Order of Man - SHAWN STEVENSON ｜ Using Bio Feedback to Fuel Your Body

00:00:00.000 If all it took was a basic understanding of food to get lean and healthy, all men would have visible abs and never need the scale.

00:00:07.980 The reality, however, is that most men don't have the abs and although they may have the scale, they're not really willing to get on it.

00:00:15.740 It turns out that the science of food and how it reacts with our body goes so much deeper, including the mental and emotional realm.

00:00:22.460 My guest today, author of Eat Smarter, Shawn Stevenson, has spent decades of his life understanding the basics and also the nuances of the fuel we call food and our relationship with it.

00:00:34.100 Today, we cover why not all calories are the same, how culture impacts our eating decision-making process, how placebos are more effective than you think in curing illness and disease,

00:00:45.600 why the diversity of what you eat is just as important as how much you eat and why you are what you eat ate.

00:00:54.720 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.

00:01:00.400 When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:01:05.120 You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.

00:01:10.180 This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.

00:01:13.980 At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:01:21.140 Gentlemen, welcome to the Order of Man podcast.

00:01:23.500 My name is Ryan Mickler, and it is my job to give you great conversations with incredible men all over the world doing big things.

00:01:31.140 We've got Shawn Stevenson on the podcast, but we've also had guys like Terry Crews and Jocko Willink and Chris Williamson and Cam Haynes

00:01:39.640 and Matthew McConaughey and George Foreman, Ben Shapiro.

00:01:44.420 The list of men that we've had on is amazing.

00:01:47.720 It's a testament to the work we're doing, and it's a testament to you and your desire as a man to learn, grow,

00:01:53.380 and then ultimately lead and serve your families, your businesses, and your communities.

00:01:57.980 I've got a good one lined up for you today in the realm of nutrition, but before I do that,

00:02:03.160 I want to talk about another good group of people over in Frenchtown, Montana.

00:02:07.820 This is Montana Knife Company.

00:02:10.140 They have been supporting my work for a very long time, and I support them.

00:02:15.100 I've got some good hunts coming up.

00:02:16.600 I've got one in October in Minnesota, and anytime I go on a hunt,

00:02:20.460 I always bring my Montana Knife Company knives with me to break down the deer, to do my cooking.

00:02:27.560 I've got my culinary set in my kitchen, and I've got a knife sitting on my nightstand.

00:02:33.560 I've got their knives everywhere, it seems like.

00:02:36.120 And the best thing about them is they're making all of their knives sourced and made in America,

00:02:40.380 like I said, Frenchtown, Montana.

00:02:42.240 So if you are a man who's looking for a good knife, and every one of you should be or have a good knife,

00:02:48.640 if you need one, check out Montana Knife Company, and use the code ORDEROFMAN,

00:02:53.840 all one word, ORDEROFMAN at checkout, to save some money when you do.

00:02:57.880 Again, montananifecompany.com, use the code ORDEROFMAN.

00:03:02.540 Let me introduce you to my guest.

00:03:04.100 His name is Sean Stevenson.

00:03:05.760 He is a health and fitness expert.

00:03:08.140 He's a best-selling author.

00:03:09.680 He's also the host of a top-ranked health podcast called The Model Health Show.

00:03:14.100 A lot of you guys listen to it.

00:03:15.180 He's got a gift, you're going to hear it, for making these complex sciences around food and nutrition and sleeping very simple and practical.

00:03:25.600 And he's quite literally helped millions of people transform their health, their daily habits, and their mindset.

00:03:32.520 He's the author of Eat Smarter, Sleep Smarter, and also Eat Smarter Family Cookbook.

00:03:38.200 And all of them explore the powerful connection between your nutrition, your sleep, and, as men, our overall performance.

00:03:47.380 His podcast, his books, his speaking engagements, he continues to really inspire people around the world to finally take control of their health and lift up their energy,

00:03:58.180 and at the end of the day, unlock their full potential.

00:04:02.240 Sean, what's up, man?

00:04:03.160 It has been a very long time since we talked.

00:04:05.620 We talked in the early years of the Order of Man podcast, so it's good to have you back on.

00:04:09.860 I'm grateful to be here, man.

00:04:11.460 Grateful to catch up and excited to talk today.

00:04:15.740 Yeah.

00:04:16.120 Well, you know, food is such an important component of health, being a man.

00:04:21.400 It's the fuel that drives our body, and I think it's something that we don't really, at least I, don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about.

00:04:28.900 I just eat what's in front of me, and as I get older, I'm realizing I can't eat like my 17-year-old son anymore.

00:04:38.120 So I'm a little more mindful of the way that I consume food than I've been in the past, that's for sure.

00:04:43.020 Yeah, I mean, you grew up like I did.

00:04:46.140 You know, we grew up in the 80s and 90s, and, you know, food culture changed a lot around that time.

00:04:52.240 You know, it really shifted culturally to a lot of convenience, you know, and the marketing, you know, was really phenomenal

00:04:59.460 and getting busy parents to, you know, essentially just kind of downgrade the process of eating together as a family, right?

00:05:11.220 So right now, according to some researchers at Harvard, only about 30% of families eat together on a regular basis.

00:05:17.420 So that's kind of like on the endangered species list.

00:05:19.700 And along with that came convenience foods, you know, a lot of microwave dinners.

00:05:25.680 You know, I know that we always had some Totino's pizza rolls in the freezer, you know, stuff that we could just pop in the microwave, eat and go, fast food.

00:05:36.540 And, you know, here's the thing.

00:05:38.140 I mean, there can be some good intention and benefit behind all this stuff.

00:05:41.840 We don't want to make this a completely black or white issue.

00:05:45.440 There's so much gray area, and it's wonderful to have access and convenience and different things to try.

00:05:52.600 But we've got to lean more into what are we really designed to eat?

00:05:56.680 How can we thrive, you know, and fueling our bodies and our families?

00:06:01.240 And also, this is a big thing, too, and why I really appreciate you is that we are sharing these habits with our families

00:06:08.760 and writing the future of our lineage.

00:06:12.360 And it matters, you know.

00:06:14.440 So, we are in a position now to really take control of what our future looks like and what our family's future looks like.

00:06:20.020 And so, this has really been my mission, especially the last few years.

00:06:22.620 I've been in this field for 23 years, which is crazy.

00:06:28.540 Crazy.

00:06:29.160 It is.

00:06:29.680 And the last few years, and I'm a nutritionist, you know, but the last few years, I've really seen how important it is.

00:06:36.200 And our greatest leverage point is the quality of our relationships and our families.

00:06:43.240 It affects everything else.

00:06:45.540 There's nobody that's more influential on what I eat than my wife, than my exercise habits, my sleep habits.

00:06:52.960 She is the most influential person.

00:06:54.820 And the same with my kids.

00:06:56.780 And so, what we're talking about now is having the opportunity to change our culture.

00:07:00.560 And so, for me, it's just like, I think it's important for us to define and understand what culture is.

00:07:07.440 Culture is a shared attitudes, behaviors, beliefs that are shared by a group of people and then passed down from one generation to the next.

00:07:19.360 All right, that's what culture is. 0.96

00:07:22.300 Our culture right now, I'm just going to say, our culture is fucked up right now when it comes to our health. 0.98

00:07:28.600 In a lot of ways. 0.99

00:07:30.060 And, yeah, in a lot of ways.

00:07:32.780 And just staying, just sticking to health.

00:07:36.060 And this is according to the CDC.

00:07:37.780 They just published this data about a year ago.

00:07:40.980 Over 60% of American adults now have at least one chronic disease.

00:07:45.440 And 40%, over 40% have two or more chronic diseases.

00:07:51.440 We are not doing well.

00:07:53.520 And this trend of lifespan increasing, which it was.

00:07:58.640 You know, humans kept living.

00:07:59.740 We're living longer and longer on average.

00:08:02.340 But recently, about a decade ago, that switched.

00:08:05.480 And now, we are experiencing.

00:08:07.680 We have the first generation alive today that's not going to outlive their ancestors.

00:08:12.400 That's not going to outlive the generation before them.

00:08:14.760 This trend of increasing lifespan has reversed.

00:08:18.260 And so, we have a largely unhealthy, very unhealthy culture.

00:08:23.680 And so, what I want to encourage everybody today and in this conversation is to take control of our microculture in our household, first and foremost.

00:08:34.920 You know, so many of us, I know the guys listening to this, want to change the world.

00:08:38.980 It starts at home.

00:08:40.080 So, focus on changing our microculture.

00:08:44.680 And that has this really powerful effect on being contagious outside of our doors.

00:08:52.180 Because we take our culture with us.

00:08:54.380 We're a representation of our culture.

00:08:56.080 And so, we have a lot of opportunity here.

00:08:59.260 But also, we got to understand, you know, it's very difficult if we find ourselves getting well-adjusted to a largely sick culture. 0.99

00:09:08.180 And so, we've got to change that.

00:09:09.680 It is, I love everything that you're saying.

00:09:13.700 It is interesting in the 80s, you know, you talk about growing up and you talk about the convenience of fast food, processed food, TV dinners, microwave meals.

00:09:25.620 So, it's the convenience and the cost.

00:09:27.800 You know, I grew up, primarily my mom was a single mother for a large part of my youth.

00:09:33.680 And every birthday, she would say, what do you want for your birthday dinner?

00:09:39.680 And I grew up thinking that Salisbury steak oven or microwave dinners was the thing that I wanted on my birthday.

00:09:47.660 Because I was so accustomed to these frozen Salisbury steak meals.

00:09:52.100 And she's like, are you serious?

00:09:53.280 I'll make you a real steak.

00:09:54.400 I'm like, no, I want that.

00:09:56.340 I want the mushy steak.

00:09:56.840 And it was hard for her.

00:09:58.240 Yeah, yeah, the gross texture steak.

00:10:01.760 I don't even know if you can call it steak.

00:10:03.940 But that's using that term very liberally.

00:10:06.360 But it was hard for her because she was working up to three jobs at a time at times in our youth to raise my sister and I. 0.92

00:10:15.720 And so, I certainly understand.

00:10:18.040 And then you think about mothers, more and more mothers now are in the workforce, more and more homes are single parent households.

00:10:24.900 And so, this is an uphill battle.

00:10:27.420 But I think to your point, there seems to have been a greater cost associated with opting for convenience and price.

00:10:36.000 And now we're paying the cost in our health, in the way that we perform, the way that we show up.

00:10:41.520 Even in your book, Eat Smarter, you talk about mental performance and clarity.

00:10:45.720 And the thing that one of the things that really stood out to me is how you're replicating your cells, I think is the term you use, replicating your cells constantly.

00:10:55.960 And you're either replicating with good, healthy, productive cells or bad, broken and unhealthy cells.

00:11:03.060 And that really stood out to me just by the food that we consume.

00:11:06.040 Yeah.

00:11:07.580 In my university education, which I went to an expensive private university in St. Louis, or right outside of St. Louis.

00:11:18.220 And in this class, this nutritional science class, that again, I paid good money to attend this class and to attend this school to get this education.

00:11:30.560 I was really disillusioned about how food relates to health.

00:11:36.320 Now, let me be, I want to be very clear about this.

00:11:39.640 This is, this is life transforming when you get this.

00:11:43.000 So I decided to go into this pre-med program because I got this programming from my environment, watching TV.

00:11:51.700 Like I should be a doctor.

00:11:53.120 That looks like a good life, you know, watching the Cosby show.

00:11:56.620 And, um, which, you know, it's kind of messed up, you know, anyways, but.

00:12:01.540 Not well.

00:12:01.960 Yeah, sure.

00:12:02.540 Hindsight is 20, 20, but the show is still great.

