to a lot of the conversation you had with other folks again, your you have a class on CreativeLive, which I recommend
and of course in your book, but you just said like eight different things that would be quote good for us. Now. I know you're often hesitant to be prescriptive because there's so many there's a lot of nuance you just talked about the stressors, you know, I don't want to prescribe something to someone who is, you know, just had a big break up the night before but I would like if you would walk us through a
reasonable approach to many of the different bio hacks or I'll just call it, you know psycho or maybe psychosomatic or I'm not quite sure what the right but all of the different techniques that you have experimented with walk us through what a reasonable recommendation from Dave asprey looks like like sure I'm gonna you know, I'm going to eat keto for fill in the blank and then I'm going to you know intermittent fast 4X
What I'm going to intermittent fast once or twice a week or just give us the what I'm trying to get to is.
How wide-ranging life can be on the plus side, right? All those can be benefits because you're not tied into one thing and I believe so many people are still stuck as you try and break in the book, but on the like on the less than and I have to do this as a punishment to myself and the way you described it 90 seconds ago was like a little bit of this a little bit. It's kind of like cooking, you know, you you're just you've got all the ingredients there. So walk us through
A reasonable commingling of these amazing ingredients that you have that you've been espousing for a long
time. Well, at least three times a week don't have breakfast. It's real tough. I think most people can do that. Now if you're obese, like I was the thought of not having breakfast and I'll having a snack and just waiting until noon like yeah, I'm gonna kill someone.
One at work. I have ended a meeting in my mid-20s on the
guys. It's 11:45. I can't pay any more attention. I'm going to
kill one of you and eat one of you if I don't go to the cafeteria. So we're done. I just left because I can't do this right I don't like feeling that way and when I say skip breakfast some people are like Dave you're an idiot. I can't do it and there are three fasting hacks that I feel like I have to talk about here. No perfect to the next things. No, it's great. And the reason for fasting hacks is to turn off.
Off The Voice in your head that says that you're going you're going to die if you don't eat and that way the past can be easy the first to hack you already figured out its black coffee coffee the amount of caffeine. Anyway, not just coffee. But caffeine present into small cups of coffee doubles Ketone production at that is really big and we didn't know that until just a few years ago. And that means if you have a cup of black coffee before your vast your ketones go up a little bit as the ketones go up to very mild levels much less than the keto bro, you know, I only eat
Aiken kind of person you're actually turning off a hunger hormone called ghrelin and you're turning on a satiety or fullness hormone called cck and when you do that all of a sudden I go wait, I'm feeling better. So the first hack just black coffee that maybe enough that you know, what suppress my appetite. I just don't care about food. I'm good. Then the next hack for that is something I'm kind of well known for and like isn't hundreds of millions of bull of your cup of coffee sold.
But I will tell you if you put some MCT oil the C8 kind that raises ketones more than coconut oil and more than regular MCT that it's called brain octane. There's a couple other people making a C8 now, but you do that in a little bit of butter and you blend it up doesn't have to be a lot just have to like 400 calories or whatever. The critics are going to tell you. You still maintain the benefits of fasting and the fasting periods, like in the mouse study over there the mouse only had water. Imma get the mouse and have an espresso machine or would have worked better.
Better so I've talked to that like world-class experts on autophagy and written a book about it. And I will tell you flat out if your protein digestion doesn't get turned on insulin doesn't move. You're still fasting except for if you're doing a fast to rest your gut and for some certain specific bacterial things. Other than that, you do those two things. Like I just don't care about food, but the other thing that is new to the world of fasting and is a part of fast this way and so we have tested a lot is
Fiber this stuff cannot be digested by you. It doesn't raise your blood sugar. It's still keto but when you put it in your body your gut bacteria turn it into something called butyric acid, which is pro ketosis. So it can actually raise your levels. It also is really good for the balance of healthy gut bacteria, so you could have a cup of coffee. You can put some Prebiotic fiber in there. You can put a little bit of MCT oil little bit of butter blend it up. It still tastes like coffee and you drink it and you know what people could waive course
it's aunts and pizza and whatever else friend and you just don't care. You know, I just don't want to eat and it's so liberating instead of going I have willpower. I'm going to say no and then we're going to judge me if I change my mind. So I'm just going to see you in the meeting again. Think about now all that's gone. Okay, there's your intermittent fast use one or all three of the fasting hacks. So you got your morning and you're still yourself, right and sometimes don't have any of them and just be like I'm going to do it. So I'm feeling really good and that that's all good doesn't have to be the same every day and then
You might want to start out the day with another hack that is
very very annoying for three days.
