Transforming Your Health into a Competitive Advantage in Business | Ted Ryce

30:49right my testosterone came back up and but then I started this is what sent me down the journey that we're on that we're talking about today was because I was like my god like I've been relatively healthy since 2017 you know varying degrees but for the most part on the healthier side for men my age and this my testosterone just dropped off the map for for two months and um and that's what kind of put me down this path of I'm not I'm gonna fight this thing like I'm gonna make sure, you know, within reason, I'm not going to fly to some shady country and get injected with some experimental chemical, but you know, with as much as I can, you know, as reasonable as I can be, I'm going to do the things necessary to create healthy longevity in my life.

31:34And that's kind of how we got to, you know, wanting to talk to professionals like yourself who know so much about this stuff. Cause you really have to do, if you're not working with an expert, this is the last thing I'm going to say, and I know I'm talking a long time. I apologize. No, no, no. Your point about working with an expert. If I wasn't like a research OCD psychopath, right? Which is what makes me good at certain aspects of my job. But like if I wasn't so willing to invest hours and hours into reading and listening to all these different people and comparing notes and trying to figure out what could work for me and then going out and finding the professionals that could help, right?

32:12I have no idea and I'm probably still sitting here with super low testosterone feeling like shit just thinking my my life. This is what my life is, right? So going back to your point of working with an expert. I know guys that when you know someone like Ted comes on a show and it's what he does and you hear that you're like, oh, that's because no what Ted said was call me. He said find somebody that you can work with who can be your guide because I'm telling you unless you are a complete psychopath. this is very hard to do yourself and it will take much longer and you will make a lot of mistakes.

32:43So I just wanted to double into that point that I found a local hormone optimization specialist who I work with here in my local area and she has completely changed. You've finally broken loose from work. Three friends, one tea time, and then the text. Honey, there's water in the basement. Not exactly how you pictured your Saturday. That's when you call us, Cincinnati Insurance. We always answer the call because real protection means showing up, even when things are in the rough. Cincinnati insurance. Let us make your bad day better. Find an agent at CINFIN.com. Game for me, but it wasn't until I found her.

33:26I was doing all kinds of different things until I found her. So I just wanted to kind of push into, I do think it's very important that if this is important to you, that you find somebody like yourself to work with. Yeah, definitely. And just so you're taking Clomid, is that correct? Because you said Clomidine? I can tell you exactly what it is. But I'll talk in the Clomiphene, right? Yeah, and Clomiphene. Yep. And yeah. Yes. What that does is it stops again. I'm not an expert in this area, but what it does is it it stops. So so here's what happens. Right. Because we can talk about testosterone because testosterone is a downstream effect.

34:18And so what I mean by that is you might say, man, my problem, I don't have any money. I don't have any money. That is my problem. It's like, no, no, no. Do you have a job? Is your business? Like that's a symptom of your problem. So testosterone is a symptom of the problem. Clomid, by the way, what it does, to my recollection, right, is it stops this process called aromatization. What is aromatization? It's when testosterone gets converted into estrogen. Guess where that happens? In your fat cells. In fact, women need that because, and, you know, women who compete in like bodybuilding, in natural bodybuilding without drugs, they're, when they get super lean, their estrogen levels drop, right?

35:12So the number one thing that's causing issues with testosterone, according to the best literature that we have, is excess body fat, especially visceral body fat, right? And so guys are so quick to go out and take TRT or some other type of medication. And look, you know what? Everyone, I've put things in my body, MDMA, alcohol. Alcohol is one of the worst things you can do, but I'm not judging. But if you want to do things the right way, you got to fix the root cause. And the root cause is this. It's like you have to lose the excess body fat. And another thing about that is we know that there's what's called a personal fat threshold.

36:01For example, Chinese people get diabetes at a lower BMI, right? So at a lower weight, BMI is just a measurement of your height and your weight. They get higher rates of obesity at a lower BMI than Americans do. Well, why is that? Well, Some people have a genetic predisposition to having diabetes or insulin resistance at lower levels of body fat. Just like I had a CT angiogram too. My calcium score is zero. I had what's called zero stenosis in my arteries. So there's no signs of any type of issues with my heart, with my arteries. I'm 48 years old. but I had a precancerous polyp removed from my colon back in 2021 and I have to get colonoscopies um I'm you know quite frequently right so why because I had a genetic predisposition to it so so you can't compare yourself to people and that's why going back to the second thing I said first was you know hire hire an expert to help you but the second was get the data right You don't want to tell yourself a story about how you're doing.

37:22Go get a DEXA scan. Go get your blood work. Go get a VO2 max. Because a VO2 max test is something that measures cardiorespiratory fitness. In other words, how fit you are cardiovascularly. Because a lot of people aren't very fit cardiovascularly. Especially if you're fat. If you've got excess body fat. If you've got a big belly. You may be going out and pushing yourself and it feels like you're pushing yourself. But the issue is you're already out of shape. You're already, your body is under stress already, right? You have what's called oxidation is higher, right? Oxidative stress is higher. If you're too overweight, you're going to have some sleep apnea.

