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Fast This Way with Dave Asprey

Hey, what's up? It's Chase. Welcome to the Chase Travis Live show here on Creativelive. Gonna get right into today's episode with you. Today's guest is Dave Asprey. You're not familiar with Dave's work. He's the founder and chairman of Bulletproof 3 60. If you've ever heard of bulletproof coffee, where you mix butter and some oil into coffee and drinking and have a lot of energy. He is the founder of that. Among many other things, Um, he's the best selling author host of the Webby Award winning podcast Bulletproof Radio. He's been on the Today show, uh, Nightline, CNN, all sorts of different media outlets, and he's got a couple books superhuman the bulletproof plan to age backwards. The bulletproof diet. Lose up to a pound a day, headstrong the bulletproof plan to activate your brain energy. And today we're talking about a couple new things. One, His latest book, How to Fast This Way, Burn Fat, he'll inflammation and eat like the high performing human you were meant to be. Ah, little m...

ore back story on Dave, So anyone who is a bio hacker like Dave is always ahead of the curve, saying things that seem controversial and Dave has been one of these guys for a long time. So much of the work that he's done in and around diet nutrition had to change the chemistry of your body are things that I personally have tried friends of mine, and fasting is one of those things. Now there's so many myths that we address in his in our conversation today, things that are featured in the book, um, some fast or some myths like that fasting is just about food, that fasting is dangerous for the body, that fasting equals dieting. Ah, lot of those myths are ones that I believe are toxic and our culture. One of the reasons that I wanted to have Dave on the shows because I personally have had experience the benefits of different types of fasting. And we do, for those who are curious, go into that all kinds of different how exercise while fasting, how to pack your sleep for increased energy, how fasting drives mental clarity and, uh, and can help you live longer thes air fax. Um, anyway, my hope is that you will listen to Dave's um, rather eloquent explication on the merits of fasting and why it's gotten a bad rap. More importantly, encourage you to copy of his book. But without further ado. Want to introduce Dave Asprey this show getting a warm round of applause from wherever you are on the Internet and let's kick it off with my conversation with They've asked you. Yeah, they love you, Dave. Thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to the show. I'm happy to be here. Chase. It's been a while. We were just reminiscing before we started recording that. It's been a good five plus years since we got to spend a little bit of time together. You're in the Creative Life Studios, I think. Either was that Seattle or San Francisco? San Francisco San Francisco Early days. Yeah, Yeah, you were early on in our health and wellness universe. Um, and I still refer to that You've done a lot of amazing work in the space of bio hacking self improvement, and that is what I want to have you on the show for. And we talked about this also before we joined. I hate saying that over and over for the people who are like Wait a minute, you keep saying the things I never got to hear and just pretend like I wasn't there. Chase. So let's go back to, um, the premise of your new book is around fasting. But before we get to the premise of your new book, I'm curious of how you ended up at fasting as a book worthy topic, because as someone who's been hacking your biology for a decade or more, presumably you could choose a lot of things to focus on. So fasting now what? Your 10 plus years into your journey as a renowned bio hacker. Uh, and of course, we'll spend some time there. But presumably there were a lot of adventures and misadventures prior to now. So take us through a A short history of how you landed, where you are right now and all of the different things that you focused on to get to where you are. But I used to weigh £300 in my mid twenties, and I had all the diseases of aging, like pre diabetes arthritis in my knees since I was a teenager. Um, cognitive dysfunction, high risk of stroke and heart attack, and I'm like, went to the doctor the way you're supposed to, and they couldn't do anything. Like we don't know, Try to eat healthy and exercise because I work out an hour and a half a day, six days a week. I did for 18 months straight. I'm still a 46 inch waist. You got anything else for me? Like you're lying, have some Wellbutrin like no and no, you're fired. And I just realized I'm gonna have to hack this myself. So I started doing the things that were supposed to work. I was a raw vegan for quite a while. And, man, you wanna break your biology do that? I, um you know, I tried the Atkins very early on zone diet, all kinds of things, and I found I could lose £50 relatively easily. The other 50 was a hard work. It took 10 years, and it culminated in me saying, You know, Keto doesn't work if you just do Keto. And the proof of that is the number of people at a low carb conference who have lost half the weight. They have to lose, and they can't lose the rest. So they're like, Oh, it's because a 16 g of carbs instead of 15. And no, that's not it. And same thing. Vegans going. My hair is falling out. I don't feel good, and I'm angry all the time. Um, it's because I'm not vegan enough. You know, I have to eat more spinach, and I've been both of those guys. Okay, s so I can have license to say that, uh and also that the guys I'm still fat. It didn't work out enough just over exercise. So I ended up spending a million dollars. I traveled around the world. I learned meditation from the Masters. I tried it all, and I've written a successful book on anti aging. People have lost a million pounds on the bulletproof diet, and probably and then some started a company that's going to be pretty well known called Bulletproof and a neuroscience company focused on meditation. And what I realized is that in my my the initial focus of my blogged and my first big book, I talked about intermittent fasting, and I talked about Kato, and if you look at, like, the Google trends after that, like, I think those helped to plant seeds for people. But intermittent fasting was a part of it. And my whole point was, Look, not having breakfast sometimes is really good for you, and you can do this bulletproof coffee thing. And if you have never heard of bulletproof coffee, it's grass fed butter, coffee beans without mold and M c T oil and you blend them together and have it for breakfast. And I've present the evidence. Hey, you're still getting the benefits of fasting. But you don't feel like I used to hype ugly, bitchy If I don't eat and then you're yelling at people right? And so, like we have lives and we can't all be health influencers who, you know, I'm just gonna, you know, drink my kills movie, which makes my joints hurt and, you know, just kind of look cool and then do whatever. Like we have jobs and we have families and we have stuff to dio. So I wanted to get the health benefits so one of the cognitive forms benefits, but during the week I just don't really have timeto be tired and what I found over the last I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of readers and followers and things is that people don't understand fasting, and people do understand Keto. So I'm disturbed at the you know, Keto at all costs thing. You need to cycle it. Like I said, because I did the not cycling thing and hurt my biology there, just like I did with the vegan thing. So fasting is has reached that point where now it's generally accepted. The problem is, there are lots of books on fasting and the instruction manual looks something like this. Don't eat for a while. Their book done. Okay, that's very short. Book hard, right? And then you could say, uh, no, I'm gonna write another book. I'm gonna go to pub, man. I'm gonna search for fasting and Pub Med to the directory of most of the medical research. You can look at its nicely organized. So now I'm gonna put up, like links to fasting studies and say fasting is good for you there. Now skip breakfast in your fasting book, and I'm not looking to, you know, poke fingers at my many colleagues who are promoting fasting and doctors and all that. It's good fasting is as important as sleeping as important as eating e. I just didn't want to write another book like that. So what I did is I looked at the evolutionary psychology. I looked at the psychology looks, the personal development, and I talked about the first time I did a four day fast, which was in 2000 and eight. I'd say before fasting was cool. I hired a shaman to drop me off in a cave outside Sedona so I could experience my fear of loneliness and my fear of starving because as a £300 guy who's learned that you have to eat six times a day or you go to starvation mode, I really I'm actually afraid of being hungry. I don't like, actually like a jerk when I'm hungry, and I realized I don't like being alone, and I would do almost anything, so to not be alone. So I'm okay, put me in a cave, and then I got no food. I got no people. I'm gonna have to just deal with it head on. But the psychological side of this, it's a big deal. So this is a book about how toe actually fast, instead