ATHE_Transcript_Ep 397_Dave Asprey
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] All right. We are going to be unpacking fasting today with one of my very best friends on the planet. In fact, such a best friend that he walked my mom down the aisle at my wedding. I am talking about Dave Asprey, the founder and chairman of Bulletproof 360, you know, Bulletproof.
It's the amazing high-performance coffee and food company. He's also of course the creator Bulletproof coffee. And I'll tell you, I love Bulletproof coffee when Dave makes it for me, I'm spoiled. He's a three times New York times bestselling author. Actually. I think that, I think that is now wrong. I think he's now hit four times with his new book, fastest way.
Of course, you know, the Bulletproof diet. That's the book I wrote the forward to and he has got the incredible Bulletproof radio super great podcasts you will want to be tuned into. You probably seen him on the today. Show Dr. Oz, Fox, CNN, Nightline, and all over the place. He's known as the father of biohacking.
And he also puts on [00:01:00] an incredible conference every year called upgrade labs. Yep. I've got Dave with me today. You're going to love this interview and here's. What else you're gonna love? You are going to be able to do as fastest way challenge for free by going to JJvirgin.com/Fastestway. And you'll also want to grab his book fastest way to help you through the process.
Okay. I will be right back with my buddy, Dave, stay with me.
Okay, Dave, this is going to be so super fun. Because I think back and, you know, we've talked so much about dieting and especially where you came from, which by the way, I'd love for you to tell your story. Like, let's actually start there and then I'm going to throw this next line out to you. So before we start to dig into today's topic, I want to make sure everybody knows the Dave before the Bulletproof, Dave.
Sure. [00:02:00] I wish we had the visual.
Dave Asprey: I can find an old fat picture, but I used to weigh 300 pounds. And before I turned 30, I had most of the diseases we think we get. After 60, I had high risk of stroke and heart attack. I had arthritis since I was 14. I had cognitive dysfunction, prediabetes and chronic fatigue syndrome. So I was not in a good place, but my career was taking off.
I was faking it a lot of the time. Cause I couldn't remember anything, but no one noticed fortunately and I decided I'd work out the way you're supposed to an hour and a half a day, six days a week, go on a low fat, low calorie diet and I'd have to lose. And after 18 months without I looked in the mirror and sure I had some muscle under my fat, I still had a 46 inch waist and I still weighed 300 pounds.
And I looked at my friends eating double Western bacon cheeseburgers with extra large fries. And I'm having the chicken salad with no chicken and no. I said, wait a minute. I [00:03:00] work out. I work out more than all my friends, I eat less than all my friends. And I'm the fattest one. If this stuff isn't working it, maybe it's not me.
But at the time I thought, actually, I'm just eating too much lettuce. I need even less, maybe have some more diet Coke. And since that time I got really frustrated and I said, I'm going to try everything, and I did because I'd been successful in Silicon valley. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying everything, and I recovered my health and I got rid of those things.
And then I said, how can I continue upgrading? And I've raised my IQ, I've lowered my biological age. And I'm around 11% body fat today give or take half a percent on the scales and I'm never hungry. And I like my life and ate food that tastes delicious and I have more energy than people have my age and it's only getting better.
It's awesome.
JJ Virgin: And this is what we're going to unpack because you know, as that was happening with you, I remember I was in grad school and we were taught that you would eat every couple of hours. You should graze that you should eat very low. [00:04:00] Be a vegetarian and do a lot of cardio. In fact, don't lift weights and tell you've lost the weight you should just do.
At least at least 30 minutes of cardio. A day more is better. If you couldn't do 30, don't bother go long, slow distance. Don't go too hard, go moderate. Right. And so, you know, we started. Off before we start the recording, I'm like, hold on, we gotta get this on. We got to get this recorded. Is this whole idea of grazing and let's, we're gonna bash this and then move into today's topic because way back then it was like, don't let yourself get hungry.
You should eat every couple of hours because it keeps your blood sugar up and stable and you should do all that long, slow distance cardio so that you can burn more fat. So a blow through that. And then we're going to dive into fasting and really kind of get rid of some myths too, around fasting. Like you'll lose all your muscle and all that kind of crazy stuff.
So what do you say [00:05:00] about grazing my friend,
Dave Asprey: JJ? On a regenerative agriculture farm. I raised cows and sheep and pigs. If you want to look like a cow or a sheep, definitely. And it turns out with our pigs. If we let our pigs eat, like cows that eat all the time, they'll weigh oh four, 500 pounds and 300 of it is fat.