38:10So your sleep isn't going to be good. You're going to already have issues. And as we get older, to your point earlier, we age is not just a number. OK, it's a good thing to say that. And you should say that if you're currently saying that. But the reality is this. Even if you're like doing everything perfect, let's take this person doesn't exist. But let's just imagine there's a lean, fit person. They've been fit their whole life. They're like Olympic level cyclists, VO2 max, right? And they've been doing the same thing. They've never changed. The only thing that's changed is their age. Their VO2 max is going to come down.

38:53We're super focused on building muscle and strength, which is the foundation in my opinion. But VO2 max is something where you can get your strength. You can be strong and have muscle in your 70s, 50s, 60s, 70s, not a problem. But your VO2 max is kind of like you have an opportunity. The younger you are, the more you can invest in it to build it up. And then the less the decline, right? And every year that goes by, you're missing out on that if you're not doing dedicated cardiovascular training. and our levels of what's called low grade chronic inflammation go up scientists are call it inflammation right and so these levels of inflammation go up even if you're doing everything right and if you're not doing everything right which is like 99.9 percent of us right unless you live unless you're part of the shimani tribe in bolivia living off the land right hunting your food which none of us listening to this are you're you're not as healthy as you think modern life is is just you know it just it is what it is we that's why we have to work so hard to stay healthy because we're really working against um you know the the amazing and fun life that we've created but it's a bit far away from let's say what our biology is designed for.

40:28Yeah. Okay. So good news with the N-clomyphene. I used it for about a year and then my doctor and I cycled off of it once we felt we had everything stabilized. So it was more of like a get yourself fixed and then all the things that you said. So it was funny. She said, basically what she said to me was in order to get you back to operational speed, we're going to use this tool, right for a period of time and then in the meantime what I need you to do is get your shit together because I yeah in the end of 2023 I was selling a company there was a lot of stress I was exiting you know there's all this stuff going on so like 2023 I kind of I'd put on about 10 or 15 pounds from where I'd like to be which is pretty much where I am today and um so some of that and you know just all the things right you you you you I'm just as susceptible as anybody else to the, Oh, I'll just have one drink tonight.

41:26Cause I earned it, you know, cause I worked so hard today. And you know, that kind of shit like adds up. And, um, I have a bunch of questions on some individual things that I'm going to save for the end. Uh, and kind of like, maybe we'll do like a rapid fire section, but there's two, there's two additional topics that I want to touch on, um, that I know a lot of people are thinking about hearing about, uh, and let's start with the big one and that's a GLP ones. Right. And as I share with you in the pre-show and you know I don't know that I've ever shared this on the show but you know I'm obviously you know it is what it is I take uh trisepatide mongeorno which is uh what is a second generation uh glp1 um I take a micro dose of that so I take one point something milliliters or milligrams or whatever the metric is um I take it once a week and so I'll give you what I have seen as the result right sure the reason that I wanted to take it and I did months and months of research on this, right?

42:25So one, it wasn't about fat loss. I was already on that journey and kind of knew how to do it. It wasn't, you know, the things that I was the most interested in were one, reducing food noise, right? So one of the things that I found is with the micro dose, all my food noise is gone. Still, still like to eat protein. I still hit my calorie numbers. It's not like I'm just not hungry, but I don't think about food all day. You know what I mean? I don't get, I don't get cravings. I'm not craving. I'm just like, Oh, I'm hungry. I'm going to go eat eggs or I'm going to go, you know, do whatever, uh, inflammation, which also comes with reduction of fat, but there's some anti-inflammation.

43:02And then the other one was, uh, I wanted to completely cut sugar for the, you know, for the most part, any processed sugar outside of like fruits or whatever out of my diet. And what I've found is again, with the micro dose, I have zero desire for sugar, right? So my, you know, my mom, and part of that was my mom went pre-diabetic about six months ago. So there's a little bit of nervousness in me that that might be, there's might be a hereditary to that or, you know, whatever. And I was like, I'm not a big sugar guy to begin with, whatever. So, so I have really enjoyed it. I've had no stomach issues.

43:39I feel like I wake up with energy. I feel, um, like I said, no food noise. Um, the inflammation stuff has been great. And, you know, in general, it's been a very positive experience, but again, I'm taking like, I'm taking less than what is normally a micro dose for most people, if they're going to do it. So that's kind of where I'm at with these, but I, you know, obviously we started, we were talking on the, um, in the green room and I was, you started giving me your response and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like I want to get into it in the show. So talk to us about DLP ones. Um, you know, and you're not going to hurt my feelings.

44:13So, so, you know, share your honest opinions on how people should be thinking about these positive use cases, places where we'd be careful, et cetera. Yeah. And I'm a little bit, I'm a little bit more biased against using testosterone because guys are like, no, I couldn't, I couldn't lose the fat. And then I started taking TRT. It's like, no, you're eating too many calories. You think, you know, that you're training properly, but you're actually not. Right. And then you take testosterone, you build muscle. Like we've done studies where people or one group goes into the gym, starts lifting weights.

44:51The other group sits on the couch and injects testosterone. I forget the levels that they use, right? Because that's really not something I know like the specific dosages. But anyway, the point is the people who sat on the couch and took testosterone gain muscle. The more muscle you have, the easier it is to lose fat, right? Because your body mass goes up. By the way, what do you think is the number one thing that determines how many calories or how many calories you burn per day? What's the number one thing do you think? Do you walk? How much you weigh? A 300-pound person requires way more calories to maintain.