of how to know that fasting is good for you and then not do it. Uh, fasting itself is not about just not eating. It's about going without, and you can fast from almost anything you want fast carbs. It's called the Keto Diet. You want fast from alcohol? It's called Abstinence. You want fast from air. It's called intermittent hypoxic training and breath work. And yes, I do that, too. Brief periods of not having what your body is screaming at you that you need will make you profoundly stronger. You can fast from water. It's called a dry fast, and when you do that, it changes your cell biology. All of these are riel, yet we're somehow obsessed with Oh my goodness, I just have to skip breakfast or I have to go multiple days and I have to kind of self flagellating. Most people, men or women who do fasting are going to feel great after the first couple days when they figure it out like I can do this intermittent fasting and there's I'm never having breakfast again. And chase, I can tell you what's gonna happen in two months. The men are gonna be like my hair is getting thin. I don't sleep very well and I don't have a kickstand when I wake up, and the women at about 4 to 6 weeks are gonna be saying I don't sleep well and my hormones are off and I don't feel good and my hair is getting so the same thing happens with Keto. You have to cycle. And so the idea is, how do you just approach fasting? So there's no pain, no fear. And how do you hack the hard parts of fasting? So you don't have to feel the pain when you have other stuff to do in your life? And the book has three big hacks for fasting as well as all the mindset and the idea of a spiritual fast in it. That journey to getting to that. First of all, the book is fantastic. So congratulations. I have read many of those books about fasting that you so speak. And, uh, I find there's a general, um, avoidance of the psychology part of it, which is one of the things I valued that you took head on. Um, but I want to retrace a couple of those steps because it's, um, being £300 on having a 46 inch waist has, um, has its drawbacks. And I wanna understand a little bit about presumably, where you were in enough pain that that caused you to take action. So that is the that is what is it? Something is a mother even mention. Necessity is the mother of invention. But there are people out there who don't weigh £300 and for whom might be listening right now, saying, Yeah, that's cool. I like eating or I like fill in the blank. I don't like going hungry or living in a cave. Um, so to those people who see themselves as mostly healthy or ish close enough, what what would you tell them? Because you had a you had a problem that you needed to solve. My belief is that most people don't understand the difference between needing to solve a problem and optimizing their performance or their health or their well being. So I'm hoping to you consort of articulate a little bit from, you know, maybe your your position is needing to versus someone who is perhaps unaware because I think there's a lot of people listening or watching right now who maybe had that point of view what I told myself when I was £270 and I've been on antibiotics pretty much once a month for 15 years because of chronic Sinus infections on I've had All these health problems is I look in the mirror and I would tell myself and believe it. I'm pretty healthy. Got a few things to work on. But really, the voice in my head is like, make sure you get paid work on your job and can you get laid? Sorry, that's the human condition. That's what the voice and I was going to say. You know, it is never going to say no one wakes up in the morning and says today I wanna optimize my health. No one on Earth Optimizing your health is a stupid idea. Yeah. Uh huh. Here's why is it ever number one on your honey do list? No, it never will be. You know what's number one on your list? You want power and you want control. And if you wake up and say today I want enough energy which is power to do whatever I call on my body to Dio you can wake up and you can sign up for that. The only people wanna wake up healthier people are desperately ill. And I did get that desperately ill when I had fibromyalgia and chronic 15 syndrome and toxic mold poisoning in Lyme disease in the long list of crap that could happen to you if you don't know what you're doing or if you're just unlucky or if you have bad genes or maybe all of those in my case. So no, you don't wanna optimize your health. You wanna have the power to do what you want to do today and doing what you want to do today include eating stuff, and you do have the power to do that. You can choose to do it later, so it'll work better on and to reproduce and to not die of things that are scary. In fact, a lot of the framework and fast this way is around evolutionary priorities in decision making that happens outside of your brain. And most of us don't understand our our cells run an operating system for life, and it's one that's so compact it runs in a single cell. Low bacteria floating around out there, Ah, mold spore, Um, a cactus. They all run this, and so do we. But it runs inside ourselves, not in our brain. And it goes something like this. If something might be scary, run away from kill or hide from it. It's fear, and all life has to respond to things that might kill it. Otherwise, the species will end and plants cover themselves and toxins and spikes and bark, and we think our way out of it. And, you know, ah, mold might make a poison right? Eso Everyone has its own defense system, but that's how it works. And you put 10 times more energy into that, then it probably warrants because most of the time it's not a threat, but it might be. And your dumb little cells, not you, are deciding whether it's a threat. If you decided to threat, yourselves will listen, but they'll decide for you long before you have a chance. And if that's fear, the next effort is food because everyone's died of famines like every species on earth. So that means eat everything. And this is why fasting It's so hard because there's a little voice that comes from inside a quadrillion ancient bacteria studied throughout your body, going eat the cookie and your but I'm fasting and they're like, I don't even know Fasting is well, I'm done. Bacteria eat the cookie and you go through this arguing thing and eventually like, I'll just say it half the cookie and then you're like, Why am I such a bad person? You're not a bad person. What happened? There is exactly the same thing is if you lean against the hot stove and you pull your hand away Good thing I pulled my hand away before it got burnt. You didn't pull your hand away. Someone else pulled your hand away and you noticed that you pull your hand away and then you took credit for it. Well, the same thing happens when you eat the damn cookie. And then you take credit for reading the cookie that you didn't want to eat because it wasn't you who made you eat it. It was another thing running inside of you that is outside of your brain. And you could have caught yourself and you could have burned will power in order to say no. But guess who controls willpower? Those same bacteria because those are the bacteria that make energy. They're called mitochondria. So that's kind of interesting where we have fear and we have food. What else does life have to dio to stay alive? Procreate? But it's also a network. I'm looking for jobs. Fuck, I'm infertility. Good God, man. Alright, We could go there, so All right. Okay. You tricked me. E might have done that before, so the the idea there, though, is okay, so if you have 10 times extra effort on fear five times on food three times on fucking well okay. What's left after that? Well, there is ah, final f word. And this is why fasting is so important. The final F word that all life does is friend. And once your basic needs are met, you will form a community. And if you're bacteria, you make a biofilm or you make yogurt or kombucha. And if you're a cactus, you make a cactus tribe whenever cactus growing. I don't know. And if you're human, you make a community and you specialize and you support each other. We're wired to do this inside ourselves, to keep our species alive. It is fundamental to being human that you wanna help other people. But if you're all the time afraid and all the time hungry, you will not do this. And we have this loop inside of us that says, Oh my God, I'm hungry. If I'm hungry, I might die. So we just went from five x 10 x Because dying is a fear thing, and if I'm going to die, then I won't get to reproduce. So imagine through that three X on there, and that's why hunger is such a trigger. And that's why we feel like such jerks when we eat the cookie. But the ways too fast are sit down and do a spiritually fast that I did in the cave and say, All right, I'm just going to deal with the feelings. I'm going to think about it. But since there's no food here, I can't sabotage for myself. Or you could say I'm going to do this in a structured setting. But most people for the first time aren't going to go four days if there's food in the house, because that part of them is going to just kind of make him do it, and then you'll convince yourself. It's a really good idea to break my fast on Lee 47 hours into into it. And right, if you take the bike, goddammit, I can tell you've done this enough times. Well, that is a personal growth