00:12:05.600 So we can isolate that.

00:12:07.520 The show is great, but just getting this programming, like they look like a healthy family because similar to you, you know, we families come in so many different shapes and sizes and forms and fashions.

00:12:20.580 And, you know, I had, as many people do, you know, like a largely complicated, dysfunctional family.

00:12:32.000 And it was predominantly, it was my mother and my stepfather.

00:12:37.360 And we lived in a very, uh, volatile environment.

00:12:42.940 You know, a lot of violence outside of my home.

00:12:45.780 Um, you know, oftentimes again, hearing, uh, gunshots, sirens, you know, this just came background music of, of my life and also inside of my home, a lot of violence as well.

00:12:59.880 And so coming from this environment and understanding that, again, we're all just trying to figure this stuff out.

00:13:08.400 So making the decision to go to a university and, and, and pursue this pre-med degree was just totally outside of my realm of experience.

00:13:17.380 Like I didn't know anybody who was a doctor, except when I went to the doctor, let alone, I didn't know anybody who ever went to college or graduated from college that I knew personally outside of like my teachers, or again, just people that are not close in proximity to me.

00:13:30.900 And so I was fully, my point being, I was fully trusting in this education system to teach me how to do this stuff.

00:13:41.200 And I hated it.

00:13:43.840 I hated it.

00:13:45.660 I hated my biology class.

00:13:47.980 I hated the nutritional science class.

00:13:51.180 And it was because something wasn't adding up.

00:13:54.940 It didn't make sense.

00:13:56.000 When we were in biology class, studying the cell, it was so foreign to every student in there.

00:14:04.200 Yes, we could have rote memorization and understand these different parts, the nucleus and the mitochondria, the cell membrane and all this stuff, all these organelles.

00:14:13.840 We can understand it mechanically, but nobody in my class, the teacher included, understood that when we are looking at that cell,

00:14:24.400 we are looking at the food that we've eaten.

00:14:29.000 There was a disconnect.

00:14:31.280 And in my nutritional science class, my teacher was not telling us that the food that we're talking about here is making every cell of your body.

00:14:40.860 Your mitochondria is made from your menu.

00:14:44.320 Your cell membrane is made from your meals.

00:14:46.820 Your nucleus is made from the nutrients that you eat.

00:14:49.920 You are literally, all these cell parts that we're looking at, that is food.

00:14:53.040 It doesn't just come from nowhere.

00:14:54.980 It's made from the food that you're eating.

00:14:58.240 And you get to choose the quality of the materials that you're building your body with.

00:15:04.620 That's how powerful it is.

00:15:06.500 And so I got out of that program, by the way, which again, this is all unconscious.

00:15:11.220 So I got out of that program, went into business instead because of another, it was a movie called Boomerang with Eddie Murphy and another classic.

00:15:21.720 But I was like, oh, that looks cool.

00:15:23.040 I'll do that.

00:15:24.060 Right.

00:15:24.240 So because, again, I didn't have exposure.

00:15:26.200 My culture was not guiding me on what to choose for myself.

00:15:30.800 But because of my own health issues, it guided me back to studying biology, to studying kinesiology, to studying nutritional science.

00:15:43.580 And it was transformative now because I understood the connection by getting myself healthy, by getting myself well.

00:15:52.380 I understood the power of food.

00:15:55.280 And, you know, for me.

00:15:56.940 That personal testimony is sometimes more powerful than any data or anything like that.

00:16:01.560 I keep going.

00:16:01.920 I didn't want to interrupt.

00:16:02.740 But that personal testimony, when you actually implement things, is so much more powerful when other people hear what you've gone through, let alone what you read in a textbook somewhere.

00:16:11.860 Yeah, it becomes a part of you.

00:16:14.200 It is a part of the texture and the makeup of your voice and who you are and how people connect with you because it's coming from an authentic place.

00:16:27.580 And, you know, I was thinking about this yesterday.

00:16:30.840 Man, oh, my goodness.

00:16:32.880 I was watching something with my wife and my son.

00:16:40.800 And we were looking at, you know, the world championships are going on right now in track and field.

00:16:45.500 And we were looking at the 400 sprint.

00:16:48.960 And I was just saying, like, man, I didn't – at the time, I didn't like being in the starting blocks for the 400 because I ran the 1, 2, 4 long jump.

00:17:01.480 And I was excelling.

00:17:03.640 But because we're not that fast yet as far as, like, being able to sustain our speed for 400 meters, I didn't like coming out of the blocks with that particular race. 1.00

00:17:15.800 Yeah, anything longer than about 50 yards is too long for me.

00:17:18.760 So you got me beat there for sure.

00:17:20.920 But I can run with the best of them for about 50 yards.

00:17:24.320 There you go.

00:17:25.100 I mean, that's all you need a lot of times, you know.

00:17:27.140 And speaking of which, right after my sophomore season, we did our 40-yard dash trials.

00:17:38.900 And so I was 15, and I ran a 4.5.

00:17:42.520 So it was the fastest.

00:17:43.920 Yeah, it was the fastest in the grade and also – I mean, except there was a couple of seniors that ran upper 4.4s.

00:17:53.880 And they went on to be, like, collegiate track athletes.

00:17:56.440 And I was just kind of the next in line, you know.

00:17:59.320 And this was all for me.

00:18:00.700 It was all for football.

00:18:01.600 I ran track to be faster on the football field.

00:18:05.340 And later on that season is when the breakdown started to really manifest consciously.

00:18:12.860 And I was doing a 200-meter time trial.

00:18:15.720 And as I was coming off the curve into the straightaway, my hip broke. 0.99

00:18:20.300 Just from running, I broke my hip because my bone density was so low because I was fueled up on fucking Tostino's pizza rolls. 0.99

00:18:31.520 And every day, every single day, man, I'm either eating all this bullshit cereal, you know, these kids' cereals for breakfast, mini muffins, you know, donuts, every day. 0.99

00:18:44.340 And for lunch, I'm eating a personal pizza at school, a pretzel with cheese, dipping that personal pizza into the fucking cheese. 0.99

00:18:52.380 And then for dinner, you know, we're either eating fast food or my mom occasionally would make something. 0.99

00:19:00.700 Occasionally.

00:19:01.180 So we're talking maybe like maybe twice a week she would make something.

00:19:05.860 And I'm literally, again, making my body out of these things.

00:19:10.060 My parents don't understand.

00:19:11.540 They don't know that this is a result of how I'm eating, that my body's breaking down.

00:19:17.620 And unfortunately, what I went through was what we refer to as standard of care.

00:19:23.180 So I break my hip, which I don't know.

00:19:25.900 I'm just limping.

00:19:26.940 And I come to practice the next day.

00:19:28.520 And the coach is like, you need to go get checked out.

00:19:30.140 And so I go get an x-ray done.

00:19:32.220 And there's my iliac crest.

00:19:33.680 My bone was just like floating off away from my body.

00:19:36.460 And the physician's like, oh, there's the issue.

00:19:39.000 We're going to get you on some crutches.

00:19:40.580 You're going to heal just fine.

00:19:41.720 Get you some anti-inflammatories.

00:19:44.000 And I'm just a kid.

00:19:45.340 So I'm just doing what they say.

00:19:46.580 It was cool.

00:19:46.980 I got to get out of class.

00:19:48.120 How would you know?

00:19:48.920 Yeah.

00:19:49.280 Take the school elevator, you know.

00:19:51.120 But nobody asked, how did a child, a thriving, apparently very fit athlete, break his hip from merely running?

00:20:04.620 It doesn't make sense.

00:20:06.620 That should have been a huge warning sign that my bone density was incredibly low.

00:20:10.080 So when you think about somebody breaking their hip, we usually think about people who are old.

00:20:14.740 Older, elderly people. 0.81

00:20:16.220 Yeah.

00:20:16.720 Or car accidents.

00:20:18.440 Or some kind of trauma.

00:20:20.040 Some really.

00:20:20.880 Right.

00:20:21.120 And also, the other thing is, you know, it tends to be something that happens with big changes in hormones as well.

00:20:32.700 And so that was the first incident.

00:20:36.240 And I had half a dozen more injuries after that.

00:20:39.100 I have game film right in this closet right here on VHS.

00:20:44.660 I was a running back.

00:20:46.680 39 sweep.

00:20:48.240 I get past the safety.

00:20:49.680 I'm five yards from the end zone.

00:20:52.400 And I come up limping.

00:20:54.500 And I limp and fall into the end zone.

00:20:56.360 Nobody touched me.

00:20:57.860 But just like tearing a muscle, you know.

00:21:02.100 My bones were just so brittle.

00:21:04.420 And eventually, a couple years after that, I get diagnosed with degenerative disc disease.

00:21:09.620 My spine is deteriorating rapidly.

00:21:12.740 So much so, the physician said I have the spine of an 80-year-old.

00:21:15.740 So this very old body was manifested in a very young person, right?

00:21:23.300 And at this point, you know, my aspirations of playing college football and all the things that I was trying to do to get out of where I come from, it was gone.

00:21:35.840 My identity was shattered, you know.

00:21:37.540 So it wasn't just the physical breakdown, it was the mental breakdown.

00:21:40.160 And so just to put a bow on this background and this story, you know, for that to show up on a scan where my L4, L5, S1 disc are so degenerated, they're showing up black on the MRI.

00:21:56.580 All right, that's years.

00:21:59.460 That is years of breakdown before that shows up.

00:22:03.420 And what brought me in was, again, just pain, like nuisance of a pain.

00:22:07.500 But standard of care.

00:22:09.800 Going to get you a back brace.

00:22:12.520 Going to get you now.

00:22:14.020 We're not talking about just some, you know, over-the-counter stuff.

00:22:17.180 We're talking about some pretty strong drugs.

00:22:19.340 Heavy, heavy drugs.

00:22:20.320 And so I go on to this cycle of medication, and this is during when Vioxx is popping.

00:22:27.760 You know, Vioxx ended up killing, killing approximately 40,000 people, okay?

00:22:35.380 Whoa.

00:22:36.020 And I was a prescription pad away because Vioxx was hot at the time, but so was Celebrex.

00:22:41.980 So Celebrex was my first drug that I was given that had side effects, which hadn't been noted yet.

00:22:49.140 It didn't even have its real, like, popular name yet.

00:22:51.860 Restless leg syndrome.

00:22:53.540 And so I couldn't sleep at night. 0.98

00:22:55.540 Felt like my legs were trying to fucking leave me. 0.95

00:22:58.300 Like, you know, that magician thing that you saw your body in half? 0.98

00:23:01.320 I've had that.

00:23:02.620 I had a, I had a, this was years ago.

00:23:05.400 I pulled back to make the bed, and I took the sheets off, put them in the wash, put them back on the bed.

00:23:10.580 And where my legs were, were worn thin.

00:23:14.860 Like, the fabric was so thin because all night long, my legs are just completely restless, moving back and forth, running a marathon in my sleep, apparently.

00:23:23.660 It's crazy, man.

00:23:25.060 You know?

00:23:25.720 It is.

00:23:26.580 And once that gets its own, like, label diagnosis, we got a drug for that.

00:23:30.960 We got a drug for that, too.

00:23:32.680 But our bodies are intelligent.

00:23:34.520 It's not doing this for no reason.

00:23:36.780 And, you know, so now I'm on another drug, and I can't sleep at night, so I'm on a drug for that.

00:23:43.160 And now I have this phenomenon called polypharmacy.

00:23:46.780 And at its root, again, my physician, as well-intended as they might be, told me that this was incurable.

00:23:55.460 You have a spine of an 80-year-old.