45:32It's like people saying, hey, let's forgive the debt of the college students. It's like, well, someone has to pay for that. You cannot build fat. You can't move to a desert island and, you know, be starving and eating bugs and climbing trees for coconuts and cracking them open and, you know, barely getting by and maintain a 300 pound body if you're like, you know, 5 '9 or 5 '11, right? It's not going to happen. You simply don't have the energy to do it. Now, this might sound controversial, but it's not. There's a lot of what's called metabolic war data showing like this is like the case. So anyway, I know I kind of went off on a tangent, but I wanted to just be clear about that before moving on to GLP-1s where I work with clients who take GLP-1s.

46:26I'm not as against them. And the reason is I think taking TRT because you think, I think it's just, I think it's a total cop out. Unless you've had a traumatic brain injury or you had a testicular injury and you actually need it, I think it's a total cop out. And there's so many doctors who will prescribe it like, come on in, let's do some TRT. When it comes to GLP-1, here's what changes my mind about it. we know that to some extent obesity is heritable. Really good person on this is Stephen Guilene. He was on the Joe Rogan show and he's written a book. I've had him on my show a bunch of times.

47:13When I first had him on, he's a neurobiologist that studies obesity. I was like, what the hell does neuroscience have to do with obesity? But the biggest breakthroughs in obesity, including GLP-1s have come from neuroscience. In fact, what do GLP-1s do? All they do is they affect the reward part of your brain to quiet it down so that you're not like, oh man, I'm feeling a little stressed. Let me go get some M &Ms or whatever the case is. So we know that there's obesity and this is something I changed my mind on as I've matured and educated myself. It's like, okay, there's a reason that I work with clients who are extremely successful DECA millionaires and they're 260 pounds at 5 '11".

48:10And it's not because they're lazy or lack work ethic. Uh-uh, right? And then I work with guys who don't struggle as much. and and it's like okay something's going on here and some people just have this is all a brain issue and some people um if if it helps here's here's my thoughts on it if do the right thing because you don't want it to be a cop out i've talked to people who wanted to work with me and they're like no but i'm taking a glp1 it's like well 25 of what you lost is muscle because you aren't doing the right things. You don't know how much protein you're eating. You're not lifting weights.

48:50I'm glad that you feel better and that's great, but I'm, I, I'm striving for X. I help people who want to achieve excellence here. Well, that's the Ozempic face that people talk about, right? So when you, when you do none of the work, right, when you continue to eat the same, uh, macro, uh, uh, macro percentages, right. Which normally are over indexed towards, uh, carbs instead of protein and you're not weight lifting weights, et cetera, and you're just taking the GLP ones, that's when you get that kind of gray sunken face look that you've seen in a lot of celebrities. Right. And, you know, this was one of the biggest things when I was doing my own research was, you know, I'm trying to get as close to my body weight, which is 195 pounds in protein.

49:37And if I can be within 70 % of that, I'm happy. Right. I mean, some days, you know, you go a little bigger, whatever. But, um, you know, that has been a big part of not having any, I feel any structural changes is all I really did was ramp up the protein and keep the carbs enough. So I had energy and that way you don't get that, that Ozempic face that people talk about. And if you Google Ozempic face, you'll see some pretty gnarly looking things, but that's done that actually. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's, you know, you dig out it. There's a ton. And what you see is like your skin starts to turn a little gray because they're not eating enough protein.

50:11They're not eating enough food in general. And they get this like skinny fat sunken face look, right? Because they're not, all that's happening, they're not doing anything to improve their body structure. They're literally just eating less calories because the GLP ones is telling their body, you know, is not giving them that indication. It's really wild. So don't get a Zempic face. All right, keep going, sorry. Don't get it, yeah. Yeah. And starting off with lower dosages, I think, you know, I've worked with several clients on GLP-1 agonists. And yeah, one of them still struggles. So it's not a it doesn't work the same for everyone.

50:51And it's something that you have to commit to long term. In other words, the research shows that when people stop taking it, they gain the weight back. right I don't know about micro doses and you know what we know about that but the the food noise comes back um and depending on who you are and how much food noise you have to deal with right um maybe it makes sense to take a micro dose for a long time now here's the thing I've created like a framework I call it the metabolic reset sequence there are ways that you can manage your hunger and cravings without that. You know, again, depending on who you are and how much you struggle, you still might have to.

51:38Yeah. I'm not against using GLP-1 agonist, but again, in the context of doing the right things. Yes. And I'll say this too. If you're someone who's like, I'm never going to do the right thing. I'm going to drink alcohol. I'm going to eat what I want. I'm not going to exercise, but, um, yeah, give me a shot. Like I'll take a shot though. It's like, okay, then do that. Right. It's better than losing your life to being overweight, but I agree with you. And just so everyone knows part of my protocol is, has been, you know, I have made necessary, uh, uh, physical activity and diet changes and structures and discipline to go along with it.