And if we let our pigs, which are biologically wired a lot like humans, if we let them intermittent fast, when you take them to the butcher, the butcher says, what did you do? The pigs don't have very much fat and they have so much muscle meat. I've never seen this in a pig that only weighs 300 pounds before.
And the difference is how often you eat. So if we had three stomachs and you'd like to chew your cut, grazing works. And I take, I take this back to when I actually had a fear of not eating every two hours because I was already fat and I didn't want to be any fatter. And I had heard your body will go into [00:06:00] starvation mode.
If you don't eat every two hours, I don't want to starve. I don't want to die of starvation and I don't want to get fatter and even worse I had learned. I don't want to be hypoglycemia itchy. I don't want to be hangry. What happens then is if my blood sugar dropped, I couldn't handle it. I would just turn to a jerk.
And so it was like fear of being. And fear of going into starvation mode, that I was so afraid of skipping a meal that I said, all right, I'm going to hire a shaman to take me to a cave in the middle of the desert, drop me off for four days with no food and no people that we want to get hangry, what am I going to yell at a cave wall?
And that was the basis of my fastest way. That just came out and it turns out you can fast for 24 hours without feeling any hunger whatsoever. And there's some things you could do during a fast to make it happen. And so far, 70,000 people have done my fasting challenge. You just go to fastestway.com.
It's free. You don't have to buy the book. But it's a [00:07:00] Testament when you see hundreds of people saying, I can't believe I could do this. I didn't know. I could go a whole day without. It sounds like a big deal, but it's not like, oh, you had dinner, you slept for eight hours. You skip breakfast and lunch.
You skip two meals. Like everyone can do this, but it sure does sound impressive to say I went 24 hours, but you can do it.
JJ Virgin: Well, here's the other piece of that. It is okay to be a little. No. It's
Dave Asprey: like, come on.
JJ Virgin: You know, it is so funny, Dave, I still remember this that they, that the dieticians were saying, do not let yourself get hungry.
You always want to eat ahead of being hungry. And I was sitting at expo west talking to our buddy, Jeff bland and Dr. Joel Kahn and, and Joel who normally I disagree with the stuff he says, but I loved what he said here. He said and I'm saying. Joel, very lovingly,
Dave Asprey: as he was choking on kale saying that it made them more virile,
JJ Virgin: told our vegan buddy who, who anyway, [00:08:00] we'll leave it at that.
So Joel said this great line, hunger equals younger. Anyway, you know what? That's actually just a fantastic line and we should not be so afraid of being a little hungry. And generally, most of the time, if we are a little hungry, it's just because we've, we've trained ourselves Pavlovian to be hungry when.
Anyway. Let's start to unpack this whole idea because I do remember back then, we were told you need to eat every couple hours and if you didn't, you would start to lose muscle. So I think one of the big urban legends around fasting is if that, if you don't eat, you slow down your metabolism and your body breaks down muscle.
So what do you have to say to that? Well,
Dave Asprey: There is something that happens when the body breaks down protein. And it's a very profound anti-aging energy enhancing thing called autophagy. So you don't need to eat all of the time to keep your muscle, but if you don't go without food, some of the time, the body never gets a chance to break down.
Zombie cells. These are [00:09:00] cells that need to get taken out, or imagine in the days in Las Vegas had screw in light bulbs, there are thousands of people's job was to find a dim bulb and get on a ladder and unscrew it and replace it. Well, your body has the same process, but there's a quadrillion of these little guys called mitochondria floating around.
So you must go without food. So the body can take all the energy that would have gone into digesting your next meal and say, Hey, let me go to digesting the weak bulbs and taking them out and replacing them with strong ones. And you're not gonna lose muscle. If you do that. Now, if you go on a long, long, fast, you might lose muscle, but you're eating the same amount of protein every day.
You're just eating it at a different time. So you can go 14 or 16 or even 12 hours without food and get benefits from that. Even if you eat the same number and amount of calories, the amount of protein. At a different time of the day. So it's not just what you eat, it's when you eat it. And they both matter.
JJ Virgin: I love that. You're saying that is so key important. I've seen it so often too. It doesn't matter. You, you know, it doesn't matter if you eat right before bed. It's like [00:10:00] yes, it does. So let's look at that. Cause in fastest way. Great book. And I will put in the show notes, go to jjvirgin.com/fastestway.