00:23:57.700 There's nothing that you can do about this.

00:23:59.880 And that is what is called a nocebo effect.

00:24:04.160 All right?

00:24:04.940 Placebo is a positive injunction that some benefit will happen as a result of taking said medication, treatment, whatever the case might be.

00:24:14.560 Sure.

00:24:15.000 Placebos, on average, are 33% effective in clinical trials.

00:24:20.500 That is wild.

00:24:21.360 I mean, this shows your mind.

00:24:22.780 Yep.

00:24:23.000 The power of the mind.

00:24:23.820 We have, it is insane how many studies we have now on the placebo helping to, whether it's cancer tumors, blood pressure, arthritic conditions, mental health issues, anxiety, depression.

00:24:42.120 There is hardly anything that we, as far as the human condition in chronic disease or acute conditions, that a placebo has not been found to benefit.

00:24:54.260 Just the belief.

00:24:56.580 All right?

00:24:56.840 Right.

00:24:57.080 And this is no longer coming from a guy who's figured this stuff out for himself.

00:25:02.500 Today, my colleagues are some of the greatest minds in this field.

00:25:07.780 The person I was just talking to is Dr. Ellen Langer, who is the first woman to receive tenure in the psychology department at Harvard.

00:25:17.880 She's still a Harvard professor in psychology.

00:25:21.400 She's been studying this stuff since the 1970s.

00:25:25.420 All right?

00:25:26.400 And so many of her studies are published in major peer-reviewed journals, but people just don't know about this stuff.

00:25:32.280 And most of them have to do with how our mind instantaneously can change our biochemistry.

00:25:40.260 And even her, actually her study, and this is pretty, pretty cool.

00:25:43.240 I'm just going to share this for everybody.

00:25:44.840 It was done in 1979.

00:25:46.980 All right?

00:25:47.340 And she shared this with me personally.

00:25:48.980 And of course, like this is in, you know, her book and, you know, you could find this stuff online.

00:25:53.320 But what she did was she wanted to see the impact that it would have on changing the environment for elderly men.

00:26:02.580 So we're talking men that are, you know, over 80.

00:26:05.840 And she basically got nine elderly men together and retrofitted the environment to be as if it was decades earlier. 0.55

00:26:14.440 So the music that they listened to when they were younger, what the magazines were, you know, just the environment itself was now matching their younger selves.

00:26:27.440 Right.

00:26:27.880 This was just a one-week study, man.

00:26:30.160 And let me tell you what happened.

00:26:31.160 Again, this is all published in peer-reviewed journals.

00:26:35.140 Their vision improved.

00:26:38.320 Their hearing improved.

00:26:39.980 They took pictures before and after and had other study participants to essentially estimate how old the people were.

00:26:47.840 They became visibly younger in their face within a week.

00:26:52.580 We're talking like years younger, their dexterity improved, flexibility improved, IQ improved, and overall cognitive performance.

00:27:04.580 Like I can go on and on.

00:27:06.580 So many things improved simply based on their thinking and their perception about the environment around them and how they associate with it.

00:27:14.960 It made them biologically younger, and today we know that there's a big difference between our chronological age and our phenotypical biological age, right?

00:27:24.720 I got my stuff done a few months ago, and I just turned 46, and my biological age is 37.4, right?

00:27:35.840 That's good.

00:27:36.420 I got mine done about a month ago.

00:27:39.780 I'm 43, and my biological age is 43.

00:27:43.400 I'm like, okay, I got work to do here.

00:27:45.860 I've got some work.

00:27:46.880 I need to reverse this a little bit.

00:27:48.040 At least you're not older.

00:27:49.080 That's true.

00:27:49.700 That is true.

00:27:50.420 At least you're not older.

00:27:50.720 I match.

00:27:51.560 Here's the thing, and this is why I'm so grateful to do this work because I can provide context.

00:27:56.180 The average person in the United States has a variability of being five years older to five years younger than their chronological age, all right?

00:28:08.360 And so it's good that you are where you are and not worse, but of course there are things that getting that data back that you can make better, and there are outliers.

00:28:19.240 There are people who are up to 20 years older or younger than their chronological age, confirmed multiple studies.

00:28:28.520 We know this, all right?

00:28:31.960 Gentlemen, I know you're into the conversation.

00:28:33.840 I'm just going to take a step away very briefly because we have our exclusive brotherhood, the Iron Council, that is now open.

00:28:40.560 We opened last week, and we have a lot of men joining us right now, which means that there is a growing contingent of men who are interested in learning how to be better men, being held accountable, having the systems to thrive and elevate their lives.

00:28:56.880 And when you join our brotherhood, the Iron Council, it's not just a group.

00:29:00.120 It's not just some social media group.

00:29:02.340 It's really about finding ways to claim who you are meant to be because most men, they just drift through life.

00:29:08.720 They carry their struggles and their doubts, but they also have their victories and their ambitions.

00:29:13.780 But at the end of the day, they're suppressing their desire for a purpose and connection and even growth because, frankly, the world and everybody else tells men just to do it on your own and either figure it out or already have it figured out.

00:29:26.800 But when men are isolated, the potential they have withers away and dies because they have nobody to share it with.

00:29:34.520 Brotherhood is where that really grows and ignites.

00:29:37.020 So inside the Iron Council, you're going to be surrounded by men doing the work of men.

00:29:42.260 They're going to hold you accountable.

00:29:43.780 They're going to push you to level up, and they're going to walk beside you through the battles that matter most, leading your family, growing your business, serving your community, building your legacy, frankly.

00:29:54.400 So we're open right now.

00:29:56.280 If you are tired of going out alone, if you're ready to stop drifting and start forging yourself into the man that you want to become, then the Iron Council is where you should be.

00:30:07.160 Check it out.

00:30:08.240 Orderofman.com slash Iron Council.

00:30:10.920 That's orderofman.com slash Iron Council.

00:30:14.220 Do that right after the podcast.

00:30:16.440 For now, let's get back to it with Sean.

00:30:17.760 How do they measure that?

00:30:21.000 Like what are they actually – what data are they actually using to measure the biological age?

00:30:27.840 All right.

00:30:29.260 There are so many different ways to go about this.

00:30:31.740 Today, gratefully, we have much more comprehensive data on this.

00:30:36.540 And let me just be clear.

00:30:38.200 I'm not 100% bought in on any of it, 100%, but we are so much further along in our understanding.

00:30:46.540 So one of the big biomarkers –

00:30:48.320 I mean it is a bit of a subjective thing, right?

00:30:50.460 When you're choosing data points and you're saying this is the thing we're going to measure.

00:30:54.360 But as long as everybody's measuring somewhat of the same thing, then we can come to some sort of consensus about age health, I guess, for lack of a better term.

00:31:03.300 Yep.

00:31:03.540 So some of the best markers are what we consider to be these metabolic health markers, right?

00:31:09.420 So this is going to be looking at cardiovascular health and performance.

00:31:13.140 This is going to be looking at immune system parameters.

00:31:16.120 This is going to be looking at what your hormones are doing. 1.00

00:31:19.920 And in particular, like – so if you're getting this really comprehensive biological age test done, they're going to be looking at all of your different hormones, stress-related hormones.

00:31:28.160 So cortisol, what's cortisol doing, your sex hormones, you know, so testosterone, free testosterone, and estrogen.

00:31:38.240 How is your body converting these things?

00:31:41.100 Are you experiencing higher levels of aromatization?

00:31:43.820 So this is when your testosterone can actually get grabbed and stolen and converted into estrogen.

00:31:48.380 And that's usually related to what's going on with your insulin levels and so how your body's processing, in particular, this impact with glucose.

00:31:58.480 And so it can get a little bit complex.

00:32:01.440 But in addition to that –

00:32:02.480 I've even heard things like the order in which you eat your food will affect insulin spikes.

00:32:07.720 So do you eat your proteins or your vegetables first, things like this that I never would have imagined, what, just even a couple years ago because I didn't know it was ignorance.

00:32:17.220 Of course.

00:32:18.040 You know, there are things like that.

00:32:21.200 But the biggest takeaway is you are different from everybody else, all right?

00:32:26.460 And so in my book, Eat Smarter, which I'm grateful, it was the number one health book in the United States when it came out.

00:32:34.420 So it was like on Amazon, like it was with like Matthew McConaughey's book came out, Michelle Obama's book, like all of these like really known.

00:32:44.340 But then there's this one health book, and I'm grateful for that.

00:32:48.140 But it was just like I feel – I love that quote that there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

00:32:52.960 And in the book, I shared this really fascinating study where they were looking at the metabolic impact or the glucose impact for test subjects eating a cookie versus a banana.

00:33:07.020 And you would think that a cookie, of course, is going to spike people's blood sugar more than a banana, but it just depended on the person.

00:33:13.040 Some people can eat a cookie.

00:33:14.220 Really?

00:33:15.260 And their blood sugar had a minor lift, but it just pretty much – their body metabolized it efficiently, effectively, without spiking their blood sugar.

00:33:24.340 I want to be one of those kind of people.

00:33:26.080 I'm sure I'm not, but I want to be one of those kind of people.

00:33:29.660 Cookie monsters are out here, man.

00:33:31.840 That's right, apparently.

00:33:32.620 And for some people, the banana would spike their blood sugar three, four times higher than a cookie.

00:33:37.980 So we all have a unique metabolic fingerprint, and that can change too.

00:33:44.560 That can change based on a myriad of factors.

00:33:46.900 One of the biggest things that was indicated in that study was the microbial fingerprint, so the makeup of their respective microbiome and the bacteria, how it's all associating with the food that they're eating.

00:33:58.500 And so that's something else to consider when we're talking about potentially – that's going to get added in, I believe, in a big way, especially in the next five years, is going to be GI testing, so gastrointestinal microbiome testing.

00:34:15.260 I mean, that makes sense, right?

00:34:44.720 That's why they're living longer.

00:34:46.400 Exactly, but they're –

00:34:47.580 At least a factor of it.

00:34:49.120 And what they found specifically – but here's the thing.

00:34:51.200 We can all do this.

00:34:53.960 They found that they have higher rates, higher levels of diversity in their microbiome than people who are in the general elderly population.

00:35:03.660 We can increase the diversity of our microbiome starting now, like whenever we become aware of this.

00:35:10.260 And I'm going to come right back to that in just a second.

00:35:12.500 But they also identified certain strains of bacteria that seemed – again, this is correlation, not causation – that were showing up in these centurions that weren't showing up in the general elderly population.

00:35:26.020 One of those is very popular.

00:35:27.300 It's called Ackermansia, for example.

00:35:29.360 And so we can, like, strive to do things to support the proliferation of those bacteria strains that they identified.

00:35:37.800 And so to circle back to how do we increase this diversity, because this is important for all of us, one of the studies that I shared in Eat Smarter actually found that individuals who had less diversity in their gut microbiome had higher rates of insulin resistance and obesity independent of their calorie intake.

00:35:57.460 Independent of their calorie intake.

00:36:02.120 Diversity matters more than what you're consuming – or the amount you're consuming, essentially.

00:36:07.840 So the diversity of our gut bacteria matters more than – how do we better put that?

00:36:17.880 It matters more than having, like, certain, quote, probiotics, right?

00:36:22.780 It's diversity matters more than having certain strains, okay?

00:36:28.320 Now, there are certain strains, like we got Firmicutes, and we got these different classes of bacteria that are, you know, correlated with certain things.

00:36:37.620 But we need to focus on diversity.

00:36:40.060 So how do we do that?

00:36:42.220 This is one of the big takeaways for everybody today.

00:36:46.200 This is really simple.