52:30It's not like this wasn't just like, oh, I'm overweight. I want to lose weight. This was like, look, I'm trying to optimize myself. I know the places that I'm weak. I know the places that, that I need help with and the things that I want to keep out of my body. Right? Like I, and I'm interested in your take on this if you feel differently, but to me, like sugar is the fucking devil, right? no disagree okay yeah hit me with that yeah no i'm into that so look yeah go so look sugar the devil okay um i'll start by saying this sugar is found in fruit it's not structurally there's different types of sugar right fructose sucrose galactose lactose but it's not so so it's not really sugar right?

53:16And going back to this brain thing, right? Because nobody is overeating oranges. There might be someone who's doing that, but that's a different problem, right? What we're really talking about, the thing that hijacks people's brain, if you look at like, when you think about sugar, tell me a food that, you know, like, oh, that's a high sugar food. Tell me what you think of. I think of candies, baked goods, cupcakes, treats, ice cream. um let's go with that yeah that kind of candy for sure um like jelly beans that's like 100 sugar most people though if they're eating like ice cream or cookies crumble cookies or whatever if you look at the fat content the calories coming from fat are much higher or they're equal to sugar So what it really is, and this is, look, and I want to say this too.

54:12I was low carb, like staunch low carb for 10 years until I got fat in my mid 30s. And I was like, I'm doing everything right. Why did this happen to me? And I was so frustrated. And now I really, I get into arguments with the low carb community all the time because of this. So sugar being the devil. If you have metabolic dysfunction, meaning if you're pre-diabetic or diabetic, the more sugar you have, the more it's going to disrupt your blood sugar for sure. However, what even causes diabetes? What do you think? I don't know the answer. I know it has something to do with insulin resistance, our inability to create insulin.

54:51Right. And what causes that is fat deposits in your pancreas, which your pancreas is what secretes insulin. So what this really is like you cannot cure diabetes by doing low carb. You cure diabetes by losing fat. Right. Or they may not. I think the medical community uses remission or whatever. They don't say cure. Can you cure diabetes? That's for a medical doctor to really explain the nuance there. But I'll tell you this, I've worked with diabetics and people with pre-diabetic blood sugar levels. The way you drop it is by two ways. Number one, build more muscle because your muscles are a sink for glucose.

55:40You store carbohydrate in your muscles. It's called glycogen. For some people, sugar is a performance enhancing food or drug or whatever you want to call it, right? But if you're like sitting around and jacking up your blood sugar levels because you're, you know, munching on, you know, gummy bears or whatever, yeah, okay, it's probably going to mess you up more if you keep that up and you're not doing any type of exercise. And in general, you have high levels of body fat for sure, but it's kind of throwing, eating sugars, like throwing gasoline on the fire. What's causing the fire? It is the fact that you have too much body fat and specifically fat in your organs, the visceral fat.

56:28And again, when like one of the biggest thing that one of the biggest issues is liver fat. People have non-alcoholic fatty liver. It's being diagnosed at higher and higher rates. These aren't people who are drinking a lot, right? So why is that happening? Well, it's because fat deposits start to get into the liver, start causing it to start disrupting its function. So really the answer is not about going back to data, right? Because I I eat sugar, right? Let's go beyond just using macronutrients or a type of macronutrient, right? Subtype of macronutrient, sugar, which is a carbohydrate. What is the root problem?

57:15If you can't, let's say if you're not under 20 % body fat, you've got work to do. If you've got a belly, you've got work to do. If you don't lift weights at all, you've got work to do. and or if you have high hemoglobin a1c which is a measure of elevated blood sugar over the course of several months you've got work to do you have fasting insulin fasting glucose high c peptide high like the answer is not in the food to eat it's in uh it's in your blood work it's in your body fat percentage because we're going now look if that's a helpful heuristic for you to not eat sugar. I'm not saying to you or to anyone listening, no, you, you gotta eat sugar.

58:00That's not true. It's definitely not helping you. Okay. But I want to make sure that we're clear right on, let's say, do you want to make sure that if your business is having a problem, you don't say, well, we need to hire more sales guys, or you want to be sure like, well, is it because we don't have enough sales guys to handle the volume? Or is it, you know, or do the guys just need better training? You want to get to the root cause. And so look, sugars, and here's something else. Saturated fat never gets talked about because saturated fat was demonized in the eighties unfairly. And now it shifted to sugar, right?

58:42Which is now being demonized unfairly and carbohydrates generally and sugar specifically without the conversation with all the nuance because that's really the issue here is nutrition is very nuanced. For example, there are studies showing like if you wanted to increase the liver fat in someone, we know that saturated fat and having a higher percentage of calories coming from saturated fat increases liver fat faster than sugar does. Nobody talks about it. Why? It's not popular to talk about. Comes from research. Research is boring. You know, scientists don't explain it well. And I'm not saying saturated fat is bad either.

59:26Right? Because again, it's how much are you eating and who's eating it? Because if I eat saturated fat, guess what? I can see my abs. I've got veins, all my shoulder, you know, I'm lean. It's not going to be a big deal versus someone who's out of shape. Again, it's these things that people are missing. So especially if you'll see a lot of people in the keto and carnivore community, I have this one screenshot from someone. Now, we have studies proving this, but it's always fun to share the anecdotes. I take screenshots from these groups. There was a guy doing keto. He was in a carnivore group on Facebook.