We'll make sure that you can get into that fasting challenge, but what's great is you go through the different types of fasts. And we also, we're gonna talk about fasting specifically for women. Let's talk fasting in general. You know, what is fasting and then what are like, what are the different types of fasting and what you do in that book?
That's so beautiful as you kind of walk people into fasting. So they don't just start out and go, we're going to go one meal a day. You know, there's a process you take people through,
Dave Asprey: but let's talk about what fasting really is fasting means to go without. And there's all these weird arguments that there's purists, who like to be on the fringe.
And we have, you know, animal, you know, vegan purists, like, ah, you know a bee touched it. I can't eat it like extremism and you have keto extremists. Like if you [00:11:00] eat a carb again you're a bad person and see, you get all this thinking and you get faster as you go. Well, in studies, the mice only had water. So you can only have water during a fast,
and it's, it's a dogma, it's a belief system. That's not backed in science. And it's funny because then you get the marks there's oh, no, you can't have water during fast. You have to have a dry fast with no water. And then the next step beyond that is you can't have air during a fast either, right. So it it's absurd
JJ Virgin: fast called the dead fast.
Right,
Dave Asprey: exactly. Right. That the suffocation fast, it's all the rage. So what you end up getting with is you say, okay, what am I going to go without to get what benefits over what period of time. And all of a sudden now fasting becomes, oh wait. Oh, can I fast from social media? Yes. Can you fast from alcohol? Yeah. It's called abstaining, right?
Can you fast from sex? Yes, people do that. And I write about that in the book and it can be intermittently or for longer periods the same as it could be with food. Right. So now that you've said, I am going to teach my body to feel safe [00:12:00] going without what is the right length of. Might it depend on the state of your body when you start the fast, if you're like, I used to be with a hundred pounds of extra fat and inflammation hanging on you probably starting with a three-day fast.
Isn't going to work very well. So maybe I should have started if I'd have known about it back then with a 12 or a 14 hour fast and worked my way up. And the same thing goes, oh, maybe you've never fasted. You've been eating 12 meals a day. Every day for the last 10 years, you're probably not want to do a 24 hour fast right away.
So you can start where you are. Likewise, if you're like me and you're really used to fasting I do about 16 hours almost every day or more because it's easy today. I'm doing one meal a day. So I'm only having dinner today and it doesn't affect my performance or my attention or my mood or anything. It's just very normal.
But if I woke up this morning and my throat was sore and my eyes were bleary and I didn't sleep very well last night. And I got in a fight with someone and I was really stressed at work. You know what I would have done, I would have had [00:13:00] breakfast. Right. And that's the thing. Your fast doesn't have to be the same way every single day.
It's completely okay to change it. Every single day. You are fasting. If you go at least 12 hours without food, and there are studies of middle-aged women in Australia, sizable studies, I interviewed the author on my show. Her name is Dr. Maraud. And, She says three days a week of 12 hours or longer intermittent fasting showed substantial benefits over even periods of time, like six weeks.
So that's all it is. You don't even have to fast every single day in order to get benefits. In fact, There is something called the fasting trap that I write about in Fast This Way. That's really important because women fall into the fasting trap faster than men. And it's the same as the vegan trap. And it's the same as the keto trap.
And is that if something is good for you, more of it must be better. And even the exercise trap and you and I both in kind of this look, if lifting weights is good, I'll lift weights twice a day, every single day, and what you get is over-trained and injured, you don't get stronger, [00:14:00] right. So that's what we're dealing with with fasting.
Let me talk about the trap, if that works, because it's so important for women. When you first start intermittent fasting, you go, oh my God, I just want 16 hours. And I have so much energy. It turns out I have more energy and focus during the day and I love my life. And so you do it for a month. You say, you know what, that's it.
I'm going to do one meal a day, five days a week because I know fasting is good. I mean, it feels good, more fast. It can only make me feel better. So then you do that for a little while. And then usually in about six weeks, but it depends on who you are, how old you are, how stressed you are, et cetera. About six weeks, you know?
Hm. That's weird. I sleep like eight hours and I feel like I didn't even sleep. And if I monitor my sleep, like with an aura ring it shows that I'm not sleeping very well, but I don't know why I know all fast, even longer because fasting always makes me feel better. I'll try a three-day fast on top of this.