00:36:47.300 So if we want to increase the diversity of our gut microbiome, improving our metabolic health like that, we've got to simply increase the diversity in foods that we're eating, all right?

00:36:59.660 We've got to feed –

00:37:00.300 Yeah, makes sense.

00:37:01.160 Every bacteria strain has its respective preferences in food. 0.98

00:37:04.920 One of the most recent discoveries is that there's a certain strain of bacteria that – it fucking loves coffee. 0.99

00:37:10.960 It loves coffee. 0.99

00:37:12.240 And it's so proliferated, like it's so widespread.

00:37:17.280 It's found in people who don't drink coffee, right, especially if they live in a household with you and you do drink coffee, all right?

00:37:25.160 And it is correlated – this particular bacteria strain – and I found out about this from this world-leading geneticist who shared this with me, Dr. Tim Spector.

00:37:36.360 It's correlated with better cardiovascular function.

00:37:40.680 It's correlated, this strain of bacteria that loves coffee, with better cognitive performance, all right?

00:37:47.200 So it has these notable benefits.

00:37:50.040 And so with that said, here's the action step.

00:37:54.200 Keep this in mind.

00:37:56.040 Whenever we eat a food, we're eating that food's microbiome, okay?

00:38:00.100 Whenever we eat a food, we're eating that food's microbiome.

00:38:02.920 And so we're taking on that data.

00:38:04.400 Food isn't just food.

00:38:05.240 It's information.

00:38:06.480 And so being able to –

00:38:08.060 It is interesting.

00:38:09.480 I wanted to say when you say the food you're eating, you're taking on that food's microbiome because I can tell the difference.

00:38:16.800 I've really enjoyed hunting over the past nine-ish or so years.

00:38:20.960 I can tell the difference in venison or even beef based on what it eats.

00:38:26.180 There's a noticeable taste difference, and I think that's just supporting the claim that you're making, which is that you're actually consuming what that species of animal or vegetation has grown in.

00:38:42.080 You're consuming that.

00:38:43.020 That makes sense to me.

00:38:43.720 I said this statement years ago.

00:38:46.480 It's become popular now.

00:38:47.640 I'm grateful.

00:38:48.760 But you could check my track record.

00:38:51.200 20 years ago, all right?

00:38:53.160 I said it's not just you are what you eat.

00:38:55.880 It's you are what you eat ate, all right?

00:38:59.000 And so keeping that in mind and in context, when you eat a blueberry, you're eating that blueberry's microbiome.

00:39:05.340 When you eat an avocado, you're eating that avocado's microbiome.

00:39:08.660 The makeup of the animal foods that you consume are going to be wildly different based on the diet of that respective animal, right?

00:39:17.460 So we know that – and there was some controversy about this previously, but now it's very, very clear.

00:39:22.780 We've got multiple studies now affirming, and I can actually – I'm just going to pull one up because I'm with my guy.

00:39:29.060 So let me pull this up right now.

00:39:32.020 While you're doing that, it's strange how things – we learn things that seem like they would be common sense, and then you look back and wonder why would anybody debate that?

00:39:42.740 What would be the debate that you're not consuming whatever you eat ate?

00:39:48.300 It just seems like such a common sense thing, but I guess, you know, the research or –

00:39:56.980 But we don't think about it.

00:39:58.540 I guess that's true.

00:39:59.800 I mean, yeah.

00:40:01.760 Just in this one lane in and of itself, looking at conventionally raised grain-fed beef versus grass-fed beef, this was published in the peer-reviewed journal, the British Journal of Nutrition.

00:40:13.020 And they found that beef from animals fed an abnormal diet of conventional grains contains up to five times less omega-3 fatty acids than what's found in grass-fed beef.

00:40:24.040 And why does this matter?

00:40:25.000 And this was cited in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

00:40:27.600 Reports that omega-3 fatty acids have anti-obesity effects, and it helps improve our levels of satiety hormones.

00:40:35.560 All right, so just keeping that in context, we're missing out on those things because we're eating animals that have been fed abnormal diet as well.

00:40:45.500 And the vast majority – last little piece – the vast majority of antibiotics used, manufactured and used in this country, it's not for us.

00:40:52.840 It's being used in factory farming with our cattle.

00:40:57.940 All right?

00:40:58.140 Right.

00:40:58.380 But it's not being used to keep these animals from being sick.

00:41:02.940 It's being used because decades ago, it was found and it was proven that prophylactic antibiotic use can increase weight gain dramatically.

00:41:15.600 Of course.

00:41:16.440 I mean, you ever seen a chicken on steroids?

00:41:18.460 They don't look like normal house chickens, man.

00:41:20.440 Like, get a chicken breast from the store and ask me what kind of chicken that you have or your neighbor has that has a chicken breast that large.

00:41:31.660 It's pretty wild to see.

00:41:34.660 But, okay, so I want to go back to what you're saying about what you consume, not necessarily how much because, you know, there is that conventional wisdom.

00:41:43.700 And I think there's some truth to this, you tell me if I'm wrong, that not necessarily that a calorie is a calorie, but when it comes to losing weight, for example, if I burn on average 2,500 calories a day, if I eat 2,000 calories, I'm going to lose weight whether I eat grass-fed beef for 2,000 calories or donuts.

00:42:05.600 I'm going to lose weight if I'm in that caloric deficit.

00:42:08.980 But that doesn't always obviously equate to being healthy.

00:42:12.880 I see a lot of skinny people who I would say are frail-looking and unhealthy.

00:42:19.160 But are there certain foods that make it harder, for example, to lose weight or create some real issues with the body, for example?

00:42:30.700 One that often comes to mind is dairy.

00:42:34.560 My body doesn't agree with dairy, and so I try to avoid that.

00:42:38.340 I don't know if that's universally true or if that's not supposed to be something that we consume in the quantities that we do.

00:42:44.720 What are your thoughts on that?

00:42:46.620 Really quickly, and I'm going to affirm this.

00:42:49.840 This is going to blow your mind, all right, with this incredible study.

00:42:53.760 But humans have been eating dairy for thousands of years, all right?

00:42:58.700 Right.

00:42:58.960 There are some people on planet Earth that do very well with it.

00:43:04.000 Others do not, all right?

00:43:05.680 But it is definitely something that, again, we can't be in this black or white.

00:43:09.280 Humans were not meant to have.

00:43:11.620 Humans have thrived on a lot of this stuff.

00:43:15.580 But let's look at natural dairy versus what a lot of people have today, which is this kind of ultra-processed dairy-like product like Kraft Cheese Singles.

00:43:28.000 They can't call it cheese legally because –

00:43:31.520 It looks like plastic.

00:43:32.460 It tastes like plastic.

00:43:34.160 It looks like it.

00:43:35.660 Kraft Singles.

00:43:36.860 It's not Kraft Cheese Singles, but it's called Kraft Singles.

00:43:39.760 And so –

00:43:40.180 Interesting.

00:43:40.860 Okay.

00:43:41.100 We've got this incredible study to affirm just exactly what you're talking about in regards to calories.

00:43:46.760 This was published in the journal Food and Nutrition Research.

00:43:49.500 And this study was also in Eat Smarter.

00:43:52.020 And so, again, this was all research that I put together and published back around 2000.

00:43:59.580 Sorry, not 2000.

00:44:00.680 2020.

00:44:02.340 2020.

00:44:03.060 Time goes fast, man.

00:44:04.200 It's like, wait.

00:44:05.820 Yeah, for sure.

00:44:07.000 And so this was published in the journal Food and Nutrition Research.

00:44:11.120 And the scientists wanted to find out what would happen with calorie expenditure when you eat a meal of processed foods or ultra-processed foods versus a meal of whole foods.

00:44:22.920 And so in this experiment, they had test subjects to eat a sandwich and what they believed to be a whole food version of a sandwich, which was whole grain bread and cheddar cheese.

00:44:34.860 Mm-hmm.

00:44:36.240 And it's a crossover study.

00:44:38.720 So – and they had test participants to eat a meal of what they refer to as an ultra-processed version of that same sandwich, highly refined white bread and cheese product.

00:44:49.360 So like Kraft Singles.

00:44:51.140 All right?

00:44:51.500 Got it.

00:44:51.880 So test subjects, and they track this because our bodies are – the primary method of us expending calories is actually through our breathing.

00:45:02.680 All right?

00:45:02.880 So they're able to actually track.

00:45:04.460 Yeah.

00:45:04.620 And so, of course, we think we're burning calories like when we're sweating or whatever, which we are, but the majority of energy that we're expelling is actually coming through our breath.

00:45:14.700 And so –

00:45:15.280 Can you – just to add one other thing, and we'll answer this maybe in a minute.

00:45:18.840 Can you increase your calorie expenditure by breathing properly?

00:45:24.160 We'll come back to that.

00:45:25.760 All right.

00:45:26.280 Let's bookmark that.

00:45:27.320 All right, so they consumed these respective sandwiches, and here's what they found.

00:45:34.320 When individuals ate the ultra-processed version of that sandwich, they had a 50% reduction in calorie burn after eating that sandwich.

00:45:44.260 Whoa.

00:45:44.620 50% reduction in the elimination of those calories that they just consumed.

00:45:49.820 So it's not metabolizing the same way.

00:45:51.820 Your body's not –

00:45:52.060 Their bodies were creating essentially like –

00:45:53.360 Processing it correctly.

00:45:54.200 A metabolic – I look at it like metabolic clogs where the body is not able to kind of figure out how to process, how to expel this energy that it consumed.

00:46:06.560 Now, just to be clear, this is short term, okay?

00:46:10.480 Our bodies work really hard and very intelligent trying to sort stuff out overall on average.

00:46:16.780 But what if you're eating like that every single day, right?

00:46:20.200 And you're counting your calories and you're trying to figure out why it's not working for you, what this is when we're talking about the quality of the food, this should be obvious at this point.

00:46:31.620 All calories are not the same.

00:46:33.920 They're not the same.

00:46:35.000 I went back in that book, in that program to illuminate where did this concept of calories that we're so superficially talking about, where does it come from?

00:46:47.220 This was something that was in the domain of physics.

00:46:49.400 This had nothing to do with nutrition.

00:46:51.060 You talked about the energy, right?

00:46:53.680 A measurement of energy.

00:46:55.600 Exactly.

00:46:56.000 And we're taking that in the context of nutrition and initially we're using something that's called a bomb calorimeter to incinerate a food and to see how much it would heat up water, okay?

00:47:09.320 And that's how you find out how many calories are in a particular food.

00:47:13.220 We are not bomb calorimeters.

00:47:15.840 Everything that we eat does not get incinerated and kind of create this thermic energy.

00:47:21.780 It doesn't work like that.

00:47:22.860 There are certain things that we eat that don't get metabolized at all as far as that's concerned.

00:47:28.080 Fiber, for example.

00:47:29.680 And so that's how you have this kind of net carbs, right?

00:47:33.700 Our bodies are not processing certain things.

00:47:35.480 It's very complex.

00:47:36.900 Our body is not a calculator, all right?

00:47:39.160 Some people might have heard that before.

00:47:40.640 It's not just this energy in, energy out, a very clean thing.

00:47:44.660 This is not to say that calories are not a valuable metric for us to pay attention to.

00:47:48.760 But you've got to understand whatever is on that label telling you how many calories are in that thing, that does not indicate how many calories your body is going to absorb, how many is going to process and utilize, and also how many calories are actually in that food.

00:48:04.420 Because today, what's on that label, we use the Atwater system.

00:48:08.840 They're not using a bomb calorimeter to find out exactly how many calories are in that food.

00:48:12.540 It's generally regarded, it's something that's generally accepted.

00:48:15.120 Like, it has about this much.