And it is at the end of your shower put it on cold water. I'm saying this for 10 years cold water on your forehead and your chest you'll last about 8 to 10 seconds. You'll jump out of the shower and say Dave asprey super jerk. Well go back in the next day. You'll last 20 or 30 seconds the day after that you'll last maybe a minute and you'll still hate me the fourth day. You'll go in and be like what just happened. Like I actually doesn't feel cold.
I feel okay. In fact, I feel really good and then your skin starts to look better and you're full of energy for the day. It only takes 3 days for the mitochondria in your body to shift the composition of their lipid membranes. This is in studies. Yes, they're Mouse studies, but it works for people to and suddenly you're better at making energy on demand when you need to because you told your body you live in a world where you might have to make energy on demand that way later when you demand the energies they don't yell at your boss. You had the energy that you need it right? It's really easy. Okay, so now
You don't have to pay for breakfast. You might have to pay for coffee and maybe some other stuff. You didn't have to pay for hot water for a minute. Okay, we can all do this. What else should you do? You should monitor your sleep because you want to be good at sleeping and there's a whole step bunch of stuff. I've written about sleep. In fact, even in this book in fastest way. There's a section on how to combine fasting and sleep to change your circadian window rapidly chapter 5 you end this chapter 5 chapter 5 is anyone's ass looking. I didn't know which chapter it wasn't top of my head. I just finished the audible.
Ed for it, but I didn't remember the number and see you go through the like, oh wait. Okay, so I got better sleep than I did before Oh and by the way part of that don't eat real close to bedtime because you'll get worse sleep and check this out. If you had dinner like it 5:30 and then you finish dinner like 6:30 and you go to bed at 10:30. You got four hours of fasting and then you sleep for 8 hours. That's 12 hours. You only have to go four more hours and you just did a 16 hour fast good for you. It wasn't that hard. Right so you can do stuff like that. But if you just did those three things oh and then once a week
Like okay. I'm going to run for 20 seconds. Like there's a tiger chasing me. Then I'm going to walk real slow and then a run Im talking run for 20 seconds run really fast and then walk as slow as you can you'll get more benefits from 222nd cardio intervals over seven minutes, then you will in 45 minutes. So steady state spinning and sweating all over the place and that's research from the University of Colorado. So, okay, you save yourself a bunch of time and
Every day you got to go for a walk for 20 minutes just to move around. There's another set of benefits there. If you were to do those things, you don't have to take all those smart drugs. I write about you don't have to run electricity over your brain, which is awesome. You know, you don't have lasers or anything. If you do those things, what you've done is you've taught your cardiovascular system. You've taught your other systems. Oh, I forgot. You should also once a week lift really heavy things briefly until your muscles can't do it again for 10 minutes. You can do more if you want to but you don't have to and we're talking squats push-ups, maybe some pull.
That kind of thing doesn't have to be crazy. That's going to tell your body something really important. And this is something that is also in fastest way and it's kind of a new unifying theory for all these bio hacks. It's that the body is always listening to the environment around you and it responds strongest the things that have a high slope of the curve in other words, if you throw the frog in hot water it jumps out if you slow
slowly turn up the heat it boils. Well, the body really wants you to jump into the hot water so it can learn how to jump out really quickly. So if you do stuff that says hey at any time you may be able to turn the heat all the way up. He'll be ready and at any time you may need to be able to go for all of a day without food. It'll be ready and if you say at any time you may have to lift really heavy stuff until you think you're going to die. It'll be ready at any time. You have to be ready to move the blood through your body it really fast. It'll be ready and that it'll be ready.