1:00:07He was doing keto, lost a bunch of like 40 pounds, I believe the weight was. He switched to carnivore to get even leaner because that's got to be the answer. And he gained 20 pounds back after doing it. And he was dumbfounded. Why? And people are, you know, doing mental gymnastics in those groups. It's completely insane what you read in there. But the answer is this. If you go from doing keto, which I don't like it, but at least you're getting veggies and doing other things and you're filling yourself up with, with, with more than just meat. What most carnivore people do, because they show it off in their pictures, their photos, right?

1:00:49Their social media photos, they're, they're cooking ribeye and, and, um, in butter and then eating bacon and eating cheeseburgers covered in cheese, you know, like, I'm sorry, hamburgers covered in cheese. It's like, dude, if you overdo your calories, and especially if a lot of them, and it's easy to overdo your calories from fat. In fact, the biggest change in the American diet is more calories are coming from fat than before. Now in the form of vegetable oils, usually because there's been an increase in, you know, junk food basically. Right. And so people are eating more food, eating more junk food, eating bigger size portions, but yeah, it's a more nuanced conversation.

1:01:39Ted. So do you have a few more minutes? I know we're over our time. Let's do it. Okay. So I want to, I want to hit you with like a, a little rapid fire section, maybe spend, you know, two, three minutes on each one of these, you know, because I think we could probably do entire episodes on each one of these things that I want to hit. And I'm going to jump around a little bit. So the first one I want to talk about is - Can I say one more thing before we go on? I know I said something controversial. So here's what I want you to do. If you're like, nah, this guy's full of it. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

1:02:10There's an influencer on TikTok that says something different. And so here's what I want you to do. You can either do a couple things, actually. There's something called, now I don't endorse these, but just as an experiment for a few days. There's something called the potato hack where you eat nothing but potatoes and potatoes. You know, people demonize carbs and say they make you fat. Potatoes actually score very high on insatiety. In other words, it's hard to eat a lot of them unless they're doctored up or embellished with cheese and sour cream, etc. So do the potato hack. Look at what it is.

1:02:46It's basically eating potatoes, right? Boiled potatoes. you will lose weight because you're not going to want to eat a bunch of potatoes right you just naturally start bringing your calories low and eating less so do it for three days and you'll lose fat if you want to test the sugar thing do a juice cleanse a juice it's not really a cleanse you're just losing body fat and um you're drinking nothing but juice which is sugar and I don't love fruit juice generally except for maybe pomegranate juice story for another time but um you will lose weight in three days of doing that now you'll gain it back as soon as you go back to your old diet but you can prove to yourself that sugar does not cause you to gain weight it can cause you to lose it and improve your if you did uh you know I wouldn't recommend going and have your blood I'm here on the job site with Dale who's a framing contractor hey Hey, good morning.

1:03:46Dale traded up to Geico Commercial Auto Insurance for all his business vehicles. We're here where he needs us most. Yep, they sure are. We make it easy for him to save on all his insurance needs, all in one place, with coverage that fits his business and bottom line. Oh, I shouldn't have looked down. It's all right. We're so far up here. Look at me. Take a deep breath. No, I'm good. So good. Get a commercial auto insurance quote today at geico.com and see how much you could save. Get more with Geico. done before and after, but you could do it. And you're, because of the low calories, you know, cause you got a juice cleanse.

1:04:19You're having something in the neighborhood of a thousand or 1200 calories per day and juice. It's really hard to drink that much juice. And you can see. Sorry, this is what I'm struggling. I don't mean to interrupt you. The reason that I've been struggling is my children convinced me to get a kitten and the kitten won't leave me alone. I apologize for anyone at home. The last like two minutes, he has been messing with me and I had to just get him out of the screen. I apologize, Ted. Cats, cats, uh, listen to no one, right? They much to their own. I'm such a sucker to allow my children to talk me into getting this kitten.

1:04:50And you know, it's whatever, it's all good. I apologize. Um, uh, so anyway, you can try that experiment and that's what I suggest that you do try these experiments because to be honest, people don't have the knowledge or experience to really even know, like maybe I come across, hopefully i come across as knowledgeable and confident um in what i do because i am but but you don't know me so i might be just you know just another person test these things and you will see um that you can improve metabolic health and lose weight doing things that you wouldn't think were even possible again i don't condone those as as ways of living or you know but just as an experiment it.

1:05:34Yeah. And I think what I love about that is, is exactly what you said, the experiment part, right? Like my, I'd say my fitness journey being not an expert, you know, armchair, you know, just hacking my own body. It's just been experiments, right? Everything's been an experiment. Does, does, does lifting weights or does boxing or does running or does yo, you know, what is, and then, and then once you find the things that seem to work for you, what's the cadence, what's the rhythm, how often, right? Like I was seven days a week lifting weights for a while. I realized that was too much, right? Then it was a lot of it.