This happens all the time. Okay. Then you wait another couple weeks ago. That's weird. My cycles totally off and my sleep is still broken and then you go another [00:15:00] couple of weeks and now is my. Yeah, that's strange. I haven't seen that before. So that's the symptoms of the fasting trap for women? For men? It usually shifts out a couple two to four weeks.
It takes a little bit longer. And for
JJ Virgin: men it's we're, we're like, we're like Ferrari's and you guys are like VW. VW bugs. I know I'm
Dave Asprey: dating myself, but you know, you're like a delicate flower that goes in the vase of a VW bug. Isn't
JJ Virgin: that would be it. We're delicate. We are very intricate. You guys are way easier.
You can take a little mess you up. Our hormones
Dave Asprey: delicate flowers are delicate,
JJ Virgin: you know? Yes, we will. As, as we, as we've proven haven't we leave that one alone. Okay. So back over, I think you're going to talk about men. We don't really care on this show. We discussed. Are you
Dave Asprey: kidding? Some of us are married.
JJ Virgin: Hey, here's the thing.
We're the healthcare CEO's of our family. We really guide our guys and I think it is important for women to understand that, [00:16:00] you know, it is easier for men to do this, but if they continue, they don't tend to be as crazy as. Where we'll like do more fitness, more stuff like, and if it's not working, we double down on it, which is really crazy.
What guys do it too?
Dave Asprey: Once it works a little bit, like I'm going to double down and for guys, and women need to know this, the first symptom is the same, but it's not going to happen for probably eight weeks. Yeah. It's wow. My sleep quality is down too. So I wake up and I feel groggy, but the second symptom for guys is you wake up without a kickstand.
Oh, right now here's what an uninvited guy
JJ Virgin: is. Anything.
Dave Asprey: Well, it happens. And, but here's what happens in the head of a guy. And I'm just going to give you, you ladies, a little peek inside a guy's unconscious things. And since I run a neuroscience clinic that looks at unconscious stuff I think this is credible.
We're going to look for an excuse for why there is no kickstand [00:17:00] and we're not going to look at fasting. We're going to look at the women in our life and say, it's because you, and then they're going to insert. Are too skinny, too fat are mean to me, didn't make me dinner, blah, blah, blah. And we're not going to do it because we're mean we're going to do it because we automatically look for a reason.
Our brains are always looking for an excuse, right. And we'll actually believe the voice in our head that says, it's your fault that we woke up without a kickstand, even if it's because we were fasting too much. So guys, I'm telling you and women with guys, if you're guys over fasting and this becomes an issue like, well, there you go.
This can happen. And. The same thing happens by the way. Very commonly with guys, when they go vegan, you wait eight weeks and suddenly there's no desire. And all of a sudden they're like, why aren't you? Yeah, we get bitchy.
JJ Virgin: Then they start to cry and all sorts of things go strange,
Dave Asprey: no matter how much celery juice they drink, JJ doesn't seem
JJ Virgin: crazy.
Isn't it. So I look at this all like a bell-shaped curve and you really want to be in the middle. [00:18:00] You don't want to be on either end. And so you're finding what's optimal for you and what's optimal for you is not necessarily what's optimal for your husband. And so it's really paying attention and dialing it in.
But there's also a concept here that I've been playing around with a lot that really your program lends itself to perfectly because you say, you know, listen to your body, of course, over, over fasting as a form of stress. So everything you started to talk about was like, okay, these are all signs that you've just, you've over overstressed yourself.
And I look at this just like you do exercise, which I want to dig into next is that we know an exercise you're supposed to cross train. We've got to think of that same thing in diet. So what you just talked about is you don't want to eat the same every single. And naturally what you described, you wouldn't be some days you may go, you know what?
I'm waking up and I'm hungry. I'm going to have breakfast some days you, I'm not hungry. I'm going to wait till lunch. And you're [00:19:00] naturally having caloric variability. You're naturally, maybe you're Quito one day, the next day that you have some carbs. And that's good because your body should be a hybrid and be able to shift from ketones to fats, to carbs and be able to be that metabolically flexible.
So that is what's so key in this plan is that it's not some rigid hardcore plan that doesn't give people that variability, that unique personality that they own, they have. So it fits within their life. Right. And allows them that flexibility that will also create the metabolic flexibility that we need to have.