It's directly into something else is called resilience. It's called a functioning immune system. It's called the ability of blood in your head in to think and to focus and to do and show up the way you want to show up. So this isn't that hard and it's all kinds of cool things like intermittent hypoxia and breathwork training meditation and things you can layer under there. You don't have to do any of that. But if you do the things that take the least amount of time least amount of money least amount of energy and give you more energy and return then all of a sudden doing the next one doesn't feel very hard because you got the energy already.
That was as well put as I've ever heard it that it was fantastic. And I think that that just the idea to retrace for just a moment cold water therapy people advocating it for a long time love with him off. He's a friend. Yeah them's been on the show. I would call him a friend. I am I would say 16 feet from my cold plunge. I have a hot tub and a cold Plunge in my yard. I reckon the other side of this window.
Use it everyday has absolutely been a game changer. And for what it's worth. I was buying a yearbook pre-orders are huge you guys just as an FYI for if you want to support people who are doing cool stuff in the world like Dave is you know, one of the best ways you can you can support Dave is to buy his book ahead of time in and thank you. Yeah. Yeah, and so I like to do that prior to having all my guests, who are
Authors on the show and I was doing that and saw you were paired there with him people also bought.
Oh, yeah, but there's just something to show to it
does it goes together like peanut butter and jelly and if you're European peanut butter jelly sounds disgusting. I know that I heard that before Marv bite ya that is nasty Vegemite Marmite all that stuff.
So
you said a few that is just a beautiful the here's a handful of Baseline things that you can do that are free cheap.
Super easy and I also have found that this idea of layering in more stuff while it sounds hard before you start when you have made habits out of these things and you have received the benefit the thought of layering and more stuff is actually joyful. And that's I think has to do with elaborate that power that you start to feel when you're in control of your life. You mentioned in there a couple things that I want to get.
Cooler on if you don't mind my being a little bit maybe the risk of being pedantic or to detail oriented, but you talked about types of fasting and again, you want to steer people to read the book but you talked about 16 8 which is a for those who were familiar with it. That's an obvious one, but just replay that for those who are new to it in the same if you would with 5/2 and anything else any other two numbers that you'd like to put together you feel free to do it, but
Give us a little bit of the some of the church types of fasting.
I put a directory of fasting in there and I want to preface this by saying the best type of intermittent fasting is the one you're going to do they all work so we can get that way. You don't have to be right on this one you have to do it. Is it so the simplest and kind of most beginner one is 16 hours without eating which is most always half of its going to be when you're asleep. Right and
When you eat all of the calories, you normally would eat during eight hours and then you can upgrade from that to an 18-6 which means you want two more hours without eating and you ate all of your meals for during a six-hour window and the next step up from that is basically a 24-hour fast, but it's much sexier to called in. Oh mad fast which stands for one meal a day.
Yeah. I'm oh mad it sounds and a badass
so and it is a little bit more biologically stressful to just Duo mad most people who do a matter like, oh my
Feel so good. I'm going to do I'm at every day forever and then two months later, they wish that they would have had breakfast every now and then so just because it was good for a couple days doesn't mean it's the best practice for every day for the rest of your life. That's the kindness to yourself and there's also five to where you can fast two days a week and you eat normally the other five there's something that I wrote about originally in the bulletproof diet like back in 2011, and it's called a protein fast. So one day a week you eat less than 15 grams of proteins you can eat
A thousand calories or something. You can have some coconut milk and you can have some vegetables that aren't too high in protein. So you're not really hungry but you get the autopsy the breaking down old cellular drunk and getting rid of it you get that effect. If you just avoid the protein so you can also do other longer fasts as well. And there are people who named them different things. So I do my best in there to say okay, you know, sometimes people will take the name of someone's work and then they say oh
That's a lean gains fast and Martin who's the guy who created the engaged in that Lincoln's is a whole program that goes with a certain length of fast and you're doing him a disservice if you're saying, oh I'm doing a lean gains fast, but you're actually just doing an 18-6 fast because you didn't do the rest of what he told you to do. So I do my best in the book to say this is a fast that's been branded. There's also the fmd or fasting mimicking diet where you eat a lower number of calories for a substantial number of days of the week, but
you're not actually fasting and what this comes down to is the real core definition of fasting which is it's just going without and you can fast from carbs. It's called the keto diet fast from animal products. It's called the vegan diet and not good for the planet. That's a whole different conversation there but I write about you know, the vegan approached and how you can combine it with fasting but how it's probably going to be harmful because of cell membrane Integrity not because of protein specifically and when you look at this, there's other things.