path, and it is valuable and it is good. And I talked about how to do that. But for most of us, did you wanna have way more energy than you're used to having? Did you want to get younger? Did you want to just feel younger? Did you want to feel like every time you push down the accelerator, you could go faster instead of being pegged? And it's already noon, and you saw the rest of the day? Well, that's why I intermittent fasting is important. The definition of bio hacking. That's that I put in the dictionary. It's a new word in our language since I did my first creative live. It's at least the definition that I first wrote is the art and science of changing the environment around you and inside of you, so that you have full control of your own biology. Well, what if you did stuff so that you just didn't feel hungry thing you could intermittent fast and you wouldn't care, and the cookie wouldn't ask you to eat it. You wouldn't trigger hunger, which wouldn't trigger fear, which wouldn't trigger lack of reproduction. And then you could just go about your morning and not be high Puglia bitchy and not have all the other stress and and ultimately you get more done, you feel better and it's easier. And that's missing from the conversations around fasting. They're just like do it because it's good for you. Do it because of the science. Yes, all that is true. But you're still not going to do it because you're mitochondria don't understand science. They understand environment. I'm gonna tell you to change your environment so the fasting is easier. So to my original question and to dovetail and make sure I'm getting this right. The reason that people ought to care about our conversation today is because of go in the blank because you want energy and you want control. You don't want to optimize your health. You want enough power to do everything you love. You don't have power to have sex until you fall over dead. You want enough power to have the best career you want. You don't have power to change the world and all of the above. It's about how you feel and nothing else. I love the you know, you talk about in the book E think enlisting your molecular your molecules enlisting your molecules are enlisting Alex Ellis enlisting your molecular machines, for example. That's the psychology and bringing those things on board all what I love about the way that your, um, phrasing this is if you're watching this right now, there is You have direct access to this benefit. I personally don't know. And I don't have any experience of fasting in line with the way that you have talked about it before and what you've written in this book and not feeling marginally, if not significantly better. I also believe that this path that many of us on our desire to beyond whether it's self improvement, betterment um, I think the way you phrase it is really appropriate is wanting the power to control your your life and do the things that you want to be able to dio. Do you believe? And you know, this goes back to why you wrote the book is the information that is widely available on these subjects. Is it largely wrong and you're trying to fix it, or is it just is just too much of it and you're trying to condense it and give it to us in a way that, you know, I'm fascinated with the why. So this is you see me digging into why you wrote the book and because there is a ton of information out there. If you think about like, why did I start creativelive? Because there's all kinds of stuff. You can find information, but you want to go to a trusted source. And as someone who's done so much of this stuff to yourself and and, you know, done the science and as you said that lived through a shaman dropping off a cave in the desert, Is it, you know, was the goal here to, you know, just give someone 10 cards they could turn over when they're trying to go through this. It's it's not the goal. Um, you're an author, too. You know that your hourly rate for writing books is it's a terrible deals right about I'm so you write a book because you have to write the book or because you have something that you think is worth thousands of hours of your time and worth your readers time. Because honestly, I think I could make coffee that as a barista and one of my coffee shops and probably call the hourly rate so well, the why of the book isn't economic and should have $ million in my podcast. It's not about being better known all my fourth New York Times bestseller. It's about making a difference, and there's plenty of books with the science of fasting. So the reason I wrote this is that there is plenty of rational reasons for fasting, and I go over some of them in the book, especially some unknown ones. But it's why why isn't everyone doing it? Why haven't we built this into our our society? We haven't done it, not because of the science. We haven't done it because of those three f words, and because those things are in control so much, and I'm shining a light right on them and saying, Here's how to get around it and getting around it isn't just understanding. It's actually just changing it, so you don't get the signals so you can do some stuff at the start of a fast that dramatically improves your likelihood of succeeding and completing the fast. And there's other things you could during the fast that makes it more impactful, like taking the right supplements, not taking the wrong supplements. So it was more about how to actually do it fast instead of Here's the reasons you should do it in the types of fast. That's easy. Just Google it. It's not even actually use dot dot Google doesn't even give you any good info about anything anymore. It just adds. But when you when you go out there and you say that's what it's about, it's about how to do it easily and without effort. Unless you wanted the effort for your own personal growth, all right, I think that's why yeah, well, ultimately, I think that's part of you know what we in a culture that gives us things, what we want when we need them and quickly, you know, I think that's a very virtuous reason for wanting to help someone because there's a lot of pain and there's a lot of lack of awareness. And there's a lot of you know you can give people the tools and especially like you said, it's a bad hourly rate. But so you've written this book going to cut to the chase here there's a line in there that says fasting is like a Swiss army knife, an incredibly impactful tool that has farm or use than just weight loss through fasting. You realize self control and self control leads to you making better decisions about the air you breathe, the food you eat and the content you consume. Are you stating that fasting has is fundamental or is it so? Is it must have? Or is it a nice to have it is They must have, like sleeping. OK, going well, If you can go through your life without doing it, you will die sooner. You will get metabolic diseases. Your risk of dying of all cause mortality goes up. But okay, death is a big deal. What if you just are running it maybe three quarters of your possible power for most of your life because you never figured this out like wait a minute. So it's not about life. It's about What can you dio? Can you think at the end of the day, do you have enough power to be nice to your kids after driving an hour home in traffic? Or are you just blown out? Right? This comes down to any equation. How maney electrons could you take from air and food? How few of them did you waste? And then how did you show up in the world? And you could do a lot better when you know how to do some fasting. In fact, one of the things that happens when you know how to fast is that voice in your head worrying about food actually stops. I found a study that's in fast this way. 15 to 50% of the thoughts in your head during the day are about what you're going to eat next. What if there weren't any of those? What would you do with 15 to 50% more capacity for thinking? That's why fast things important. You want to show up in the world as yourself stop thinking so much about food, I will. I will confess something. So I, um, hit the gym yesterday morning. I have a little home gym here and my trainer that I used to go to this gym. I now see her remotely and historically, probably through a story that I have told myself, um, rather than science, but that I needed to eat before working out. So I had energy. Bond. I'm trying to put myself in a little vulnerable position here because I think there's probably a lot of people who think like me. And then I was like, Wait a minute, I'm reading Dave's book. I'm talking to Dave this week. I'm going to not eat because I had stopped the night before at about 6 30 which is pretty early dinner for me, but did that and my training session was at eight and I woke up and was e. Found myself a little bit paranoid, like, Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have a bad I'm gonna have a bad work out because I'm not going into my workout prepared. Um, I did have coffee. It's a good call. And then I had my workout on. My workout was harder than normal, and it was so hard, in fact, that I didn't have room in my psychology to say Gosh, Why is this hard? However, my energy level was extremely high and when I finished working my working out the thought of eating did not cross my mind until 12 45. Wow, look at you. And but here's the question. As someone who is in the middle of of working