00:48:16.960 It's math.

00:48:17.780 They're just doing math.

00:48:18.720 Give or take.

00:48:19.600 It's a guideline.

00:48:21.240 Right.

00:48:21.480 So, there isn't a perfect kind of summation or match in understanding how the calories in food is showing up.

00:48:29.860 And also, same thing with exercise.

00:48:31.060 You can see how many calories you burn on the treadmill.

00:48:33.840 That's not precise.

00:48:36.120 And it could be wildly different depending on you and your unique metabolism.

00:48:39.920 And so, all of this to say, when it comes to that study with the ultra-processed sandwich, what you're seeing is something called an epicaloric controller.

00:48:52.080 So, this is above calorie control.

00:48:54.780 I shared earlier how the study affirmed that diversity in the microbiome led to greater weight gain independent of calorie consumption.

00:49:05.780 People who had less diversity in their microbiome were absorbing and storing more calories in people who had more diversity.

00:49:14.840 Okay?

00:49:15.320 That's an epicaloric controller.

00:49:18.520 Your microbiome makeup.

00:49:20.500 The quality of the food that you're eating.

00:49:23.320 Also, just from what I was taught in college, we know that this is true, but we forget it.

00:49:29.620 The macronutrient makeup of the food that you're eating.

00:49:32.320 We know that your body burns a significantly higher amount is getting burned.

00:49:38.420 Calories are getting burned.

00:49:39.500 Processing protein versus carbs and fat.

00:49:43.280 All right?

00:49:43.780 There's this thermic effect.

00:49:45.360 So, what type of calories are you eating?

00:49:47.780 Because it's going to have a huge impact on your metabolic fingerprint.

00:49:50.600 So, what you're saying in that case, for example, that protein is – I'm generalizing a little bit, so bear with me when I say this.

00:50:00.940 But that protein is a very efficient calorie to consume is what I'm hearing you say.

00:50:06.780 Now, this is a great question because the word efficiency is where we can have some trouble because we –

00:50:18.780 And we do – of course, I love efficiency.

00:50:23.060 I want efficiency.

00:50:24.360 We want fuel-efficient vehicles, right?

00:50:26.380 But when it comes to metabolism, efficiency might not be the primary metric because in some regards – and I'm just going to give an example.

00:50:36.420 In some regards, having a very efficient metabolism when we're eating the banana, right, and the banana and cookie,

00:50:44.240 we might convert that banana really efficiently into blood glucose and spike our blood sugar because it's so efficient, all right?

00:50:54.120 And so, it just – it's – even with efficiency –

00:50:55.880 That's a good point.

00:50:57.080 It depends on the context.

00:50:59.200 It is context-dependent.

00:51:01.840 So, this is not to say that we don't want an efficient metabolism where we have these metabolic clogs and things are not getting processed.

00:51:08.580 I would say we want an appropriately efficient metabolism, and that is –

00:51:15.280 Based on your objectives, right?

00:51:17.200 I mean – because I think about – like – so, let's use an analogy of vehicles.

00:51:22.580 We could all say that maybe a Prius is hyper-efficient when it comes to burning fuel.

00:51:28.320 But if I'm off-roading in the mountains camping with my family, I may not be interested in fuel efficiency.

00:51:36.300 I may be interested in low-gear horsepower to get me up the mountain in four-wheel drive.

00:51:41.880 So, it's a case-by-case depending on what you're – it's the same reason why in high school I played football and team dinners were like spaghetti dinners because of the carbohydrates.

00:51:52.020 You know, that was the common idea.

00:51:53.820 Like, get as many carbs as you can because you're going to need it for the game tomorrow.

00:51:56.980 Stuff like that.

00:51:58.180 Yeah, muscacholi, man.

00:51:59.480 That was my favorite before the game.

00:52:01.800 And I'd be tired after, you know.

00:52:04.300 Oh, yeah.

00:52:04.760 Oh, yeah.

00:52:05.320 That's a really great analogy.

00:52:07.140 That's a really great analogy.

00:52:08.820 You know, it's all about your needs, your purpose, your goals, what aligns with you.

00:52:15.960 Because we can eat any and everything.

00:52:18.000 And humans have, all right?

00:52:20.460 But does it align with you in how your unique metabolism is working right now?

00:52:26.060 And that will change.

00:52:27.640 That will change.

00:52:28.720 And so, it's building up these skills to be able to acknowledge what's best for me right now.

00:52:34.660 And what happens is, unfortunately, we get dogmatic.

00:52:37.180 We find something that works for us.

00:52:39.240 Maybe we're doing this standard – you know, and I come from this culture – this standard bro model of counting our calories, weighing our food, and it works at one point.

00:52:48.000 And then suddenly, maybe it's five years later, like, it's just not working for me anymore.

00:52:52.420 Like, what's wrong?

00:52:53.600 And what we tend to do is just diet harder.

00:52:55.660 Like, I'm just – it's me.

00:52:56.700 I'm the problem.

00:52:57.480 I'm doing it wrong.

00:52:58.120 I just need to go and, you know, do more cardio, whatever.

00:53:00.280 No, your epicaloric controllers have changed, and we need to make adjustments there.

00:53:07.420 So, maybe it's changing the way that we're training.

00:53:09.340 Maybe this is changing the macronutrient profile.

00:53:11.500 Maybe it's changing the foods that we're eating because all calories are not the same, and they do not resonate with our cells the same way at all times.

00:53:21.740 And so, like, it can get complex because there's a lot of factors, but some of the best data that we can get, if I'm just going to lay it all out here.

00:53:29.900 We've got all this incredible self-quantification today.

00:53:32.840 People are wearing all these, like, wearables and tracking this and that.

00:53:35.740 You can check everything from your heart rate variability to, you know, your blood sugar with continuous glucose monitors.

00:53:42.360 There's so much that we can track, and it's just – we're just getting started.

00:53:46.040 You know, I'm telling you, before you know it, we're going to have stuff that is able to track, like, things that you can't even imagine.

00:53:51.840 But –

00:53:52.080 I mean, I think we're going to be cyborgs.

00:53:53.820 This stuff is all going to be built, and we're going to be chipped, and it's going to be inside of us,

00:53:57.980 and it's going to detect things, and it's going to be wild.

00:54:00.860 A lot of great things will come from it, and a lot of not-so-great things will come from it.

00:54:05.000 Yeah, man.

00:54:05.800 I mean, I remember watching Cyborg when I was a kid, Jean-Claude Van Damme.

00:54:10.620 I wanted to be a cyborg.

00:54:12.800 Now?

00:54:14.360 Now?

00:54:15.280 It's a little bit more questionable.

00:54:16.360 But where we are today, AI is here.

00:54:21.660 My prescribed mandate for everybody is to be more human than you've ever been.

00:54:28.220 Be more human than you've ever been. 0.65

00:54:30.600 All of this self-quantification is great, but it can easily fuck you up because it's getting us outside of our bodies,

00:54:41.580 and we're so externally focused.

00:54:43.620 Your body is telling you every single microsecond what it needs and what's best for you.

00:54:52.620 But we're so externally focused, a lot of times we're not listening to that data, and it's right there. 1.00

00:54:58.100 You are a fucking genius. 0.99

00:54:59.100 You're not talking about the data. 1.00

00:55:00.420 You're talking more about intuition, I think, is what you're saying.

00:55:03.280 Am I understanding you?

00:55:03.940 Because data to me says the empirical peer-reviewed evidence, intuition is, hey, I don't feel right.

00:55:11.560 I feel sluggish.

00:55:12.720 I feel bloated.

00:55:13.760 I feel whatever.

00:55:15.140 And that's what – is that what you're saying?

00:55:16.600 Pay more attention to that?

00:55:19.180 Intuition is – and we've got – that seems like a soft science to even say that.

00:55:25.700 Okay.

00:55:26.160 All right.

00:55:26.800 Got it.

00:55:27.160 We've got – again, we've got mountains of data on intuition, but it's beyond intuition.

00:55:34.940 It's biofeedback.

00:55:38.220 It's biofeedback.

00:55:39.940 All right?

00:55:41.380 Pay attention to how you look.

00:55:45.200 You see yourself.

00:55:47.160 Pay attention to how you feel.

00:55:49.460 We're not talking about intuition and like kind of like literally how do you feel?

00:55:55.200 You know if you're more tired today than you were yesterday. 1.00

00:56:00.880 Pay attention to that shit. 1.00

00:56:02.840 This is not intuition. 1.00

00:56:03.880 Well, I know.

00:56:04.400 It's just paying attention to how you feel and pay attention to how you perform.

00:56:09.640 Pay attention like can I do the same thing or this workout like I just did this three days ago.

00:56:16.260 It's so much harder now or this is easier.

00:56:18.720 Like I was able to do 10 more pounds today.

00:56:20.920 Like I feel really good.

00:56:23.460 What did you do to get here?

00:56:24.700 Did you have a great night of sleep, right?

00:56:27.660 Did you – like your last workout where you didn't perform well, did you have an argument with somebody that you care about, right?

00:56:34.200 Were you stressed at work, all right?

00:56:36.280 So we're talking – we're not going to use intuition as an out, not to put – not to devalue intuition.

00:56:43.360 But this is paying attention to the biofeedback.

00:56:45.640 And our body is screaming at us all the time, giving us this data.

00:56:49.920 But – and my point being this, your wearable can tell you that, oh, I didn't get enough deep sleep last night. 1.00

00:56:57.740 Like, fuck. 0.99

00:56:58.400 Like I didn't – you know, like I must not have recovered. 1.00

00:57:01.780 But you might feel awesome.

00:57:04.500 You might feel the best you have.

00:57:07.000 And then you start to play this – and it's – a lot of this is non-conscious.

00:57:11.560 You play this game with yourself where you talk yourself into being more tired because the wearable told you that you didn't sleep well.

00:57:18.420 And the wearable is far from perfect in giving you that data.

00:57:23.820 This is, again, it's great, and it can give us some parameters, but it can also guide us to not listen to our bodies, which is far more powerful in giving us this feedback.

00:57:36.340 This is the – what was the – nocebo or non-cebo?

00:57:40.320 This is what you're talking about right here.

00:57:42.580 Yes, exactly.

00:57:43.500 You can nocebo yourself, yes.

00:57:45.600 Right.

00:57:46.160 Interesting.

00:57:46.500 I like that you're talking about this because I – you know, even in reading your book, at some points I was like, man, this is so deep.

00:57:53.740 I don't understand about the ghrelin and the – all, you know, and mitochondria.

00:57:59.020 But then when I hear you talk more about the biofeedback, and that's a much better nomenclature for what I was talking about than intuition.

00:58:08.420 That makes sense because I know, for example, if I go to lunch today here in the next, you know, hour or whatever it might be,

00:58:14.080 and I go get myself a double whopper at Burger King, it's going to be delicious.

00:58:19.000 Like, it really is going to be good.

00:58:20.980 But an hour later, my workday is done.

00:58:23.740 I might as well just not come back to work because I'll be tired.

00:58:27.080 I'll be sluggish.

00:58:28.160 I'll be distracted.

00:58:29.080 But if I go have a chicken breast that I cooked two days ago and I have, you know, some rice and asparagus, it may not be as amazing tasting as Burger King right away, but I'm going to feel better.

00:58:44.920 I'm going to have focus.

00:58:46.160 I'm going to have clarity.

00:58:46.940 I'm going to have energy.

00:58:48.060 This is what I hear you talking about.

00:58:49.600 Yeah, because your intuition can tell you to go to Burger King, right?

00:58:55.920 True.

00:58:56.620 Yeah.

00:58:56.980 But is that really your intuition?