Passing from alcohol we do that there's fasting from gluten. It's just going without their social media fasting. There's dopamine fasting. I'm going to fast from anything that gets me to stimulated to reset my dopamine receptors and there's my dopamine receptors. There's actually emerging evidence that you're probably just during a normal fast also making it so that when you do eat the food taste better and that you're actually get more pleasure from it. So fasting is a spice when you put it that
That way and the list goes on there's 24-hour fast 48-hour fast 72 are fast. There's dry fast where you go without water and without food for a day or sometimes up to three days, which has a different effect on the body and probably is a little bit rough on a lot of biology's but people are doing it. So what I would encourage people understand is you don't have to have a name for your fast just pick a link the time and say I'm going to go this long without eating junk food. You just went on a junk food fast for three days.
For you if you're addicted to junk food. It's going to be really hard to do because they put MSG and neutral Sweden there and those are addictive substances. You're going to like I'm dying without my my diet soda and my French fries here. You're not dying. That's the voice in your head. Just lying to you so start there. That's okay too. It's just choosing to go without something for a brief
period awesome. Now, I promised to ask you a couple of questions about how women might approach this differently and before I do.
Do because you may choose to include this in it. Maybe it's different. Maybe it's not for the gender biology, but I want to touch on the mental Clarity aspects when I first started experimenting with some of your techniques and Bulletproof Coffee in particular. I got way smarter.
especially between I would say two and six hours after the Bulletproof Coffee and my mental acuity was significantly elevated and I got to the point that if I had to, you know lead an executive meeting or give a keynote in front of thousands of people and if I didn't have that near me, I
Disappointed and frustrated because I became I started to rely on it. So I've personally experienced the clarity of thinking that goes with Bulletproof Coffee and I'm wondering if you can tell us is that something is that just the fat that is in there or is it the combination of not having eaten and then when you do put calories in your body, they are fat so you're mimicking fasting. What is the combination and this asking for a friend?
But my friend is that is truly me like I to this day if I'm going to do something very public in front of a large audience and I will not I will Fast and I will consume a bunch of good high quality fat and it makes me way smarter. I want to know why
okay, it turns out it's not making you smarter. It's making me more energetic you already have the smart end there, but you didn't have the power to use them. Aw. Thanks, Mom.
Again, again rewire your
brain in that amount of time and you can rewire your brain. It takes a lot of work. So what's going on there? There's probably six reasons that Bulletproof Coffee is doing that and the most obvious one is coffee makes you smarter we know this but when you are not fasting you're eating stuff and the vast majority of things that we call food have toxins in them. And that's okay. The toxins are there because animals don't want us to eat their site plans, too.