through the work that you're doing air have done for us in this book and have played with intermittent fasting, seen some benefits? Why have Why do I still that I know intellectually have all that internal psychobabble about not eating? And yet when I did it almost accidentally, almost forgetting that I had such a great experience. I had such a great workout and didn't feel hungry. I felt very naturally hungry. At 12 45 Walk me through. You know what happened? Go back. You know Detective Asprey, Please go back and tell me what's going love it that you tried this working out fasted, especially for I'm guessing, is a strength workout. So it's perfect. There's something called M tour that you might have heard of, and I referenced this and I think all of my books and this is what your body uses to put on muscle, and if it's chronically elevated, it also triggers cancer. So when you want to build muscle, what you do is you suppress M tour and then you when you release em tor, it comes springing back, and there's three things we know of that suppress M tour, which will cause the spike you're seeking. And one of them is fasting. One of them is coffee, and one of them is exercise. So what you did is what I call in some of my books, tripling down or triple stacking on em tour. So you basically compressed it all the way, and then when you ate, that's what triggered the surge of interest. You probably got more benefits from your workout when you had lunch because you did everything you could to keep it suppressed. The reason you felt so good after your workout is that workouts naturally increase opiates and adrenaline. So you suppress your hunger after the workout because you worked out and I was like, Yeah, I got myself some journalism opiates, and by the time they were off like okay, I could eat when you ate, were you just ravenous or was it normal hunger it was pretty normal. Hunger was normal. Hunger. It's supposed to be. Yeah. And it was a again, as someone who has intermittent fasted as a part of is a curiosity for myself because so many of my friends, like you and others are have been advocating it. Never really sort of hopped on the train. Um, went in reading the book, you know, you advocate working out fasted Haven't done that before, or and actually, not not having not done it. But I actually have fear around it because I don't want a bonk and waste my time. So, gosh, give it a world. And is this something? Now, this is the This is the final question in my sort of trotting out my own experience here. This is just again. Yesterday was this just Was this all, um, was just psychology? Was I expecting this and then it happened? Or do you believe deeply that I'm just a product of my biology and, um and I was ready to have this be successful, cause I'll tell you, I'm gonna short circuit my own question here. I was prepared for it to suck. I was gonna say I don't think this is a case of placebo was about 31% but you were very curious about it, But you didn't have an expectation of an outcome. And when really, I forgot. Like, that's the part that was strange to me. Is I? I had forgot that I didn't eat, You know that I was focused on the work out, and then I went right from working out to a thing. I had a lot of energy, and I was literally, like like, like, 12 45. I was like, Wow, wait a minute. This is these air. My first calories, aside from some coffee and so that's available to me at all times is what you're saying it is, But that doesn't mean you should do it at all times. That's where we're going. Next you use an or a ring or some kind of sleep tracker of any sort of going on there. Okay, Cool. Alright. So yeah, you You know, you're ready to score. So if you have woken up that morning and like, man, I got terrible sleep last night, I'm really kind of blown out. You should have skipped the strength workout and you should have some breakfast with protein. In fact, like today, I'm gonna do a yoga class. It's all good. You don't need to put yourself out because fasting is a stressor. It's just it's a good stressor, unless you already have enough stress. Look, you know, if you broke up with someone the night before you got fired the night before, you know your life's on fire or you've got, you know, the beginnings of a cold. Maybe you just don't need to fast and go hit the gym really hard. You actually be kind to yourself. And this is the other reason I wrote fast. This way is I am seeing men and women burn themselves out on fasting because they feel so good. It's like no, at least a couple times a week. Have some breakfast already. Like have breakfast with friends. Have some bacon like you'll be fine, you know, have some eggs or heck, if you have to have some gluten free waffles, it's fine. You don't even have to be Keto. In fact, you don't wanna be Keto all the time, but fasting is a tool that is free. It saves you time, and when you do it at least some of the time. It profoundly changes the energy you have the rest of the day and in the rest of your life. And it'll likely give you many mawr additional years of feeling good before you at the end. Man, that's a good R y. Yeah. I like you. You talk about Roo and business and the r O. I of of this is power health, you know, feeling good thinking. Well, um, and I also appreciate what I'd like to go into it in just a moment is how this is different for, um, for women. But before we do that, you have articulated in lots of different places. I've listened a lot of the conversations you've had with other folks again. You have a class on creativelive, which I recommend, um, and of course, in your book. But you just said like, eight different things. That would be quote good for us. Now, I know you're you're often hesitant to be prescriptive because there's so many. Um, there's a lot of nuance. You just talked about the stressors, you know, I want, you know, prescribe something to someone who is, you know, just had a big break up the night before. But I would like if you would walk us through a reasonable approach to many of the different, um, bio hacks or I'll just call it, you know, psycho or maybe psychosomatic, or I'm not quite sure what the right. But all of the different techniques that you have experimented with walk us through What a reasonable recommendation from Dave Asprey Looks like like sure I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna eat Keto for fill in the blank, and then I'm gonna, you know, intermittent fast for X, where I'm gonna intermittent fast once or twice a week or just give us the what I'm trying to get to is how wide ranging life can be on the on the plus side, right? All those could be benefits because you're not tied into one thing. And I believe so many people are still stuck as you try and break in the book. But on the like, on the less than. And I have to do this as a punishment to myself. And the way you described it 90 seconds ago was like a little bit of this a little bit. It's kind of like cooking. You know, you're just you've got all the ingredients there, so walk us through a reasonable co mingling of these amazing ingredients that you have, um, and that you've been espousing for a long time. Well, at least three times a week Don't have breakfast. It's really tough. I think most people can do that now. If you're obese, like I waas the thought of not having breakfast and not having a snack and just waiting until noon. Like, man, I'm gonna kill someone at work. I have ended a meeting in my mid twenties, on the guys. It's 11. 45. I can't pay anymore attention. I'm gonna kill one of you and eat one of you if I don't go to the cafeteria. So we're done. E just left. Like I can't do this right. I don't like feeling that way. And when I say skip breakfast, some people are like Dave, you're an idiot, I can't do it. And there are three fasting hacks that I feel like I have tow. Talk about here is perfect to the next thing you know, it's great. And the reason for fasting hacks is to turn off the voice in your head that says that you're you're going to die if you don't eat. And that way, the fast could be easy. The first hacky already figured out its black coffee, coffee, the amount of caffeine, anyway, Not just coffee, but caffeine. Present in two small cups of coffee doubles ketone production. Okay, that is really big. And we didn't know that until just a few years ago. And that means if you have a cup of black coffee before you fast, your key tones go up a little bit as the key tones go up to very mild levels, much less than the Keto, bro. You know, I only bacon kind of person. You're actually turning off a hunger hormone called ghrelin, and you're turning on a satiety or fullness hormone called C C K. And when you do that, all of a sudden like, Oh, wait, I'm feeling better. So the first hack, just black coffee. That may be enough. Like you know what suppressed my appetite. I just don't care about food. I'm good. But then the next hack, for that is something I'm kind of well known for. And like, there's hundreds of millions of a cup of coffee sold. But I will tell you if you put some M C T oil, the C eight kind, that raises key tones mawr than coconut oil and more than regular M. C T. That it's called brain octane. There's a couple other people making a C eight now, but you do that in a little bit of butter and you blend it up. Doesn't have to be a lot, does not feel like calories or whatever the critics are