1:06:09Some of the stuff that I do too, just so everyone's clear and listeners know this about me. Sometimes it's just mental health stuff, right? So it's not even like I'm going to the gym to lift weights because I'm trying to get jacked or think that's even the right thing to do. Your body needs a chance to respond. Your muscles need a chance to regrow and, and, and all that. But, um, it was more like mental, But I realized I wasn't at a certain point at a certain number of months of that. Right. I stopped feeling as good. I stopped getting gains. And I said, OK, I got to dial it back. And now like two heavy lifts, maybe three a week has become a good rhythm.

1:06:43But it and you've said this over and over in different ways. And I think it's just a core point here is we have to one, we have to be intentional with this stuff. Right. Two, there is absolute value in data and knowledge. So your actual stats, as you've mentioned, working with someone who knows how to interpret those stats and apply them to you and what your goals are, et cetera. And if you do that and think of these things as tests, like the potato hack or a juice cleanse, whatever, all they're really doing is helping you get better in tuned. If I'm taking what you said, these little tests help you get in tune with what works and what doesn't, which then allows you to eventually come up with the routine that puts you in the best place.

1:07:28I mean, that's what we're trying to get to. And I think thinking of these things as tests or experiments is absolutely the right way, guys. And too often, too often, we just get caught up on like, like you said, I'm going to do keto, right? And then it's, and keto is hard as hell. And there's, you know, and, and it's very difficult, especially for the age, this 35 to 50 range that we're talking about, because you have kids, you have a spouse or a partner, your job is probably the most stressful it has ever been at that point, right? Because you're either growing it, if you're an owner or a founder, or you're trying to raise up your career and advance to the next level.

1:08:03So you have all this reality, right? That isn't just, I'm going to wake up every day and spend every minute that I'm awake thinking about my physical and mental health, right? So it's about finding that cadence. And to that extent, you know, I wanted to hit you with three over-the-counter, now over-the-counter in most places, we'll call them chemical compounds and their impact on our body. And the first is nicotine, right? Tucker Carlson has Alps, Joe Rogan's putting in Zins. Talk to me a little bit about nicotine. I just saw Dave Asprey was on a buddy of mine's show, the Mick Unplugged show, which I highly recommend everyone listen to if you're into business stuff.

1:08:43and he was talking about, you know, five milligrams a day of nicotine is great for mental health and, you know, fighting off dementia and all this shit. And like, like where one is nicotine use positive at all? Cause some people will tell you just in general, it's terrible. Don't listen to anybody too. Is there an amount or range that feels like it does have some positive benefits and, you know, kind of walk us through nicotine real quick. Oh, that's, that's a random one, But I'll tell you, I might smoke a cigar every once in a while, but I respond very poorly to nicotine. We know that it's similar to caffeine in that it can, you know, enhance cognitive function, but it's more addictive.

1:09:25It can cause cardiovascular issues. The best thing that you can do to improve cognitive function is to get lean. Make sure your VO2 max is high. In other words, spend time doing cardio, things like zone two and HIIT training and lose fat, sleep well, and caffeine is a preferred. I wouldn't mess around with nicotine, especially if you have an addictive tendency towards addiction. Yeah, and I'll double into just personally. uh so i do i i use uh that uh target costum's apps alp brand mostly because they have a a three milligram that seems to work very well i do one maybe two a day um i do have an addictive personality and what i found is because uh because of uh i have pretty hardcore hyperactivity and um and i found that one it does help me focus a little and when i first started using these because of the focus enhancements, which were very positive for me at a, at a low dose.

1:10:35And, you know, if I kept dosing myself during the day, I felt awful in the evening, awful. So I have to be very careful. One, two, three milligram a day tops. If I go to a third or a fourth, I immediately, and you know, if you're, you, if you're not hydrated enough, the cardiovascular vascular stuff, you can start to feel some heart palpitations, lighten some heads. I would agree. This isn't my favorite thing. I have found that a small dose has a positive effect, but if I go past the small dose, I see rapid negative impact. So I would agree. Stay away from it, guys, if you can. If you do, go way lower than, like, they're selling sixes, nines, 13s in stores.

1:11:16A 13 milligram pouch of Zin, which I think Zin is the only brand in the States right now that sells anything over 10, that's going to put you on your ass. There is no reason to have that much nicotine in your body, in my opinion. Okay. The next one I want to talk about is weed, right? New York State, it's legal now. It's legal a lot of places. It's become commonplace. If you drive down the road in most states that it's legalized, you're driving by cars. You can smell it everywhere. It has become very normalized in our life now. What should you be thinking about with weed? Is this, is it, is it, is, is there, are there any positives to it outside of the recreational kind of take you away from yourself?

1:11:58Or is this just pure recreation? And if you're going to use the substance, understand why you're using it. Don't try to convince yourself of anything else. And, you know, just understand there's negatives to it. Yeah, look, I, I, I, that was my drug of choice, right? And every once in a while, I still might, might do it depending on the circumstances. But, But yeah, there's nothing healthy about weed, right? If you have cancer and if it helps stimulate your appetite, in that situation, it's like do what you need to do. But if you're trying to optimize health and your overall, you know, I don't want to say healthy because it's a rare thing in today's society.