00:58:59.320 You know, that's the thing with intuitive eating.

00:59:01.420 It's keeping it in context, right?

00:59:04.100 You are able to think more broadly, have a meta perspective and to like zoom in and have a micro perspective as well and to decide on how do I want to feel and where I am right now.

00:59:16.560 And so this is, again, very evolved capabilities that we have as humans and our ability to intuitively eat, if we want to label it that, or to have healthy biofeedback is dependent on how much static is on the line with that intuition.

00:59:35.200 And where does that static come from?

00:59:37.060 If my habitual or kind of cultural habits have been to eat a lot of fake ass food, and this is what my tissues are made of, my brain is made of this stuff, my intuition to go to Burger King might be a little bit off because all of this signaling, these signaling molecules, the stuff that's making my tissues,

01:00:01.000 this is not what we evolved having and how we evolved to run.

01:00:07.180 And so that can be off in and of itself.

01:00:09.100 If we're spending all day staring at our phones, I challenge you to think about a time when you were doom scrolling for an hour on your phone and you got off like, man, I feel great.

01:00:20.040 I feel a lot better than when I started.

01:00:21.620 You know, like we tend to feel kind of like drunk, like if we're on our phones, staring at our phones all that time, that's going to throw off that static on the line.

01:00:31.920 That's all this external focus, right?

01:00:34.400 All these micro stressors in our environment, you know, there's all these messages of negativity that so many of us are getting fed consciously.

01:00:43.320 This is all static on the line to be listening to what our body is telling us.

01:00:48.960 And so when we have that thing of like, yeah, you know, intuitively, like my inner child is telling me that I need to go and get some ice cream.

01:00:57.400 You know, my intuition is saying, Ben and Jerry, Ben and Jerry, what does that mean?

01:01:02.820 Right.

01:01:03.300 And that's not necessarily intuition, not to say that your intuition doesn't deserve or should have some ice cream.

01:01:09.540 But being able to get that clear feedback, that takes practice, that takes clarity, that takes cleaning up.

01:01:16.260 Oh, one more big component is the microbiome.

01:01:19.640 We know today that those microbes influence our consciousness.

01:01:25.620 This is well established.

01:01:27.660 All those trillions and trillions and trillions of bacteria, they have their own goals and desires and wishes.

01:01:34.160 And they can be sending out messages to you that you are misconstruing as your intuition that you need to go and grab that ice cream sandwich, right?

01:01:45.840 Because certain bacteria really are, they love that.

01:01:49.000 They want that.

01:01:49.940 They want to stay in control.

01:01:51.520 Or the coffee, like you were saying.

01:01:53.400 Right.

01:01:53.620 Or the coffee, right?

01:01:54.740 So where is the information really coming from and the healthier we can get our microbiome with focusing on diversity, even when we're eating healthy, right?

01:02:07.200 And we're doing, because this is what happened to me, right?

01:02:10.520 I was just sharing this with my son when I was in college and I was working at a casino in St. Louis. 0.99

01:02:17.400 All right, shout out to, no, I'm not going to shout them out, damn them. 0.98

01:02:22.220 But I was working at a casino and one of my coworkers was, he won Mr. Missouri, like caveman Missouri, whatever, like natural bodybuilding, whatever. 0.99

01:02:32.780 And it was this Nigerian guy, great guy.

01:02:37.100 And he, you know, I worked out, you know, but he was like, we should work out together, whatever.

01:02:41.300 So I was like, yeah, man, you know what you're doing.

01:02:42.920 So like, let me train with you.

01:02:44.180 And, you know, having that opportunity to actually learn what I was doing and learn to train.

01:02:52.620 So I was sharing this with my family about, you know, this exposure that I got in training and being able to like pick up this data.

01:03:05.020 And one of the things that he got me onto was like, this is, again, this is 2000.

01:03:13.040 This is now, this is actually 2000.

01:03:14.840 Like this is 1999, 2000 taking creatine, which is having a huge moment right now.

01:03:22.080 It is.

01:03:22.840 But just being able to like get this exposure, pick up these data points.

01:03:28.060 He taught me supersets, you know, so like drop sets, was doing all this stuff.

01:03:33.740 But what I was getting was this diversity of inputs.

01:03:37.240 And it's very similar with the microbiome.

01:03:39.800 You know, it's something that we can target is looking at not just the diversity, but also understanding that everything has its place.

01:03:48.220 And we want to have a microbiome that has more what we consider to be probiotic or friendly flora that's running things and less of the pathogenic or opportunistic bacteria.

01:04:01.160 But not here's I didn't say none.

01:04:04.380 None.

01:04:04.860 I didn't say none.

01:04:06.000 It's got to be harmonious in a way.

01:04:09.440 Right.

01:04:09.620 It's about the balance.

01:04:10.640 Everything has its purpose.

01:04:12.760 And what got us into the situation where we become now there's all these like deadly or very serious antibiotic resistant conditions that are emerging.

01:04:22.740 Like it's crazy because we went too far and trying to kill everything.

01:04:26.540 Right.

01:04:26.980 And just thinking like, oh, we found this pathogenic bacteria strain.

01:04:29.780 We just need to bomb it out.

01:04:31.720 And then, you know, we could just move on from there.

01:04:33.880 And so having this haphazard use of antibiotics and whether it's the things that we're putting on our hands, whether it's the things that we're consuming, just to have a better relationship with all this stuff.

01:04:44.200 Because last point, a strong, healthy microbiome is a resilient microbiome.

01:04:51.060 Right.

01:04:51.360 And so learning that resiliency from my my exposure and training with my friend, like externally, we need that same resilience, resiliency internally by focusing on how do we support the proliferation of healthy bacteria.

01:05:08.940 This is this is the last last piece of this.

01:05:11.500 Listen to this.

01:05:11.920 When I was eating what he talked about, chicken, rice, broccoli, chicken, rice, broccoli, chicken, sweet potato, broccoli.

01:05:21.940 Right.

01:05:22.200 Eating this meal strategy.

01:05:26.260 I fell into this eating, quote, eating healthy, but eating the same foods over and over again and missing the diversity to feed my microbiome.

01:05:34.820 So we need to be mindful of that.

01:05:36.760 Add in some new stuff, you know, proactively.

01:05:39.600 And it's not that difficult because these microbes are again, these are very, very small organisms.

01:05:44.580 A little bit can go a long way.

01:05:45.980 So what I want to encourage everybody to do is to look up and there are great websites that have this information.

01:05:53.040 I'm going to share one with you.

01:05:54.280 So let's see.

01:05:56.960 Let's do season.

01:06:00.560 It's called seasonal.

01:06:05.500 Here it is.

01:06:08.540 Seasonalfoodguide.org.

01:06:10.980 Seasonalfoodguide.org.

01:06:12.200 You can look up what is seasonal and available in your local area.

01:06:16.420 I do this all the time.

01:06:18.580 It got me on to a lot of different foods that I wouldn't have normally eaten or even thought about, even knew.

01:06:24.660 And just adding stuff in and eating some foods that are in season, encouraging diversity.

01:06:30.680 Life is giving us these foods in our environment for a certain reason, I believe.

01:06:34.960 At a certain time.

01:06:35.960 Yeah.

01:06:36.160 You know, and what we have today is great that we can eat whatever we want, whenever we want.

01:06:41.840 That's a, it is a blessing in some ways, but it can be a curse in others.

01:06:45.580 And so what is the environment trying to feed you to keep you resilient?

01:06:50.840 Right.

01:06:51.100 So focus on the diversity.

01:06:53.780 Get five to seven servings of fermented foods every week as well.

01:06:58.660 Target that.

01:06:59.320 And this can be, again, dairy versions to vegetable versions to their animal, their meat versions as well.

01:07:07.640 When I was working at the university gym, the university that I graduated from, I got to work with people from all over the world.

01:07:14.560 And once I became aware of this, this was, again, about 20 years ago, I started asking people from, whether they're from Ireland, whether they were from Ethiopia, whether they were from India.

01:07:26.020 Hey, do you guys, what kind of fermented food did you guys have?

01:07:30.300 Every culture ate fermented foods.

01:07:32.180 Has something.

01:07:32.980 Yeah, sure.

01:07:34.240 Every culture ate cultured foods.

01:07:37.560 And our ancestors figured this out a while ago because that can provide us with not just prebiotics.

01:07:43.680 So the prebiotic substrate, but probiotics, a variety of different strains that help us to make postbiotics in us for us.

01:07:53.740 So like short-chain fatty acids that help with our cognitive function, our heart health.

01:07:59.460 It's a symbiotic thing that we evolved with.

01:08:01.900 So be proactive in getting those in as well.

01:08:05.060 I love it, man.

01:08:06.040 I love it.

01:08:06.640 Well, we're going to move over to our exclusive Iron Council segment.

01:08:10.640 But before I get to that, just let the guys know who are listening right now who are not members of the Iron Council, where to connect with you.

01:08:17.080 You have the three – do you have the three books or more than three?

01:08:21.320 Because I know Sleep Smarter, Eat Smarter, and then you have the newer Eat Smarter Family Cookbook as well.

01:08:28.040 So let the guys know where to go and connect with you on those things.

01:08:31.020 Awesome.

01:08:31.500 Yeah, of course.

01:08:31.900 You can pick those up anywhere that books are sold.

01:08:35.300 The Eat Smarter Family Cookbook is the most tactical.

01:08:37.900 And I'm grateful to say when it came out, it was the number one cookbook in the United States, USA Today National Best Seller, all that good stuff.

01:08:46.600 I'm a foodie, man.

01:08:47.720 I love food.

01:08:49.000 And so the recipes are delicious.

01:08:51.780 And it's for guys like us that grew up.

01:08:54.640 Like I love McDonald's breakfast.

01:08:57.000 How do we upgrade that?

01:08:58.460 And there's great stories in there as well.

01:09:00.120 It's going to be tough.

01:09:01.280 It's going to be tough.

01:09:02.100 I share the story of in the movie Big Daddy with Adam Sandler when he takes the kid to McDonald's and he misses the cutoff.

01:09:10.720 Like I identify with that so much.

01:09:13.340 And, you know, because if I didn't get up in time or get out the door in time, I miss that breakfast.

01:09:18.540 And, you know, like that's all I want is that breakfast sandwich.

01:09:21.600 So there's an upgraded breakfast sandwich in there that is –

01:09:24.100 Okay.

01:09:24.700 I haven't seen that.

01:09:25.600 I've gone through the book a little bit, but I have not seen that one.

01:09:28.560 So I'm going to take a look at that one for sure.

01:09:30.000 Yeah, there's burgers in bowls.

01:09:32.820 There's incredible dinner options.

01:09:34.480 But all of it is based on science as well.

01:09:37.640 So we're not skimping on the deliciousness.

01:09:40.040 And by the way, there are thousands of families now that have that.

01:09:44.280 And, you know, people, they post and send me the photos.

01:09:47.300 It stays in their kitchen.

01:09:49.000 It stays in their kitchen.

01:09:50.420 And I'm so grateful because that's what it was about.

01:09:52.700 It's about, yes, upgrading our nutrition, eating real food, but it's also about family.

01:09:57.220 And so that's why – and here's – I'm going to share this with you guys.

01:10:00.520 I don't usually talk about this.

01:10:02.500 I had to fight to get family in the title.

01:10:06.720 Really?

01:10:07.620 Yeah.

01:10:08.360 Because the publishing industry, they're like – and I'm with one of the big five.

01:10:12.540 The big five publishers.

01:10:15.260 But they're like family in the title doesn't work well.

01:10:17.880 It doesn't sell as many copies.