going to tell you. You still maintain the benefits of fasting on the fasting purists like in the mouse study. Over there, the mouse only had water. Yeah, the mouse and having espresso machine or what? It works better. So I've talked like world class experts on Oughta Fiji and written a book about it. And I will tell you flat out, if your protein digestion doesn't get turned on and your insulin doesn't move, you're still fasting. Except for if you're doing a fast to rest your gut and for some certain specific bacterial things, other than that you do those two things like I just don't care about food. But the other thing that is new to the world of fasting and is a part of fast this way and something I've tested. Ah, lot is prebiotic fiber. This stuff cannot be digested by you. It doesn't raise your blood sugar. It's still Keto. But when you put it in your body, your gut bacteria turn it into something called beauty uric acid, which is pro ketosis so it can actually raise your levels. It also is really good for the balance of healthy gut bacteria so you could have a cup of coffee. You could put some prebiotic fiber in there. You put a little bit M C T or a little bit about it, blend it up. It still tastes like coffee and you drink it. And you know what? People could wave croissants and pizza and whatever. It's funny and you just don't care. You know, I just don't want to eat, and it's so liberating. Instead of going, I have willpower. I'm going to say no. And then we're gonna judge me if I change my mind. So I'm just going to sit in the meeting again. Think about Oh, that's gone. Okay, there's your intermittent fast use one or all three of the fasting hacks. So you got your morning and you're still yourself right? And sometimes don't have any of them. And just like I'm gonna do it because I'm feeling really good and that's all good. Doesn't have to be the same every day. And then you might want to start out the day with another hack that is very, very annoying for three days, and it is at the end of your shower. Put it on cold water. I'm saying this for 10 years. Cold water on your forehead and your chest. You last about 8 to 10 seconds. You'll jump out of the shower and say, Dave Astros, it's super jerk. Well, go back in the next day. You'll last 20 or 30 seconds. The day after that, you'll last maybe a minute, and you'll still hate me the fourth. They'll go in and be like what just happened? Like I actually doesn't feel cold. I feel OK. In fact, I feel really good, and then your skin starts look better and you're full of energy for the day. It only takes three days for the mitochondria and your body to shift the composition of their lipid membranes. This is in studies? Yes, their mouth studies, but it works for people to and suddenly you're better at making energy on demand when you need to. Because you told your body you live in a world where you might have to make energy on demand that way later, when you demand the energy so you don't yell at your boss, you have the energy that you needed, right? It's really easy. Okay, so now you don't have to pay for breakfast. You might have to pay for coffee and maybe some other stuff. You didn't have to pay for hot water for a minute. Okay, we can all do this. What else should you do? You should monitor your sleep because you want to be good at sleeping. And there's a whole bunch of stuff I've written about sleep. In fact, even in this book and fast this way, there's a section on how to combine fasting and sleep to change your circadian window. Rapidly. Chapter five. You want this? Chapter five, Chapter five. Anyone looking? I didn't know what chapter it was. Top of my head. I just finished the audible read for it, but I didn't remember the number. And, uh, you go through the like, Oh, wait. Okay, so I got better sleep than I did before. Oh, and by the way, part of that don't eat real close to bedtime because you get worse sleep and check this out. If you had dinner, like at 5. 30 and then you finished in, like, 6. 30 and you got about 10. you got four hours of fasting and you sleep for eight hours. That's 12 hours. You only have to go former hours. And you just did a 16 hour fast. Good for you. It wasn't that hard, right? So you could do stuff like that. But if you just did those three things Oh, and then once a week, like, Okay, I'm going to run for 20 seconds like there's a tiger chasing me. Then I'm gonna walk real slow, and I'm gonna run. I'm talking, run for 20 seconds, run really fast, and then walk ASL OAS. You can. You'll get more benefits from two 22nd cardio intervals over seven minutes than you will in 45 minutes of steady state spinning and sweating. All over the place. And that's research from the University of Colorado. So okay, you save yourself a bunch of time, and every day you gotta go for a walk for 20 minutes just to move around. There's another set of benefits there. If you were to do those things, you don't have to take all the smart drugs I write about. You don't have to run electricity over your brain, which is awesome. You know, you don't have lasers or anything if you were to do those things. What you've done is you've taught your cardiovascular system. You've taught your other systems. Oh, I forgot. You should also once a week lift really heavy things briefly until your muscles can't do it again for minutes. You get more if you want to, but you don't have Thio and we're talking squats, pushups, maybe some pull ups. Uh, that kind of thing doesn't have to be crazy. That's going to tell your body something really important. And this is something that is also in fast this way, and it's it's kind of a new unifying theory for all these bio hacks. It's that the body is always listening to the environment around you, and it responds strongest the things that have a high slope of the curve. In other words, if you throw the frog in hot water, it jumps out. If you slowly turn up the heat, it boils well. The body really wants you to jump into the hot water so it can learn how to jump out really quickly. So if you do stuff that says, Hey, at any time you may be able to turn the heat all the way up, it'll be ready. And at any time you may need to be able to go for all of a day without food, it'll be ready. And if you say it any time, you may have to lift really heavy stuff until you think you're gonna die. It'll be ready at any time. You have to be ready to move the blood through your body really fast. It will be ready, and that it will be ready. Translates directly into something else is called resilience. It's called a functioning immune system. It's called the ability of blood in your head and to think and to focus and to do and show up the way you want to show up. So this isn't that hard. And there's all kinds of cool things like intermittent hypoxia and breath, work, training, meditation and things you can layer under there. You don't have to do any of that. But if you do the things that take the least amount of time, least amount of money, least amount of energy and give you more energy in return, then all of a sudden doing the next one doesn't feel very hard because you've got the energy already. That was as well put as I've ever heard it. That was fantastic. And I think that that just the, uh, Thio retrace for just a moment, um, cold water therapy people in advocating it for a long time love Wim Hof. He's a friend. Yeah. Yeah. Van has been on the show. I would call him a friend. I am, I would say, 16 ft from my cold plunge. I have a hot tub and a cold plunge in my yard directly on the outside of this window. I use it every day has absolutely been a game changer. Um, and for what it's worth, I was buying a your book preorders air huge you guys just as an FBI. For if you want to support people who doing cool stuff in the world like Davis. Um, you know, one of the best ways you can you can support Dave is to buy his book ahead of time in and thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And eso. I like to do that prior toe having all my guests who are authors on this show. And I was doing that and saw you were paired there with them. People also bought. Yeah, but it does. It goes together like e don't like peanut butter and jelly. And if you're European peanut butter jelly sounds disgusting. I know that. I heard that before, right? Yeah, that is nasty. Vegemite, Marmite, all that stuff. So you said a few. That is just a beautiful. Here's a handful of baseline things that you could do that air free, cheap, super easy. And I also have found that this idea of layering and more stuff while it sounds hard before you start, when you have made habits out of these things and you've received the benefit, the the thought of layering and more stuff is actually joyful. Um, and that's I think it has to do with a lot of that power that you start to feel when you're in control of your life. Um, you mentioned in there a couple things that I want to get particular on if you don't mind my being a little bit Maybe the risk of being pedantic or too detail oriented. But you talked about types of fasting. And again, you wanna want steer people to read the book. But you talked about, um 16 8, which is a for those who are familiar with it. That's that's an obvious one. But just replay that for those who are new to it and the same if you would with five to and anything else any other two numbers that you'd like to put together, You feel free