To see their babies so plants cover their babies and poison animals don't want to see their babies. They bite us if we try to eat their babies. So what what's going on there is like well our ancestors figured out that they would die if there was a famine so they figured out they could eat this plant and not die notice. They didn't say they could eat this plant and show up on stage and kick ass and be at their highest and best power, right? They joke one and two not starve and these became our foods and if you talk to a food company executive,
What's the cheapest food I can get it's the stuff that will keep people from starving. And then how do I make it tastes really good on some artificial colors and flavorings and bad fats and some salt and you're good to go. Right? So when you're fasting one of the side effects of people don't think about is you're not consuming negative things in Plants now plants have good things to but your by avoiding the negative you're doing something special and this is a core part of the bulletproof diet, which is outside of just the world of fasting but when you fast you are consuming
No toxins that slow you down. Your digestive processes are not working. So the energy that you would have put into breaking down food is not there when you use the MCT oil in the coffee and it raises ketones ketones have more electrons per rotation of the Krebs cycle, then you can get from eating carbohydrates or burning glucose which comes from eating too much protein or eating carbs. So all the sudden your brains like, yeah, and we know in science the neurons will eat ketones even
If there's sugar floating around nearby they prefer it because it's a better fuel for them. Now the glial cells that shape and support your brain. They want sugar they'll eat ketones if they have to but they don't function as well. That's one of the reasons you cycle in and out of ketosis is when you don't fast all the time that's called starvation. And those are happening. You also have the pharmacokinetics of caffeine and we're modifying that with the fat but the thing that was missing that I really haven't talked much about because the research just came out its
Publication
it's been driving me nuts when I
first had Yak butter tea in Tibet and I noticed a difference I could not explain it. And I remember I was at South by Southwest probably the first year or two of bulletproof just starting the blog and I didn't have a blender and I said man, I don't want to eat all this, you know junk food that's available everywhere. So I bought a stick of butter and a cup of coffee and I ate the stick of butter like a Snickers bars front of this VP from from Twitter who was just horrified. I'm like no I'm hungry.
Re I just need some food here and it didn't work. You know, I was okay, but I didn't get the buzz what's going on here? Why do I have to blend it? Well, I gave $50,000 to the University of Washington for basic water biochemistry research and Gerald Pollack who identified this fourth phase of water. It's a real thing in water. You can see it in a microscope when water is up against a lipid membrane. These little droplets of fat. It changes its structure and it turns out what humans do we drink water and then we put the water next to our cell.
Games which are made of little droplets of fat and then we expose it
to 1200. Nanometer light is called
heat that body body and that changes the water so that it's the form of water that we can use to make energy in the form of ATP or to fold proteins and to do it ourselves do so our cells are full of special water and what Gerald figured out in his research at u-dub. Was that butter and he did test the grass fed.
Butter and MCT at least the eight carbon chain, the the stuff that I recommend both of those is they form very large amounts of this kind of water. So when you blend that Bulletproof Coffee up you are now drinking water that your body can use right away without having to burn calories to heat it up. So like okay, I got energy from ketones. I got water I didn't have to heat up and transform in order to use it. I got caffeine. I got the other polyphenols that are in coffee that are good for you. It's
I wonder that you feel amazing. I did not know all of that. When I tried the thousand different things to see what tastes good and what works and what gives me the buzz. I'm looking for and it's not a caffeine Buzz. It's very different and you're also not eating the very common toxins that are present in coffee called ochratoxin a which forms from a species of fusarium fungus. That's very common in coffee so common that it's illegal to sell coffee that has very much of this toxin. It's illegal in China all of Europe in Japan and most of South America.
But it's legal. There's no limits on that stuff in coffee in the u.s. When it's illegal to drink elsewhere. They send the coffee to the US and Canada and then they'll drink it and then you don't get the same buzz from that coffee you get jittery and for me, I quit coffee for five years. I thought I was allergic to it. No, I drink clean coffee and that was part of the bulletproof creation is I flew down to Guatemala and we put in new infrastructure to avoid the fermentation problems in coffee and then we lab test the coffee. So there's a lot going on in that cup of Bulletproof Coffee, but I promise you given the 10
Longevity of this and the hundreds of millions of cups of it. It's because people feel it like you're not alone in that I want this energy, but I will tell you if you do Bulletproof Coffee for about two years and you stop eating bad fats the way I recommend the seed oils canola corn soy your cell membranes change. It takes about two years. That's the half
life of fat in your cell membranes.