1:12:37But let's say you're focused on health and you have no major chronic illnesses. It's not going to help you, right? It messes up with your brain. chemistry makes you more likely to have anxiety um again i think that the the poison is in the dose and certainly aside from the can uh cannabinoids that are in marijuana combustion breathing and smoke or now we know vapes like vapes are in particular we're coming we're starting to learn that's pretty bad for your lungs. And so inhaling smoke is not good for you. It doesn't matter where the smoke is from. Yeah, yeah. Okay, good. So I'd say in the second half of my adult life, I've tried to replace, in the days when I'm running the excuse play of I need to land the ship, you know what I mean?

1:13:35When I'm running that excuse play for my own mental, um you know I've I've trans I tried to I've transitioned a little away from alcohol and I don't drink as much um or substantially less uh but what I found was um and I liked it for that reason right at first but I found that continued use over time even once or twice a week um I I lost my snappiness you know I wasn't like I've always prided myself on for better or for worse I could index things in my brain fairly quickly. And I felt like it just throttled that ability, and I really didn't like it. And I've substantially, in the last six months or so, kind of downshifted on that.

1:14:18Because, again, if it doesn't have a positive impact and, you know, you're not just using it for recreation for recreational purposes, which is okay. You know what I mean? No judgment on anyone who decides to do that. But the idea that you can smoke or, you know, take edibles every night before bed, you're just harming yourself. You know, there's no that's not that's not a victimless crime, I guess, if your brain would be the victim. Yeah, we know it affects sleep architecture. I believe it suppresses REM sleep in particular, if I remember correctly. It's not not really that necessary to kind of it's like it's not good for you.

1:14:58alcohol too not good for you right past two drinks a week we know that there's risks start uh happening right no amount of alcohol is good for you and listen i drink i'm not saying that with any sort of moral judgment just sort of like just own your your decisions we all live and we die and we have to decide uh how you know what experiences we want along the way and and i think it's okay. I, I, I'm in Brazil right now. I drink wine here. I like caipirinhas, which are sugar with fruit and just a liquor called cachaça shaken up. Like that's, that's, I don't like other types of drinks. I like that one, you know?

1:15:42And so, yeah, I'll, I'll do it every once in a while, but just, I don't, I just, I don't make any excuses about or try to try to, what do you call it. Just using a euphemism. It's, it's, it's not good for me. It can be fun. And I think, I think there is some benefit to that because I do believe that health goes beyond just the, the physical, it has to do with social, has to do with psychological and some people would argue spiritual. Right. So I think there can be an argument made for it. But again, if you're, You don't want to justify chronic use with like you shouldn't be doing anything every week, even drinking every week.

1:16:27If you're going through a period where you're going out and meeting with clients, OK, but you need to rein it in. You shouldn't be doing any of that every week. Yeah, there's definitely some mental catharsis in sitting around with your bros, having a couple of cocktails, talking shit for a couple hours. There's 100 percent in that. Right. So, no, I think that's phenomenal. And, you know, I get high. Join Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Yeah, that's what everybody says. That's what everybody says. I've been doing it for 20 years, man. Just the amount of complexity. It's not as probably like it's, you know, doing like the Birdman suits or squirrel suits, whatever they're called.

1:17:09Right. It's not as crazy as that, but it's super stimulating. You never get to the top. It's just spiraling levels of complexity and challenge for your brain. And you make a lot of friends too. There's a great social aspect because it calms guys down with their attitude because everybody gets their butt kicked in there, right? Yeah. Or got their butt kicked along the way. Some people are really good. I trained with this one guy, four-time world champion. Yeah, I don't think he gets his butt kicked very often. But yeah, but anyway, so so doing finding, I believe, too, just modern life is so easy.

1:17:52I know it's hard. It's stressful. It's weird. Like I'm going through we're running ads right now and trying to, you know, figure out like what the right combination of ads to scale our business, you know, and it's super frustrating. But on the other hand, life has never been easier. You're not suffering from like the Shemani tribe in Bolivia, for example. They're kind of untouched by processed food. They are 70 years old and they have no cardiovascular disease, no plaque in their arteries at 70. Like they've unheard of cardiovascular health. But guess what? They're dying from infectious diseases.

1:18:26They get a, you know what I mean? Like we're living such a good life. It gets a little boring. So we have, especially if we're high performers, we come home after a hard day at work solving problems and complex issues and being creative. And then you're home, you're like, man, I'm watching TV and this series is boring. Let me have some popcorn and a little bit of wine or maybe a few caramels, you know. And we're kind of suffering from life being too good. Yeah, there's too much availability. There's not enough challenge to get to the resources to make them scarce enough that we consider them. We just go to the store, buy another bag of whatever, and pop it in our face.

1:19:10All right. I want to wrap up. I appreciate your time. This has been amazing. We've gone so many different directions and talked about so much stuff, and I really appreciate your opinion. The last thing that I just want to ask you and take – we don't have to spend a lot of time here, but I mentioned that I used to wear Whoop. I know there's Oura rings. I get a lot of questions from people, and again, not an expert, so this is why I have guys like you on because I want to know. Like, one, do you think wearing these devices adds real value? Like, I love the stats as, like, a high-performance kind of crazy person, but I don't always know, like, what I find is I go in cycles.