to do it, but just give us a little bit of the some of the types of fasting. I put a directory of fasting in there, and I want to preface this by saying the best type of intermittent fasting is the one you're going to dio. They all work s so we can get that You don't have to be right on this one. You have to do it. Is it so the simplest and kind of must begin or one is 16 hours without eating, which is most of these half of it's going to be when you're asleep, right? And then you eat all of the calories you normally would eat during eight hours, and then you can upgrade from that to an 18 6, which means you went to more hours without eating and you ate all of your meals for during a six hour window. And the next step up from that is basically a 24 hour fast. But it's much sexier to call an O mad fast, which sends for one meal a day. Yeah, I'm mad. It sounds kind of bad ass. So, uh, and it is a little bit more biologically stressful to just do a mad. Most people who do a matter like, Oh my God, I feel so good I'm gonna do I'm at every day forever And then two months later, they wish that they would have had breakfast every now. So just because it was good for a couple days doesn't mean it's the best practice for every day for the rest of your life. That's the kindness to yourself. And there's also five to where you can fast two days a week, and you eat normally. The other five. There's something that I wrote about originally the bulletproof diet, like back in 2011, and it's called a protein fast. So one day a week you eat less than 15 g of proteins. You can eat 1000 calories or something. You can have some coconut milk, and you can have some vegetables that are too high in protein, so you're not really hungry. But you get the oughta Fiji, the breaking down old cellular junk and getting rid of it. You get that effect if you just avoid the protein, so you can also do other longer, fast as well. And there are people who name them different things. So I do my best in there to say Okay, you know, sometimes people will take the name of someone's work, and then they say, Oh, like that's a lean gains fast. And Martin, who's the guy who created the engaged lean gains, is the whole program that goes with a certain length of fast and you're doing him a disservice if you're saying, Oh, I'm doing a lien games fast, but you're actually just doing in 18 6 fast because you didn't do the rest of what he told you to dio. So I do my best in the book to say this is a fast that's been branded. There's also the FMD, or fasting, mimicking diet, where you eat Ah, lower number of calories for a substantial number of days of the week. But you're not actually fasting. And what this comes down to is the real core definition of fasting, which is It's just going without and you can fax from carbs. It's called the Keto Diet Fast from animal products. It's called the vegan diet and not good for the planet. That's a whole different conversation there, but I write about you know, the vegan approach and how you can combine the fasting, but how it's probably going to be harmful because of cell membrane integrity, not because of protein specifically. And when you look at this, there's other things fasting from alcohol. We do that there's fasting from gluten. It's just going without there's social media fasting. There's dopamine fast. I'm gonna fast from anything that gets me to stimulated to reset my dopamine receptors. And there's my dopamine receptors. There's actually emerging evidence that you're probably just during a normal fast, also making it so that when you do eat, the food tastes better and that you actually get more pleasure from it. So fasting is a spice. When you put it that way and the list goes on, there's 24 hour fast, 48 hour fast 72 hour fast. There's dry fast where you go without water and without food for a day, or sometimes up to three days, which has a different effect on the body and probably is a little bit rough on a lot of biology's. But people are doing it. Eso What I would encourage people understand is you didn't have to have a name for your fast. Just pick a length of time and say, I'm going to go this long without eating junk food. You just went on a junk food fast for three days. Good for you. If you're addicted to junk food is gonna be really hard to do because they put MSG and neutral Sweden there and those are addictive substances you're gonna like I'm dying without my diet soda and my french fries here. You're not dying. That's the voice in your head is lying to you. So start there. That's okay, too. It's just choosing to go without something for a brief period. Awesome. Now I promised Thio ask you a couple of questions about how women might approach this differently. And before I do, because you may choose to include this, um, in maybe it's different. Maybe it's not for the gender biology. Um, but I want to touch on, uh, the mental clarity aspects. Um, when I first started experimenting with some of your techniques on bulletproof coffee in particular, I got, um, way smarter, especially between I would say, two and six hours after the bulletproof coffee and my mental acuity was, um, significantly elevated. And I got to the point that if I had to, you know, lead an executive meeting or give a keynote in front of thousands of people, and if I didn't have, um, that near me, I was disappointed and frustrated because I became, I started to rely on it. So I have personally experienced the the clarity of thinking that goes with bulletproof coffee, and I'm wondering if you could tell us. Is that something? Is that just the fat that is in there, or is it the combination of not having eaten? And then when you do put calories in your body, they are fat. So you're mimicking fasting. What is the combination? And this asking for a friend. But, my friend, it is truly me. Like I to this day. If I'm going to do something very public in front of a large audience, and I will not, I will fast and I will consume a bunch of good, high quality fat, and it makes me way smarter. I want to know why. Okay, it turns out it's not making you smarter. It's making more energetic. You already have the smarts in there, but you didn't have the power to use them. Thanks, Mom. E. Where your brain in that amount of time and you can rewire your brain, it takes a lot of work. So what's going on there? There's probably six reasons that bulletproof coffee is doing that, and the most obvious one is coffee makes you smarter. We know this, but when you are not fasting, you're eating stuff and the vast majority of things that we call food have toxins in them. And that's okay. The toxins were there because animals don't want us to eat their sorry plants don't want to eat their babies, so plants cover their babies and poison animals don't want to eat their babies. They bite us if we try to eat their babies. Eso What what's going on there is like, Well, our ancestors figured out that, um, they would die if there was a famine. So they figured out they could eat this plant and not die. Noticed. They didn't say they could eat this plant and show up on stage and kick ass and be at their highest and best power, right? They just wanted to not starve. And these became our foods. And if you talk to a food company executive, what's the cheapest food I can get? It's the stuff that will keep people from starving. And then how do I make it? Tastes really good at some artificial colors and flavorings and bad fats and some salt, and you're good to go, right? So when you're fasting, one of the side effects that people don't think about is you're not consuming negative things in plants. Now, plans have good things to, but you're by avoiding the negative. You're doing something special, and this is a core part of the bulletproof diet, which is outside of just the world of fasting. But when you fast you are consuming no toxins that slow you down, your digestive processes are not working. So the energy that you would have put into breaking down food is not there when you use the M C T oil in the coffee, and it raises key tones. Keytones have mawr electrons per rotation of the Krebs cycle. Then you can get from eating carbohydrates or burning glucose, which comes from eating too much protein or eating carbs. So all of a sudden, your brains like yeah, and we know in science, the neurons will eat key tones. Even if there's sugar floating around nearby, they prefer it because it's a better fuel for them Now. The glial cells that shape and support your brain, they want sugar. The key terms if they have thio, but they don't function as well. That's one of the reasons you cycle in and out of ketosis. You don't fast all the time. That's called starvation and those were happening. You also have the farm ako kinetics of caffeine, and we're modifying that with the fat. But the thing that was missing that I really haven't talked much about because the research just came out. It is prepublication. It's been driving me nuts. When I first had yak butter tea in Tibet and I noticed the difference, I could not explain it. And I remember I was at south by Southwest, probably the first year or two of bulletproof just starting the blogged. And I didn't have a blender and I said, Man, I don't want to eat all this, you know, junk food that's available everywhere. So I bought a stick of butter and a cup of coffee and I ate the stick of butter like a Snickers bar in front of