Dave Asprey: It is. It's so important to have metabolic flexibility where your body and that don't mean you consciously. I mean, your body feels safe with an empty stomach. It feels safe with fat. It feels safe with carbs and it doesn't get a stress response to do with
JJ Virgin: them. Right. It doesn't go. What, what is this carb?
I have, no, you have not eaten one of these for years. What is this? What do I
do?
Dave Asprey: In fact, we know that people don't need any carbs in [00:20:00] addition to probably getting cranky over time and having poor gut bacteria, healthy
JJ Virgin: mochi made by.
Dave Asprey: There you go. Someone
JJ Virgin: has to do pairing sad. What you don't know listening is that Dave, he makes the best mochi ever.
So at all of our parties, we always have Dave making the mochi and
Dave Asprey: Moochie is a pounded rice thing from Japan, for the stuff that's wrapped around
JJ Virgin: ice cream. It's very well with Bulletproof coffee.
Back over to carbs. Yeah. W what happens when someone never, ever eats a carb there? Yeah. You
Dave Asprey: get insulin resistant and there's studies that show this, which means your body forgets how to use carbs. And when your cells are wired, right. They're able to make the enzymes that allow you to make energy from glucose or blood sugar, or from.
And magically, this means you have more power, more resilience, more endurance, and the kind of resilience and power. Isn't like, you know, I'm a power [00:21:00] athlete, which is power to, you know, wake up, stay focused, get grounded, do what you want to do all day long and the power to maintain control over your emotions and fasting triggers a lot of emotions.
We should probably talk
JJ Virgin: about the Edwards. Okay. It's definitely, let's talk that. And then we're going to go into exercise. So yes, let's talk. Oh, come on. Exercise or health boring.
Dave Asprey: All right. There are three F words that are built into your cells all life on earth, whether it's a bacteria, whether it's a whale in the ocean, it does not matter everything in between plants. Animals follows the same rules. First important rule is runaway from kill or hide from scary things. It's fear.
That's the first effort. So 10 times more focused than is necessary for that. Right? And this is our emotional trauma. This is stuff we worry about. Even if it isn't actually a real fear. If we, if your brain thinks it might be like, oh, someone yelled at me, that's actually [00:22:00] scary to your subconscious, not to you this second.
Is food or feed because the rule is eat everything and all life dies a is over time. So we are wired in ourselves way before we can think about it about a quarter second before we think there's a part of us. That's like, Right. And you have to recognize that's not you, right? Same way. If you lean against a hot stove accidentally and you pull your hand away before it gets burned, you're like, yeah, good thing.
I pulled my hand away and then you go, wait, I didn't decide to pull my hand away. Who pulled my hand away? It was the same person that made you eat all the bagels. This is the one who pulled your hand away it's before you can think. And it takes a lot of extra energy to catch that, that desire. And then.
Hold back on it and that's called willpower. So when you get the voicemail says, eat the bagel, and then you have the power and the resilience and the energy to say, no, that is something that's necessary. But if you can't make energy because your body doesn't have [00:23:00] resilience and flexibility, metabolically, then you're not going to be, we'll say no to the bagel.
And it becomes really a problem. Third F-word that all life has to do to stay alive. Is a reproduction
JJ Virgin: related efforts. Yes, I do.
Dave Asprey: Fertility. Fertility is what you're thinking about. Yeah, I know you JJ. That's not what you're thinking about. Anyway, those are the three F words, but what we get mixed up and I I'd like to say, especially women, but I don't think that's true.
I think it's actually men and women is that we go, oh, if I don't eat, I might die. So we ping pong between fear and food being pong ping. Right. And then someone tells us we'll starve if we don't eat six times a day. So then that puts us in fear. Right? That's why it's so hard. What you learn in fastest way is how to turn off the fear part.
Which makes it so much less work to just deal with the food [00:24:00] part. It's all about the voices in your head. So the book is as much about psychology as it is about the whole I'm going
JJ Virgin: on a hike with our buddy Vivian today. And well actually I'm not going on a hike buddy, Vivian today because I wanted to go on this big steep hill hike and Vivian said, I'm fasting.
So we better go do something like a little walk on the beach. And so what would you say? I'm like, oh, come on. Piece of cake. So anyway, we're going to, we compromised with a, a yoga class, but what would you say about exercise and fasting?
Dave Asprey: I want to be behind you guys and yoga class. That's what I'm thinking about.