And when that happens you actually make stronger cells and you'll find
that you need
unless butter less MCT oil and you just have built cells that make more of that power on
demand and you will eventually get to the point where you know, what today's a really big day. I'm putting some butter and NCT in my coffee and you know today I just don't need anything else have a cup of black coffee cuz I like it and I'm totally dialed in
and you can go on stage and you can be
yourself and it's up to you but it takes time because you're rebuilding your body from the inside out and if while you're drinking your bulletproof, if then for lunch you go have the deep fried calamari and french fries. You're gonna have to keep having that Bulletproof.
Our
and that's fascinating. Thank
you for been a long
answer. No, I loved it. Like that's why this is a long-form show. What role just a small follow-up question. What role does simply not eating because I have also tried to like we were taught as kids eat a big breakfast. So you have your nourished before you go on stage and I just m floppy and not good and my
if
my I don't show up with breakfast no way. Yeah, and and
so you know that is part of my question I guess specifically is how much of my okay, I'm doing the Bulletproof Coffee. But how much of it is the fasted State as well? Because my body, you know, I'm aware that you know, the number one use of energy is Locomotion number two is digestion. So how much of my awareness of how much better I /
Form when I'm you know on an empty stomach and and Bulletproof Coffee how much of that is just in the fasted state where we have energy that we would otherwise would be burning through digestion.
I don't have a hard number for you, but it's a meaningful amount it is that when all the blood that would be in your stomach to digest food isn't there and all of the energy that goes to making the pancreatic enzymes for digestion all of that all the gut motility. It's just doesn't need to happen. So then it's like oh extra energy where can I put it? It will go into your brain, especially because you're calling on your brain at that time. So it's a it's a very meaningful what that difference is, and I wouldn't dream of doing a big
Big keynote a big event or or even like sitting down for an eight-hour writing session to write my book if I'm like. Oh, I just ate a giant meal because your sluggish and even if you're saying I just ate a small meal. It depends on what's in the meal if you had some some sugar in there. You can write really well, you know, you'll show up and you want to feel great you only have a one our keynote put a tablespoon of organic sugar in your Bulletproof Coffee and now your brains like yeah, I got all the glucose I need and I got
ketones and I got all this stuff and you've like yes, and of course, you might not feel so happy
later that day, but I'll be my best for that
our sugars that cognitive enhancer for the short term and then cognitive unenhanced over the
long term.
all right, so I want to put a bow on a couple of things and then Circle back to how give you an opportunity to speak directly to the some of the women who are listening yet or anyone who's curious about that and the last the you know above that I want to put on it is so there's a combination of things that I personally experienced through not eating and
Aside from the stories. I've told myself which is the only real negative. I personally have gotten a lot of benefit from fasting in various different forms. I've tried to share some of those today and want to
I want to make sure that I'm making a connection and it's not a false one because my connection was around this mental Clarity was you know a lot of not having eaten the part that I just walk through the Bulletproof Coffee is you said has a bunch of things that are happening in there. But there's also this Clarity that comes from eating less or fasting actively fasting in any of the various ways that you've talked about today that have a history.
Of mental Clarity and in the book you bring in religion Zen Buddhism Hinduism anything judeo Christian. There is a history of fasting in each of these different philosophies of life, and I'm wondering if you can connect some of those for us. I thought you might bring it up while I was kicking around some of these things historically, but since you didn't I found that to be interesting and I'm wondering if you can share a little
bit
I did some pretty hefty Research into fasting practices around the world throughout history. And what you'll find is that every spiritual practice every organized religion that you can find has fasting as a part of what they do and it's been lost or watered down over there. Especially the last couple hundred years because it's frankly unpopular to tell people dhoni and we'd like to eat right? It's also equally unpopular say don't have sex. We like to have sex
There are things that are fundamental human drives and those are two big ones that it's really hard to bet against and if you could bet against them, then there would be no more people because we would starve to death and we wouldn't reproduce so it's okay to just acknowledge that we want to eat and it's also in a spiritual tradition. It's around fasting for a couple days which provides Clarity because the digestion work stops so that energy go to the brain because you go into ketosis. So the energy goes into the brain and you really do
Do hit a state of clarity and it's so amazing after the second day of fasting as I describe it. I'm talking about the different days in the cave when in fasting which is the the backdrop in the structure for fastest way the third day like I'm just not hungry, but I'm so powerful like I can feel everything. I can see everything think colors are more vibrant. Like my senses are awake that's real and it is a religious kind of experience and it requires dedication and whatever your
Belief system is whatever deities or energies you work with it's easier to connect with them when you're running at full power and it's so counterintuitive to say, wait a minute. You mean when I'm not eating I'm running at full power but it's like this you can have a battery that's charging and run it but there's energy going into the recharging and if you're so I'm not gonna worry about recharging. I'm just going to run off the battery and that's all I'm going to do all processes are forward all of its focused. That's when people can connect with the Divine they can connect with the universe.