this VP from from Twitter who was just horrified. I'm like, No, I'm hungry. I just need some food here. And it didn't work, you know? I was okay, but I didn't get the buzz. What's going on here? Why do I have to blend it? Well, I gave $50,000 to the university of Washington for basic water biochemistry research, and Jerrold Pollak, who identified this fourth phase of water. It's a really thing in water. You can see it in a microscope. When water is up against a lipid membrane, these little droplets of fat, it changes its structure, and it turns out what humans dio we drink water, and then we put the water next to our cell membranes, which are made of little droplets of fat. And then we expose it to 1200. Nanometer light is called Heat that Buddy buddy, and that changes the water so that it's the form of water that we can use to make energy in the form of ATB or to fold proteins and to do what ourselves dio so ourselves. Air full of special water. And what Gerald figured out in his research at U Dub was that butter. And he did test the grass fed butter and M C T. At least the eight carbon chain. The stuff that I recommend both of those they form very large amounts of this kind of water. So when you blend that bulletproof coffee up, you are now drinking water that your body can use right away without having to burn calories to heat it up. So like OK, I got energy from key tones. I got water. I didn't have to heat up and transformed in order to use it. I got caffeine. I got the other poly phenols that Aaron coffee that air Good for you. It's no wonder that you feel amazing. I did not know all of that when I tried the 1000 different things. See what tastes good and what works and what gives me the buzz I'm looking for. And it's not a caffeine buzz. It's very different. And you're also not eating the very common toxins that are present and coffee called okra toxin A, which forms from a species of fusarium fungus that's very common in coffee so common that it's illegal to sell coffee that has very much of this toxin. It's illegal in China, all of Europe, in Japan and most of South America, but it's legal. There's no limits on on that stuff in coffee in the U. S. So when it's illegal to drink elsewhere, they send the coffee to the U. S. And Canada, and then they'll drink it and then you don't get the same buzz from that coffee, you get jittery. And for me, I quit coffee for five years. I thought I was allergic to it. No, I drink clean coffee, and that was part of the bulletproof creation is I flew down to Guatemala and we put in new infrastructure to avoid the fermentation problems and coffee, and then we lab test the coffee. So there's a lot going on in that couple Bulletproof coffee. But I promise you, given the 10 year longevity of this and the hundreds of millions of cups of it, because people feel it like you're not alone in that I want this energy. But I will tell you if you do bulletproof coffee for about two years and you stop eating bad fats the way I recommend the seed oils canola, corn, soy your cell membranes change. It takes about two years. That's the half life of fat and your cell membranes, and when that happens, you actually make stronger cells and you'll find that you need less butter less M C T oil. And you just have built cells that make more of that power on demand, and you will eventually get to the point where you know what? Today is a really big day. I'm putting some butter and M c t and my coffee. And, you know, today I just don't need anything else. Have a cup of black coffee, cause I like it and I'm totally dialed in and you can go on stage and you can be yourself, and it's up to you, But it takes time because you're rebuilding your body from the inside out. And if, while you're drinking your bulletproof if then for lunch, you gotta have the deep fried calamari and french fries, you're gonna have to keep having that bulletproof forever. That's fascinating. Thank you for a long answer. No, I love it. Like that's why this is a long form show. Um What role? Just a small fall of question. What role does simply not eating? Because I have also tried to like we were taught as kids eat a big breakfast. So, yeah, you're nourished before you go on stage. And I just am floppy and not good. Like my I don't show up with breakfast. No way. Yeah, And so, you know, that is part of my question. I guess specifically is how much of my okay, I'm doing the bulletproof coffee. But how much of it is the fasted state as well? Because my body, you know, I'm aware that, you know, the number one use of energy is locomotion. Number two is digestion. So how much of my awareness of how much better I perform when I'm, um you know, on on empty stomach and and bulletproof coffee? How much of that is just in the fasted state where we have energy that we otherwise would be burning through digestion? I don't have a hard number for you, but it's a meaningful amount. It is that when all the blood that would be in your stomach to digest food isn't there, Andi? All of the energy that goes to making the pancreatic enzymes for digestion? All of that, all the gut motility it's just doesn't need to happen. So then it's like, Oh, extra energy. Where can I put it? Will go in your brain, especially because you're calling on your brain that time. So it's Ah, it's very meaningful. What? That difference is Bond. I wouldn't dream of doing Ah, big big keynote, A big event or or even like sitting down for an eight hour writing session to write my book. If I'm like, Oh, I just ate a giant meal because you're sluggish, Andi, even if you're saying I just ate a small meal, it depends on what's in the meal. If you had some some sugar in there, you're gonna write really well and you'll show up and you want to feel great. You only have a one hour keynote. Put a tablespoon of organic sugar in your bulletproof coffee, and now your brain is like, Yeah, I got all the glucose I need and I got key tones and I got all this stuff and you're like, Yes. And of course, you might not feel so happy later that day, but it would be my best for that. Our sugar is a cognitive enhancer for the short term and then cognitive, un enhanced over the long term. Um, all right, so I want to put a bow on a couple of things and then circle back to how, uh, give you an opportunity to speak directly to some of the women who are listening for, Um um anyone who is curious about that and the last, you know, a bow that I wanna put on it is so there's a a combination of things that I have personally experienced through, not eating. And aside from the stories I've told myself, which is the only real negative, I personally have gotten a lot of benefit from fasting in various different forms. I've tried to share some of those today. I wanna I wanna make sure that I'm making a connection and it's not a false one because my connection was around. This mental clarity was, you know, a lot of not having eaten the part that I just walked through. The bulletproof coffee is, you said, has a bunch of things that are happening in there. But there's also this clarity that comes from eating less or fasting, actively fasting in any of the various ways that you've talked about today that have a history of mental clarity. And in the book you bring in religion, Zen, Buddhism, Hinduism, anything Judeo Christian. There is a history of fasting in each of these different, um, philosophies of life, and I'm wondering if you can connect some of those for us. I thought you might bring it up while I was kicking around some of these things historically. But since you didn't, I found that to be interesting, and I'm wondering if you could share a little bit. I did some pretty hefty research into fasting practices around the world throughout history, and what you'll find is that every spiritual practice, every organized religion that you confined has fasting as a part of what they dio. And it's been lost or water down over, especially the last couple 100 years, because it's frankly unpopular to tell people don't eat, we'd like to eat right. It's also equally unpopular. Say, don't have sex. We like to have sex like there are things that are fundamental human drives, and those are two big ones that it's really hard to bet against on. If you could bet against them, then there would be no more people because we would starve to death and we wouldn't reproduce. So it's okay to just acknowledge that we want to eat. And it's also in a spiritually tradition. It's around fasting for a couple days, which provides clarity because the digestion work stops so that energy go to the brain because you're going to ketosis so the energy goes into the brain and you really do hit a state of clarity. And it's It's so amazing after the second day of fasting, as I described what I'm talking about, the different days and the cave when, and fasting, which is the backdrop in the structure for fast, this way. The third day, like I'm just not hungry. But I am so powerful, like I can feel everything. I could see everything. Think colors and more vibrant, like my senses are awake. That's really and it is a religious kind of experience, and it requires dedication. And whatever your belief system is, whatever deities or energies you work with, it's easier to connect with him when you're running at full power. And it's so counterintuitive to say, Wait a minute. You mean when I'm not eating and running at full power? But