JJ Virgin: Well, we'll do it not to bother anymore. I've gotten really good at you. I see. Yeah. And I even actually did a hot meal, so here's the funny thing. Yeah, I'm really good child. So, but I love happy baby, but Tim and I went [00:25:00] to core power yoga, cause it's right near our Airbnb. It's like literally half a mile.
And I find this core power yoga too. And I don't know anything about it. I'm like, this looks cool. So we drive over there and it's a Saturday morning and we get there 10 minutes ahead and we put our maps down. It's not a big room and people keep coming into the room. Well, first of all, we go in the room and the room.
It's a hot yoga class and I've only done a hot yoga. So I've done it once. Do you know what I did? I did it with Jeff Hayes and Kathy Smith in park city, Utah. I'd say that because I'm so glad Jeff Hayes was with me because Kathy Smith is sitting there bouncing on a toe. It's 110 degrees. She's on one toe.
She's got a leg up. She's got her head laid behind her head. I and Jeff, Jeff and I are looking to other sliding, you know, and it was the first yoga class I think I'd ever taken. And here it is is like an advanced yoga class with all, everybody in there. It's like doing these things and I'm like, get me out of here.
I'm never doing the skin. So I didn't know. This was a hot yoga class. We go into. It's hot. I'm looking at Tim. Like, [00:26:00] we should go. Tim's like, we're going to stay. And so we're sitting in there waiting for the class star and there's more maps and more maps. And now pretty much it's like, it's like boiling sardines here.
It's so packed full of people in this yoga class. But I will tell you, we, we rocked that yoga class. Like I feel now, like I can pretty much do anything. I did not stand on one toe and put my foot around my head, but I made it. And I didn't have to work now.
Dave Asprey: Oh man. I, I have a lot of concerns about hot yoga.
Mostly there's air quality and a lot of the right
JJ Virgin: you're you're now breathing in everybody's stuff. So we're not going to a hot yoga class today. It's Vivian was like, I want to go back to another one. I'm like, yeah, no, I did that. Okay. I can cross that off the list. I know better now. Anyway.
Dave Asprey: Regular temperature when you should exercise.
Okay. So I wrote a whole chapter in fastest way. [00:27:00] There's a chapter for women and there's a chapter about exercise and timing. And the most effective thing you can do to get more out of your exercise is to exercise at the end of your fast and then break the fast right after the actual. So in Vivian's case, if she wasn't jet lag, she slept really well.
Last night, she didn't have any wine last night and she's like, I'm really feeling full of power. This is a really strong, fast I've got it. I'm going to go hard. And then afterwards we're going to go eat some protein. I could respect that and she'd get probably more of an effect from the workout. But if she's saying, you know what we just traveled I'm actually, it's really hot.
I'm just not feeling super energetic today. That's probably not a day to push yourself really hard during a fast, so it's okay during a working fast and that's what she's doing. And, and in the book I differentiate there's spiritual fast. One day, two day, three days, journaling resting, relaxing, recovering, going deeper.
Taking all the energy of the body that would be looking for food instead of looking for knowledge and wisdom about [00:28:00] your body and yourself. Okay. That's cool. But if you're trying to do that, you probably shouldn't also be doing CrossFit and then there's a working fast where you're saying, okay, how do I have more energy and more focus throughout the day?
And then you probably do want to do your exercise, but not at the beginning or middle of the fast, because that's going to raise your cortisol for a long period of time. So
JJ Virgin: fast. I think one of the. That people don't use is how great it is to work out and then eat. So talk about what happens when you do a workout and then you have your meal.
Dave Asprey: Well, JJ, you and I have both had pre-workout formulas and there's a time for pre-workout formulas. Right. But it isn't necessary to eat right before you work out. Cause you're going to crash. If you're going to do a century riding a hundred miles, you will bonk. If you don't eat right. That's a different thing than what most of us are dealing with in a hot yoga class, or even a pretty heavy session at the gym.
Like you've got enough in you to handle that. So. What [00:29:00] we're talking about with exercise and food. And what happens if you fast is something that I talk about infest this way called tripling down on inventory, which sounds kind of technical. So let me walk you through it. In-store is a signaling molecule in the body that says.
Right. Okay. That's awesome. You just have that all the time, except then you would probably grow tumors. So your job is to spike it really high. So you get regeneration and then to keep it low, the rest of the time so that you get recuperation and recovery and so grow clean, grow clean. So these, you create these cycles and MTR.