And if you want to enter a state of samadhi, which is where you actually are at one with the universe, it requires fasting and if you want to do a lot of the very Advanced meditation States, it requires periods where you just your guts not busy you're doing something else and I believe that if we can make fasting scientifically valid, which it is it's already done, but if we can make it achievable again, or if you can get that three-day fasted state, but you can do it in one morning because you actually raise your ketones as if you were fasting.
The end result of any of those practices is that a metabolism that works better provides more energy to the person who has that metabolism. And when we have more energy we are wired to be kind to each other. So that's what most religions want you to do be nice to other people. Like let's not have another War although most religions go through a phase of War II, but that's another
fascinating
and a fascinating
fascinating who but I'm pumped how many times you done that before? Is that the
No, it was the first actually the first all right. You heard it here first folks. I always like to bring you premieres here on the show. They've talked to me about how women might think about this a little bit differently than men do to a that female bodies react to changes and I know there's some special considerations and I'm hoping you can shine a light on them.
There's a whole chapter in the book that's specific to fasting for women and one of the problems in the
three of fasting research guess who we do our fasting experiments on
There's two classes of animals that have basically no rights. One of them is mice and the other one is college freshman. And I mean fresh men, right? So he wrote most of History are you know, it was white dudes in college. So that was who they would run the experiments on this. I called you experiment. The diet experiment is all this up because they'll do anything for beer money right? I know I went to school too. So there's fewer studies.
women in fasting but we understand some evolutionary psychology and I reference the studies that we do have and what happens is for men if you don't have sex no one's going to die, right if you don't reproduce it's okay with a woman if you do have sex and there's inadequate calories or inadequate nutrients you could die because you could get pregnant and there could not be enough food for you and the baby and mother nature knows that you're
Screwed now, you know like hey, I'm using birth control. I'm not going to get pregnant. But Mother Nature doesn't know that because Mother Nature is listening to the little cells in your body that are following the basic for f words. So we have a disconnect there and what that means is that you're likely to experience more physical biological stress sooner than a man does during a fast and fasting still provides great benefits, but you might want to start out by doing three to five days a week.
Of intermittent fasting not every day of the week. In fact most women, but not all who I know who especially if they're exercising a good amount. Don't do well over time with unending intermittent fasting especially if they're also mixing in some longer fast. So my recommendation there would be half breakfast on weekends have brunch with your friends. And if you're trying to Meg's Quito and to trying to mix fasting with the keto diet, would you do not have to do it's particularly rough men?