it's like this. You can have a battery that's charging and run it, but there's energy going into the recharging, and if you're so I'm not gonna worry about recharging, I'm just gonna run off the battery, and that's all I'm going to do. All processes air forward, all that's focused. That's when people can connect with the divine. They can connect with the universe. And if you wanna intra state of samadi, which is where you actually are at one with the universe, it requires fasting. And if you want to do a lot of the very advanced meditation states, it requires periods where you're just your guts not busy. You're doing something else, and I believe that if we can make fasting scientifically valid, which it is, it's already done. But if we could make it achievable again, or if you could get that three day fasted state, but you could do it in one morning because you actually raise your key tones as if you were fasting. The end result of any of those practices is that a metabolism that works better provides more energy to the person who has that metabolism. And when we have more energy, we are wired to be kind to each other s. Oh, that's what most religions want you to dio be nice to other people like let's not have another war, although most religions go through a phase of war, too. But that's another thing. Uh huh. Fascinating and fascinating fascinating, but I bumped. How many times you've done that before? Is that the first? No, it was the first action was the first, All right, You heard it here first, folks, I always like to bring you premiers here on this show. Um, they've talked to me about how women might think about this a little bit differently than men do. The way that female bodies reactive changes. And then, you know, there's some some special considerations, and I'm hoping you can shine a light on that. There's ah ah whole chapter in the book that's specific to fasting for women and one of the problems in the history of fasting research. Guess who we do our fasting experiments on. There's two classes of animals that have basically no rights. One of them is mice, and the other one is college freshman. And I mean fresh men s o most of history. It was white dudes in college. So that was who they would run the experiments on the psychology experiments, the diet experiments and all this stuff because they'll do anything for beer money, right? I know. I went to school to So there's fewer studies on women in fasting. But we understand some evolutionary psychology, and I referenced the studies that we do have. And what happens is for men. If you don't have sex, no one's going to die right. If you don't reproduce, it's okay with a woman. If you do have sex and there's inadequate calories or inadequate nutrients, you could die because you could get pregnant and there could not be enough food for you and the baby. And Mother Nature knows that you're screwed now you know, like, hey, I'm using birth control. I'm not going to get pregnant. But Mother Nature doesn't know that because Mother Nature is listening to the little cells in your body that are following the basic for F words s o. We have a disconnect there, and what that means is that you're likely to experience more physical biological stress sooner than a man does during ah, Fast. And fasting still provides great benefits, but you might want to start out by doing 3 to 5 days a week of intermittent fasting, not every day of the week. In fact, most women, but not all who I know who, especially they're exercising a good amount, don't do well over time with unending intermittent fasting, especially. They're also mixing in some longer, fast. So my recommendation there would be have breakfast on weekends, have brunch with your friends. And if you're trying to mix Keto and trying to mix fasting with the Keto diet, what you do not have to dio is particularly rough. Men will typically hit the wall in about two months, and women typically hit the wall in about a month. This is a month of unending intermittent fasting, um, or unending Keto without consuming carbs or without taking a break from intermittent fasting. Some women, especially if you're young, especially if you don't have any underlying health conditions at all you might be, you know, I feel great. I don't eat breakfast, hardly ever. But I will bet you money that three months after saying that like, you know what? My cycles a little bit off, and there's also times when you look at your or a ring score. And there's this amazing thing that when you're on your cycle, there are certain times when you're ready to score, will be lower. Your very good lower and your body is doing a lot of extra work on refreshing the uterine lining. Well, during that time, it might be a better idea to have breakfast, and it also might be a better idea too fast. But you've got to be aware of that. The saving grace here is that women are almost always better bio hackers than men, and I don't know if you know people saying, Oh, women, they're more heart centered or whatever, which is a bit of a stereotype. But I will say that women, because your biology changes on a regular basis, you're more aware of changes in your biology if you're a guy like me. I didn't realize that anything below my neck really mattered very much, except if I was on a date or if I was hungry. And this is a very common, very stereotypical perspective, but it's born out through mitochondrial behavior and survival instincts. So what this means is, if you are practicing fasting or you're practicing Keto or, for that matter, you're practicing the vegan diet and you start noticing changes in your hormones. You start noticing changes in your hair. Then it's time to eat some more, and it's okay to do that do not get into this idea. I have to do the same fast every day because it's easier. I have to work out every day the same way. Because it's easier over training is a problem. Over fasting is a problem, and you'll see it in thinner hair, thyroid dysfunction and hormone dysfunction. And before those hit you, you'll see it with sleep disruption so fast, things powerful, just not every day. It's really easy. Every other day you could do it. Well, I I found that section fascinating. Um, not because of my gender, because, like, I I want to understand 360 degree or as much as possible when I'm undertaking something. And I have been, you know, dipping my toe and fasting for a long time without really knowing much of the science. Very superficial, Still getting plenty of benefits. But I just want to give you personally a shout out because your book is really helpful. And it it, um, shine the light on a lot of the things that I was like, s O. That's why not. Dissimilar to what you how you helped me understand the benefits that I got from my workout yesterday morning. Eso, you know, shout out. Thank you so much for writing a book about fasting that I felt, like, needed to be written. Um, and we've already said once, but I'll say it again. If you want to be ableto help Dave out pre ordering his book will make sure to drop this podcast in time so that you can get it before it's out. That's a huge help for for any author. And Dave is in that category. Um, you know that that's a great way to support folks beyond just the purchase. The timing of that purchase matters. And if you could buy it from, ah, local bookstore, a small bookstore, that's even better. Of course, all these choices are yours. So, Dave appreciate you being on this show. Congratulations on, of course, all your successes. And it was a treat to get to meet you a few years ago, and you did your creative live class gonna have to recommend that. And, um, just thanks so much for being on this show and for writing the book. Keep keep doing the cool things that you're doing and any can you steer people towards. Ah, couple places you'd like them to go on the Internet, Um, in pursuit and I shared a bit about your book. But is there anything else that you want to say before we scoot? If you do prior to my book first, Thank you. It's worth your time where I wouldn't have written it. If you go too fast this way dot com, which is the Web page for the book, and you send me a copy of your receipt, I'll send you a bunch of other stuff, and then you go to the website and figure out what it is. But basically, it's my job to make it easy for you to figure out how to start fasting in a way that won't break you, and that makes you feel good. The reason I'm doing it is that I think it will make you nicer to yourself and to other people around you. I want us to have a lot of nice people because there's a lot of stress people going on right now. There's also a section in the book on fasting and immunity went to eat when to fast and when to eat. Depending on what kind of an infection you might have. There's really good data on this that isn't really well understood are well known, but it is well understood. I just say it's worth your time. And if you haven't heard of bulletproof radio top 100 podcasts for years running a couple 100 million downloads and I'd love to spend more time with you there. Awesome. Thanks for being on the show. Congrats on the book. It was fun to read a little bit more about something I've been paying attention to for some time. So thank you very much. And, uh, signing off. Everybody check out Dave's book and we'll be back in your ears again. Hopefully tomorrow. Thanks to you. Yeah, yeah.