Well, the way into our works, it's like a spring. The more you push it down, the more it will. So we know three things that push em, tore down. One of them is fasting so great. You skipped breakfast, you've already suppressed your MTR. Another one is coffee. the coffee and probably green tea or exactly the third [00:30:00] thing.
Is exercise. So imagine if you woke up, you had a Bulletproof coffee, which will not break a fast, you can have it non Bulletproof if you want. But most people find they have less hungry and more focused if they do it with a Bulletproof coffee. And then you say, I'm going to exercise now you've suppressed.
In-store as much as possible then what will cause it to spike is after all that exercise, all that suppression, eating protein. And carbs. You don't have to have the carbs. Just protein will spike it, but insulin will raise them towards substantially. So what you can do then is you can say, all right, I actually have a good, fast, and a good workout.
I'm going to go have some source of protein. And I can have some carbs with it. And it might be, you know, one of your favorite carbs, garbanzo beans. There's just so gross. I don't know why you like this, but you can have rice. You can have sweet potato, whatever kind of carb you want. It doesn't have to be sugar, but you want some of those, but most importantly, you want protein instead of.
About 30 grams of protein within a half hour of [00:31:00] exercising prevents a two day spike in cortisol and cortisol is a really interesting and important hormone. If it's too low, you will die and you'll get sick and you'll feel terrible. And if it's too high, You'll get sick and you'll gain weight and you'll feel terrible.
So it's one of those things it's important and necessary needs to be in the Goldilocks zone. And if you do this, I'm going to exercise faster than I'm going to fast. Another 12 hours, your cortisol is going to go up and you actually feel good because cortisol makes you feel. Unfortunately, then you're going to probably have a little bit of a, of a spare tire from that that you didn't want, because cortisol is pro-inflammatory when it's too high.
So basically just have that food right after you exercise, and it's okay to have some carbs then if you're not doing keto and you're going to feel really good, and you're going to get MTR to go up right after you exercise. So, boom, you got muscles.
JJ Virgin: And for those of you that missed that beautiful video of Dave's, your biceps are almost as big as.
Looking at that.
Dave Asprey: What [00:32:00] I know they're just as big as your triceps, JJ. I'm not even talking about your base.
JJ Virgin: All right. So you've got your fastest way challenge and I know you've had what, like 50, a hundred thousand people go through this fast.
Dave Asprey: 70,000 and counting now.
JJ Virgin: Yahoo! So let's get some more in there. So jjvirgin.com/fastestway, jump in there.
And again, I love the way you lead people through this. So I watched that and I'm like, this is just fantastic. It's so good that you, you step people in, you meet people where they are and help them so that wherever you are coming into this, you will have success. Because again, you start. You know, the wrong way you get hungry, you get angry and you spin out that won't happen here.
You're going to go, well, I can do this. So a fantastic job on the book and really explaining things and making something that has a lot of. Misinformation and urban legends myths around at dispelling, those explaining [00:33:00] it and easy to understand science and then giving people a very actionable blueprint.
So again, that is fast this way, and you can join the challenge for free JJ, virgin.com forward slash fast this way. And Dave, I love you so much. Thank you so much for being here and being such a great friend for. Ever
Dave Asprey: thanks, JJ. I love you right back and thank you for your work in the world and for sharing knowledge, and those are just making it accessible.
I am still traumatized that I spent so much time tired and fat and miserable. And doing things that didn't work. I had the willpower, I had the desire and I just didn't have the knowledge. And you have been such a wealth of knowledge for so many people. And heck I wouldn't have become a four times New York times bestselling author without you helping me.
So I am forever in your debt. Anything I can do to help you on there.
JJ Virgin: Thank you. my friend.. All right. [00:34:00] So there you have it, every myth about fasting busted. Plus you learn a little bit about some of them, some of the things Dave and I have been up to over the years, we've been hanging out for gosh, over a decade now.
So I want to remind you to jump into that challenge. It is fantastic. You can get a jjvirgin.com/fastestway for free, and really does a beautiful job. Of meeting you where you are and helping you walk through and get fasting into your life without going through any pain to do it. And also if you've not yet subscribed to JJ yep.
That's it subscribetojj.com. It's as simple as that to subscribe to this podcast. So you never miss an awesome episode. See you next time.