Will typically hit the wall in about two months and women typically at the wall in about a month. This is a month of unending intermittent fasting or unending keto without consuming carbs or without taking a break from intermittent fasting some women, especially if you're young especially if you don't have any underlying health conditions at all, you might be I feel great. I don't eat breakfast hardly ever, but I will bet you money that three months after saying that like, you know what my Cycles a little bit off and there's also times when you look at your
Or a ring score and there's this amazing thing that when you're on your cycle, there are certain times when your Readiness score will be lower. You hurry, very bill is lower and your body's doing a lot of extra work on refreshing the uterine lining. Well during that time. It might be a better idea to have breakfast and it also might be a better idea to fast but you've got to be aware of that. The the Saving Grace here is that women are almost always better biohackers than men and I don't know if you know
People saying women they're more heart-centered or whatever which is a bit of a stereotype but I will say that women because your biology changes on a regular basis. You're more aware of changes in your biology. If you're a guy like me, I didn't realize that anything below my neck really mattered very much except if I was on a date or if I was hungry and this is a very common very stereotypical perspective, but it's born out through mitochondrial behavior and survival instincts. So what this means is if you are
Practicing fasting or you're practicing keto or for that matter you're practicing the vegan diet and you start noticing changes in your hormones. You start noticing changes in your hair, then it's time to eat some more and it's okay to do that. Do not get into this idea. I have to do the same fast every day because it's easier after workout every day the same way because it's easier overtraining is a problem over fasting is a problem and you'll see it in thinner hair thyroid dysfunction and hormone dysfunction and
And before those hit you you'll see it with sleep disruption so fast things powerful just not every day. It's really easy every other day. You can do it.
Well, I found that section fascinating not because of my gender because like I I want to understand a 360 degree or as much as possible when I'm undertaking something and I've been dipping my toe and fasting for a long.
I'm Without Really knowing much of the science very superficial still getting plenty of benefits, but I just want to give you personally a shout out because you think your book is really helpful and it it shined a light on a lot of the things that I was like, ah, so that's why not dissimilar to what you how you helped me understand the benefits that I got from my workout yesterday morning. So, you know shout out. Thank you so much for writing a book about
Fasting that I felt like needed to be written and we've already said once but I'll say it again if you want to be able to help Dave out pre-ordering his book will make sure to drop this podcast in time so that you can get it before it's out. That's a huge help for for any author and Dave is in that category. You know, that that's a great way to support folks Beyond just the purchase the timing of that purchase matters and if you can buy from a local bookstore a small bookstore, that's even better.
Of course all these choices are yours. So
Dave appreciate
you being on the show. Congratulations on of course all your successes and it was a treat to get to meet you a few years ago. When you did your creative live class going to have to recommend that and just thanks so much for being on the show and for writing the book keep doing the cool things that you're doing and any can you steer people towards a couple places you'd like them to go on the internet in Pursuit and I shared the bit about your book, but it's a
Anything else you want to say before we scoot
if you do pre-order my book first. Thank you. It's worth your time or I wouldn't have written it. If you go too fast this way.com, which is the web page for the book and you send me a copy of your receipt. I'll send you a bunch of other stuff. Then you go to the website and figure out what it is. But basically it's my job to make it easy for you to figure out how to start fasting in a way. That won't break you and makes you feel good. The reason I'm doing it is that I think it'll make you nicer.
Yourself and other people around you. I want us to have a lot of nice people because there's a lot of stress people going on right now. Yeah, there's also a section in the book on fasting and Immunity when to eat when to fast and when to eat depending on what kind of an infection you might have.
There's really good data on this that isn't really well understood or while known but it is well
understood. I just say it's worth your time. And if you haven't heard of bulletproof radio top 100 podcast for years running couple hundred million downloads, and I'd love to spend more time with you there.
Aw.
Awesome. Thanks for being on the show congrats on the book was fun to read a little bit more about something. I've been paying attention to for some time. So thank you very much and signing off Everybody Take Out Dave book and we'll be back in your ears again.
Hopefully tomorrow. Thanks Chase.
All right, that is a wrap. But before you go, hey, I wanted to say thank you so much. And I do note that many of you have asked how you can help me out there in the world and I have a great answer for that and it is sharing this show.
All is I create this content with a talented hard-working crew of your creative life. And our goal is to get this information out there to the world help the greatest creators and entrepreneurs of our time get their ideas spread far and wide so you sharing your takeaways or just links to the show any of the podcast platforms or whatever means the world to me thing to how you can help. If you care is to leave a review at your preferred podcast platform that also helps surface this show
Oh the guests in in search results on each of the platforms and it means a lot. So thank you so much really really grateful, and I'll look forward to seeing and next episode hopefully soon. Maybe next maybe right after this maybe going to anyway whenever you get around to it. I'm here. Thank you.