1:19:43I'll wear the Whoop for, like, three months. I'll kind of figure out how to calibrate myself and what the impact is. And, guys, I can tell you point blank, weed and alcohol absolutely impact your sleep. If you've ever worn a Whoop or an aura ring, 100%, you can see the difference. Number one, number one thing that helps me sleep is sex before bed, like good sex before bed. So really interesting. You know, and that's not, that's not, I'm not, I'm not throwing that line out there, ladies, just, just letting you know what the results came back. For me too, like, or any type of life exercise or, you know, somewhat vigorous exercise, depending on the mood.

1:20:21But my, my, I guess my question is like, if I'm starting a journey, right. So I, so we've talked about this person. Is it worth investing in an aura ring or a whoop to help us stay on track, to have metrics, to, to kind of watch trends, et cetera. Are these devices worth the investment? I know they're not terribly expensive, but it's a couple hundred bucks. And, you know, maybe there's a monthly fee or whatever to some of them, depending on what you get. Like, is it worth investing in these items to help us along? Like, is the juice worth the squeeze, I guess is what I'm asking. So I'm wearing an aura ring right now, right?

1:20:53I got the Gen 4. For me, it's worth it. But here's the thing. I don't pay attention to most of what aura talks about. The readiness score, I throw that out, right? A lot of, because what they do, they try to gamify it to, one, make it more proprietary. I also look people are super their attention sucks so they like get bored with the same stats so you can tell like over the the I've been using an aura ring since I think 20 2019 and you can tell like auras evolve like I'm like man just tell me what I want to know like this other stuff some of it's interesting but a lot of it doesn't replace solid testing like what I talked about earlier but what is solid about it is it can track your act.

1:21:40I don't like the Whoop. Oura Ring has studies comparing it to polysomnography, which is the gold standard of measuring sleep architecture, sleep quality. Whoop doesn't, to my knowledge. Maybe they've done something more recently. So Oura is the gold standard in that it's still not as good as going and getting a sleep study, though, if you need one, but it can help you change your behavior. Like I, I have fragmented sleep. I wake up, um, you know, so it, it helps me to dial in my bedtime. So the things that matter are like, what time are you going to bed? Because if you're going to bed at different times, you're, you're, even if you're sleeping eight hours, you're, you're, you're going to feel the effects of that, the circadian disruption, um, your sleep efficiency, how long out of the time you're in bed, How long were you actually asleep, right?

1:22:35How long you were asleep, how much movement. Like as far as the different phases, because people were like writing articles about like, here's how to optimize your REM sleep. There's even arguments about from sleep doctors who use polysomnography about what phase starts when and how many phases. So I don't think Aura is quite at the level. So you have to know what to pay attention to. Generally speaking, though, if you buy it and just kind of mess around because you're not quite at the point where you want to hire someone to help you, try it if it does get you. Because the thing is people buy supplements and it motivates them even though they don't know what their blood work is.

1:23:21They just read something or someone on Instagram. So they buy it and it kind of – it's like this health – a small win for their health. and it gets the motive. The big thing is, does it help you behaviorally? And if it does improve because you can quantify your steps or your sleep, I'd say it's worth it. Yeah, I'd say in general, it's worth it, but it's good to be intentional and know some of the things. I don't give a shit about your readiness score. I've had some of my best workouts with a bad sleep and a bad readiness score, right? Or if you had sex right before bed and your heart rate's elevated, right?

1:24:07And then you fall asleep or we'll say, hey, your heart rate was elevated last night, but you actually slept well. It was not elevated because, you know, you're thinking about, you know, so like some of my clients, I have a client who's just being made CEO because there was this big issue with the CEO and his son and some craziness happening. And so like, it's not because of mental stress, it's because you did a little bit of exercise before bed. So you have to have some knowledge if you really want to understand like what to pay attention to and whatnot. But if it generally, give it a try if you're struggling with your health and a little bit of quantification and gamification can help, you know, get you more active, then go for it.

1:24:54Yeah. Yeah. Ted, I appreciate it, man. You, uh, this has been phenomenal. I appreciate you taking it, you know, following around, you know, kind of going all different directions, but this has really been a masterclass, man. And I think we've given people, um, you know, some, some, some great things to dig into if they want to go deeper into your world, right. Get to know you better, follow your work and maybe even ultimately work with you. Um, where's the best place for them to go? Yeah. You can find my podcast on Apple or wherever iTunes, wherever you listen to podcasts, legendary life, Ted Rice.

1:25:26Um, my last name spelled R Y C E. So watch out for that. But if you want to learn more about like the, the metabolic reset sequence that I do, uh, you can go watch a free masterclass that I've put together. It's about 30 minutes long and you go to legendary life podcast.com slash free. Awesome guys. I'll have the links too. So whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening, wherever you listen, just scroll down into the description or the show notes. And I'll have links to all this stuff. Ted, I appreciate the hell out of you, man. I'd love to have you back sometime because there's like, I got a million more questions that we didn't even get to.

1:26:04But, but I love it, dude. This has been fantastic. I appreciate all the extra time and I wish you nothing but the best. Thanks, Ryan. Really appreciate it. It was my pleasure.

1:26:23Happy Holidays! Want to give your host a gift? Consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show this holiday season. It really helps the show grow. From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas, everyone, and a Happy Holiday.

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