01:10:19.360 But I understood at that point being in this business at this long because I know colleagues

01:10:26.060 of mine all the time, people who are first-time authors, they're like, you know, well, you

01:10:29.480 know, they made me change this.

01:10:30.840 No, no, no.

01:10:32.060 This is mine.

01:10:34.060 This is mine.

01:10:36.600 This is what the name is.

01:10:38.040 And I stood on business and made sure that it was in the title itself.

01:10:41.680 They're like, oh, you're putting this subtitle.

01:10:43.200 No, no.

01:10:44.600 Family Cookbook is in the title because a lot of the science in the book and as you'll discover,

01:10:49.360 really quickly, one of the studies found that people who eat with their family, with

01:10:53.940 children who eat with their caregivers or their parents, just three meals per week have

01:10:59.800 a dramatic reduction in the development of obesity and disordered eating.

01:11:05.840 All right.

01:11:06.160 There's something about that three meals per week is a minimum effective dose seen in

01:11:10.820 multiple trials that it has a protective effect on our children.

01:11:14.600 And we talk about why.

01:11:16.040 And that's just for starters.

01:11:17.260 And so that science is in there.

01:11:19.360 Delicious food is in there.

01:11:20.480 Eat Smarter Family Cookbook is available everywhere books are sold, as is Eat Smarter

01:11:24.000 and Sleep Smarter.

01:11:26.000 Awesome.

01:11:26.560 Sean, I appreciate you, man.

01:11:27.580 Thanks for joining us today.

01:11:29.600 It's my pleasure.

01:11:31.880 Man, I'm not in my normal recording studio, so I realize the sound may be off a bit, but

01:11:36.860 I did want to remind you that we have a brand new segment to the Order of Man podcast, and

01:11:41.300 it is exclusively for our members of our brotherhood, the Iron Council, where they get to ask all

01:11:46.820 of my guests their most pressing questions.

01:11:49.400 So we've got the next segment coming up.

01:11:52.020 It is that exclusive guest question segment from our Iron Council members.

01:11:56.240 And I'm going to give you a sneak peek so you can see what types of questions are being

01:11:59.740 asked.

01:12:00.420 If you are interested, join the Iron Council at orderofman.com slash Iron Council, where

01:12:05.360 you too will be able to ask your questions of my guests and also all the other benefits

01:12:10.040 that come with being a man in the brotherhood.

01:12:13.500 Enjoy.

01:12:13.680 So this first question comes from Ken Newcomb.

01:12:17.840 He says, I am intermittent fasting, which he says you are a fan of.

01:12:22.080 If I am training jujitsu first thing in the morning, am I okay staying in a fasted state

01:12:28.280 even with that heavy cardio?

01:12:31.920 That's a great question.

01:12:33.640 That is a great question.

01:12:36.560 Now, I would love to have a follow-up question, like how long have you been doing that?

01:12:40.360 Are you intermittent fasting and training right now?

01:12:43.680 Because it's really about, and this is just to keep it very simple, it's about how you

01:12:49.800 feel personally.

01:12:51.060 I can't give you like a definitive thing.

01:12:53.680 If you feel great training in that fasted state and then fueling up after, keep doing

01:12:58.180 it.

01:12:59.640 But I would say for the majority of people, because it is something that is kind of like

01:13:05.780 glycolytic pathway, very cognitive, they might need a little something.

01:13:11.520 All right.

01:13:12.040 And this could be-

01:13:12.880 What would you recommend?

01:13:14.680 This is going to be individual.

01:13:16.740 I'm going to give some options.

01:13:17.920 This could be some ketones.

01:13:19.780 All right.

01:13:20.220 Could be some ketones.

01:13:21.640 It could be having a little bit of something that has some glucose along with it.

01:13:27.620 So maybe, I mean, again, it depends on the person, maybe a little bit of carbs with some

01:13:32.420 protein.

01:13:32.840 You know, so maybe a couple of eggs and some sweet potato.

01:13:35.640 Or it could be a situation which, for myself personally, it depends on what I'm doing, though.

01:13:42.940 But maybe a little coffee with some protein.

01:13:45.280 You know, put some cold brew with the protein powder, right?

01:13:50.180 I run really well on amino acids, right?

01:13:53.680 And your body can utilize those aminos, gluconeogenesis, and make that into glucose if need be.

01:13:58.900 But what I would say is be cautioned to not get into a catabolic state with your muscle.

01:14:07.680 You want to protect your muscle.

01:14:08.860 So if that means like having a little bit of something beforehand.

01:14:11.620 But the most important thing is if you feel good doing it, keep doing that, right?

01:14:19.160 There isn't a cookie cutter way to do it.

01:14:21.360 What is catabolic state?

01:14:22.640 I'm not familiar with that term.

01:14:24.340 What does that mean?

01:14:25.220 Because when I go train, I train in the morning first thing.

01:14:28.560 I usually don't have anything.

01:14:30.440 And I like doing it that way because it feels, if I eat anything, I feel like I'm going to throw up.

01:14:35.620 Yeah.

01:14:35.880 So what is catabolic state?

01:14:38.640 Or is that what you said?

01:14:39.800 Catabolic?

01:14:40.480 Catabolic?

01:14:41.620 Yes.

01:14:42.100 Well, that's one of the things.

01:14:43.500 But so there's, I don't like to generalize, but when I was in school with this expensive education, we're taught.

01:14:53.320 Basically, we have these two states.

01:14:55.080 We're in a catabolic state or an anabolic state, right?

01:14:58.240 Anabolic sounds way better.

01:15:00.220 Catabolic is a breaking down of.

01:15:01.820 Anabolic is building up of.

01:15:04.340 There's a dance that's happening all day with this stuff, right?

01:15:07.220 So I was trained that anabolic state is just basically when you're sleeping, all right?

01:15:13.500 There's some studies showing you can get a little bit of that anabolism, like when you're meditating a certain way, but it's very difficult to be in this anabolic state.

01:15:22.060 These are kind of tied to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.

01:15:26.580 Sympathetic, fight or flight, parasympathetic, rest and digest.

01:15:31.640 Really, when we're resting, when we're restoring ourselves, we're dipping our toes into some anabolic things.

01:15:38.740 Strength training is an anabolic stimulus.

01:15:40.720 We get some anabolic benefits, but we're catabolizing.

01:15:44.480 We're breaking our bodies down.

01:15:46.380 Right.

01:15:47.000 Those benefits come later.

01:15:49.520 Right.

01:15:49.880 But it doesn't mean when you go to sleep that night, which that is the biggest anabolic state, just to be clear.

01:15:55.980 Absolutely.

01:15:57.340 But we dip our toes into anabolic recovery all the time.

01:16:01.060 Your body isn't just this kind of like off or on.

01:16:03.900 I'm doing one or the other, period, point blank.

01:16:06.480 There's a dance that's happening.

01:16:07.700 And so with that being said, for you, your body already has the fuel to be able to do your training.

01:16:17.280 That's why you're able to do your training.

01:16:18.960 All right.

01:16:19.260 So you have stored glycogen in your liver, in your muscles.

01:16:24.620 So if you are using your stored glycogen in your muscles, for example, you just want to make sure you add, you fill those containers.

01:16:32.240 Replenish.

01:16:33.240 Right.

01:16:34.020 So it's about doing what feels good.

01:16:36.160 But I'm a fan of having something, though.

01:16:39.760 And so for me, again, coffee with a little bit of protein is what I've been found.

01:16:47.040 That's what I do recently.

01:16:48.520 Right.

01:16:48.740 I used to.

01:16:49.640 There was a big phase where I didn't have anything or coffee with some butter, that kind of thing.

01:16:54.820 But it just is situation dependent.

01:16:57.160 I've done a lot of fasted training sessions.

01:16:59.060 So it just depends on what feels good to you.

01:17:04.980 Perfect.

01:17:05.520 That's that biofeedback, I think, that you were talking about.

01:17:08.420 All right.

01:17:08.660 So this one comes from Dustin Stokes.

01:17:12.040 He says that he's really enjoyed the book.

01:17:14.580 I don't know if you knew.

01:17:15.380 We used this last month for our book of the month inside the Iron Council.

01:17:19.400 So this is timely.

01:17:21.400 But he said for guys in their 40s and 50s, when your metabolism starts to slow and weight becomes harder to lose,

01:17:28.740 what are the two most important strategies surrounding nutrition, macro micronutrient supplements, and medical interventions?

01:17:36.480 Now, this is a lot.

01:17:37.640 This is a lot.

01:17:38.520 Such as TRT, GLP-1, where appropriate.

01:17:44.360 Just even with that, since we're talking about, just even the introduction of those things, those are huge topics.

01:17:50.740 GLP-1s, TRT.

01:17:53.380 So we can't.

01:17:55.780 GLP is a peptide, right?

01:17:57.700 Yeah.

01:17:58.060 And there's so many more.

01:18:00.200 Oh, listen to this.

01:18:01.160 I wrote Eat Smarter in 2018, 2019.

01:18:07.960 All right.

01:18:08.200 I started to work on it then and completed it in 2020.

01:18:12.680 So, I mean, I was doing the research prior.

01:18:14.340 So 2019 is when I, like, really put the book together.

01:18:17.740 And it came out the first week of 2021.

01:18:20.100 I was talking about GLP-1s all those years ago.

01:18:24.620 GLP-1, adiponectin, leptin, ghrelin, all this stuff.

01:18:30.040 Our body has a vast array of satiety and hunger hormones that are doing this dance. 0.93

01:18:34.880 All right.

01:18:35.160 We don't even know all of them yet.

01:18:37.240 We're just.

01:18:38.360 And so, but I was talking about GLP-1 in relationship to food, in relationship to lifestyle factors that help us to regulate our blood sugar.

01:18:49.220 I had no idea that this GLP-1 movement was coming down the pike.

01:18:53.120 Would blow up.

01:18:53.520 But I talked about this, as of this recording, six years ago because the data was right there.

01:18:59.740 So I'm saying that to say that we need to be very careful about jumping right to any of those things.

01:19:06.440 If your lifestyle is not in order and you are just tearing through your testosterone because you're sleep deprived.

01:19:14.000 All right.

01:19:15.840 We've got a fascinating study done on young men.

01:19:18.780 All right.

01:19:19.020 So in their early 20s, college age men.

01:19:22.440 Absolutely tanking their testosterone levels to that of men who are decades older by being sleep deprived for just one week.

01:19:34.220 Just one week.

01:19:36.800 Testosterone is very likely our most sleep dependent hormone.

01:19:41.360 It's like jacking into the charging station.

01:19:44.760 Your testosterone is going up in correlation with how much sleep you're getting.

01:19:48.480 And if you're sleep deprived, that's one.

01:19:50.600 So, again, we're jumping on to TRT without it. 1.00

01:19:54.380 Are you sleeping or are you fucking around? 0.99

01:19:57.540 You know, so we got to check all these boxes first. 1.00

01:20:00.180 Are you strength training?

01:20:02.020 Are you eating too much sugar?

01:20:04.980 And you're upticking your aromatization where your testosterone is getting converted into estrogen.

01:20:09.880 And then you come in with this, right, not to take it off the table, but if you jump right to that, chances are it's not going to work for you in the long term, especially in the long term.

01:20:21.800 Short term.

01:20:22.260 Yeah, you're going to be feeling it.

01:20:23.900 You're going to feel great.

01:20:24.940 All right.

01:20:26.120 But eventually there is no free lunch.

01:20:30.220 There is no free lunch.

01:20:31.600 So, with GLP-1, same thing.

01:20:35.760 Are we checking the boxes?

01:20:37.480 Are we coming in with this Band-Aid solution here that's going to work for a little while, possibly get us dependent on something, and not really addressing the root cause?

01:20:46.640 So, to circle back.

01:20:49.140 Go ahead.

01:20:50.540 No, no, you're good.

01:20:51.380 That makes sense.

01:20:52.380 We used to have this T-shirt.

01:20:53.840 Maybe you need to bring it back.

01:20:54.800 We called it the T-booster T-shirt, and on the back it just said, it said, compete, lift heavy, eat meat, sleep, have sex, be manly.

01:21:08.340 That's the way you boost testosterone. 0.99

01:21:10.500 And everybody mocked it.

01:21:11.820 No, that's the way you do it.

01:21:13.800 It is exactly by the research the way that you do it.

01:21:16.860 I love it.

01:21:17.380 I love it, man.

01:21:18.420 Yeah.

01:21:18.700 You know, that's, oh, man, I love that.

01:21:21.860 I love that.

01:21:22.340 And to answer that question, too, about, you know, over 40, and we were just sharing, so I haven't shared this with anybody, but, you know, doing the biological age testing, getting over 100 metabolic factors checked, immune system factors, organ function, testosterone, I'm not on any of this stuff, all right?

01:21:44.620 My testosterone was at the edge of being abnormally high, all right?

01:21:49.140 So it's over 1,000, all right?

01:21:51.060 Not to take out the potential, like, all that stuff is an option, but what are you doing with your lifestyle?

01:21:58.800 And one of the biggest factors today, and Lord knows how good my markers would have been had I not had the most stressful year of my life as well, right?

01:22:10.440 Yeah.

01:22:10.780 And so I also found that there was a key nutrient deficiency that I had no idea, right?

01:22:17.740 And for many people, like, 60% of the population is deficient in vitamin D.

01:22:24.700 For African Americans, it's like almost 80%.

01:22:26.920 Really?

01:22:28.480 And it could be a methylation, yeah.

01:22:30.760 Because it evolves.

01:22:32.200 Is it the absorption rate or something?

01:22:33.860 Is that what it is?

01:22:34.600 Melanin in the skin, you know?

01:22:38.220 It's like sunscreen, right?

01:22:40.120 Yeah, that's right.

01:22:40.580 Yeah.

01:22:41.560 More time in the sun because, you know, you're just wired to be that way.

01:22:46.080 And we don't live in a culture, especially in the United States, where we're outside a lot.

01:22:49.880 And so vitamin D supplementation might be a good idea.

01:22:53.120 And vitamin D can potentially...

01:22:56.540 Oh, my God.

01:22:57.140 This just came out.

01:22:57.980 I'm going to share it with you, man.

01:22:59.980 All right.

01:23:00.380 This just came out.

01:23:01.460 Okay.

01:23:02.960 This was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

01:23:07.260 And it found that taking just one capsule of vitamin D3 each day, which is around 40 cents,

01:23:12.960 can slow your rate of aging at a cellular level.

01:23:16.620 And this was a four-year study.

01:23:20.180 And the researchers found that people who took this intervention with vitamin D3

01:23:24.080 prevented the equivalent of nearly three years of aging versus people who do not.

01:23:30.360 Whoa.

01:23:31.460 All right.

01:23:32.000 So it's tied to so many other metabolic factors, immune system factors, testosterone,

01:23:38.960 what your hormones are doing.

01:23:40.420 Are you getting enough sunlight?

01:23:42.400 Are you taking vitamin D3?

01:23:44.160 Because you might need more.

01:23:46.280 Or maybe you have methylation issues.

01:23:47.880 Or maybe you have...

01:23:49.200 The list goes on and on on why a deficiency could happen.

01:23:51.980 But what are you going to do about it?

01:23:53.260 And you can't know unless you check.

01:23:54.840 At minimum, get your vitamin D checked.

01:23:58.060 All right.

01:23:58.500 You need vitamin D3 if you're taking supplements.

01:24:02.940 When I was in school, we weren't taught that there was a difference.

01:24:06.020 Now we know there's a clear difference.

01:24:07.500 There's multiple forms of vitamin C, multiple forms of magnesium, multiple forms of B12.

01:24:11.640 It's not all one thing. 0.99

01:24:12.560 You're not just going to get it from a little bitch-ass supplement. 1.00

01:24:15.820 All right. 1.00

01:24:16.240 A multivitamin.

01:24:17.360 All right.

01:24:17.780 You've got to make sure D3 and vitamin K2 along with it.

01:24:23.460 Because the K2 is going to make sure you're going to optimize absorption

01:24:26.940 and help to ensure that the D3 is going where it's supposed to go in your body.

01:24:33.380 It has a big relationship with calcium, which is a whole other topic.

01:24:36.280 But take it with vitamin K2.

01:24:38.240 And also get some sunlight regardless.

01:24:41.100 Regardless.

01:24:42.080 It's how we evolve to actually make D3.

01:24:44.600 It's a complex process how we do it.

01:24:46.880 But cholesterol is converted.

01:24:49.200 Well, let's not even get into it.

01:24:50.720 It has to do with our liver and our kidneys.

01:24:51.980 But we need sun exposure to the best of our ability.

01:24:55.800 And the cool thing is that your body is really good at kind of storing stuff away.

01:25:00.980 So the months, one of the big things, what if you live in winter or whatever?

01:25:06.660 I'm from Missouri.

01:25:08.520 Okay.

01:25:08.980 We got extremes of everything.

01:25:10.640 Winter is no joke.

01:25:11.680 I get it.

01:25:13.220 But spring and summer when you get sun exposure, do your best to build up and utilize that, optimize that.

01:25:20.080 And, yeah.

01:25:22.580 So I hope that it's helpful.

01:25:24.360 So, oh, last thing.

01:25:26.280 This is super quick.

01:25:27.080 Okay.

01:25:27.700 So over 40 vitamin D3 supplementation and or make sure you're optimizing your sun exposure.

01:25:37.040 We want to make sure from the nutrition.

01:25:39.300 We're just talking about nutrition here.

01:25:41.620 We really need to be even more mindful of our macronutrient ratios for us.

01:25:47.840 Okay.

01:25:48.080 Some – we have these wars going on where now it's like I grew up and was in school during the low-fat epidemic.

01:25:58.080 Okay.

01:25:58.240 Marketing.

01:25:59.300 And then we go to the whole other extreme, like low-carb.

01:26:01.800 The carbs are bad.

01:26:02.320 Carnivore.

01:26:03.220 All right.

01:26:03.740 Carnivore.

01:26:04.320 Yes.

01:26:04.640 And I know – these are my friends and colleagues who are like the faces of these respective diets.

01:26:09.440 But the thing is, it's what's best for you right now.

01:26:14.520 Your body might be screaming at you to give it some more carbs.

01:26:18.560 And this can help with serotonin production.

01:26:22.000 This can help with – there's even some potential in helping with testosterone and aromatization and your body not going overboard.

01:26:30.780 If you're eating the right carbs for you right now, there's so many different benefits.

01:26:36.400 Potentially, this could be having less carbs.

01:26:40.020 And so over 40, tinker with your macronutrient ratios if you're not seeing the results that you want in your training, in your body composition.

01:26:49.040 D3, I mentioned.

01:26:52.260 What else would be another tip here?

01:26:54.760 Nutritionally.

01:26:57.380 And this is really, really tough.

01:26:59.100 I want to say the thing that I want to say, which I'm going to say this.

01:27:03.080 It's outside of the nutrition realm.

01:27:05.860 Obviously, eat real food. 1.00

01:27:07.780 But fucking walk. 0.99

01:27:10.000 Like, this is – we have – it's overwhelming. 0.99

01:27:14.460 It's hard to go online if you're into any kind of fitness stuff and not see people talking about walking.

01:27:19.660 Again, I've been talking about this for years.

01:27:20.940 Even more so than I've seen forever.

01:27:24.240 It's one of the most effective ways to really clear your body of glucose, clear your bloodstream of glucose, get it into your muscle cells, your legs, especially your calves, like a sink to soak up that glucose if you're walking after your meals.

01:27:40.580 You know, just walk.

01:27:41.840 Make it a mandate.

01:27:42.560 You should be getting in at minimum – and I've got studies, and I've shared this before, looking specifically at testosterone, all right?

01:27:49.780 4,000 steps a day was the minimum effective dose to have a market.

01:27:55.260 That seems low.

01:27:56.320 Right.

01:27:56.760 It is low.

01:27:57.560 It is low.

01:27:58.360 But that is like the minimum effective dose to not be like madly deficient in what your body's potential is with testosterone.

01:28:05.360 8,000 to 12,000.

01:28:07.700 That was the optimal range of like seeing some –

01:28:09.840 I try to get 10 a day is my goal.

01:28:11.720 10 a day.

01:28:12.300 If I can do that, I feel pretty good about my steps.

01:28:15.240 Yep.

01:28:15.520 So we can put this in terms of steps.

01:28:17.020 You can put this in terms of minutes.

01:28:18.580 But it's good to at least get a little pedometer to get a beat on like, you know, but walk.

01:28:26.080 Walk.

01:28:26.620 Yeah.

01:28:26.780 It's a great time to be – to process your thoughts, you know.

01:28:30.380 No doubt.

01:28:30.740 To, you know, just be more human, walk, especially over 40.

01:28:35.960 But this is something, again, 30s, 20s, we're so sedentary.

01:28:41.080 Just walking is going to be so helpful with your body composition and performance.

01:28:44.720 Awesome.

01:28:46.660 Sean, I appreciate you.

01:28:47.760 Again, I know you got to get going.

01:28:48.820 I kept you longer than I said I would, but thank you for taking that extra time.

01:28:51.900 The guys are going to find value in that.

01:28:53.520 And again, guys, go check out Sean.

01:28:55.120 Buy his books.

01:28:55.880 Go check out the show.

01:28:57.520 And Sean, appreciate you, brother.

01:28:59.020 Thanks for joining me today.

01:29:00.760 It's my pleasure, man.

01:29:01.660 Thank you.

01:29:03.800 Gentlemen, there you go.

01:29:04.600 Mr. Sean Stevenson.

01:29:05.740 He was a guest early, early on in the podcasting realm when I started in 2015.

01:29:11.160 But it's good to have him back.

01:29:12.560 And I wish we would have stayed more in touch, but it's good to reconnect with him and learn a little bit more about the fuel that is our food and how we can perform at optimum levels.

01:29:24.220 Because we do.

01:29:24.880 So life is hard with relationships and business and economies and health issues and serving our communities and leading our families.

01:29:32.960 It can be really, really challenging.

01:29:34.960 And an integral part of making sure that we are doing the best is fueling ourselves with the right kind of food in the right kind of way for maximum performance.

01:29:43.600 So check out their family cookbook, Eat Smarter Family Cookbook.

01:29:46.800 Check out Eat Smarter and Sleep Smarter.

01:29:49.140 And then lastly, also make sure you check out the Iron Council.

01:29:52.460 We're having some great conversations.

01:29:54.540 In fact, last month, we used Eat Smarter as the book of the month, and we all talked about it.

01:30:00.740 So it was good to have Sean come here and reiterate and underscore some of the things we talked about in the Iron Council last month.

01:30:07.320 Check that out at orderofman.com slash ironcouncil.

01:30:11.720 All right, gentlemen, you've got your marching orders.

01:30:14.180 I will be back tomorrow for our Ask Me Anything.

01:30:16.800 Until then, go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to be.

01:30:24.540 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast.

01:30:27.440 If you're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be,

01:30:31.440 we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

01:30:34.580 you

Order of Man - September 23, 2025

SHAWN STEVENSON ｜ Using Bio Feedback to Fuel Your Body

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