Episode 378: Mark Sisson: Why Everyone Should Supplement with Collagen and Practice Mindful Eating

0:01Hi, guys. It's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it. Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

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1:55I want the non-negotiables. Like what do you do every morning? I want to know your routine. Usually I wait till the end for this part, but I saw you, I'm like, I got an ad. This is the information people want to know, right? Because look at you. I mean, he literally is like, you would think he was 35. Okay, go on. Thank you. My gosh. Yeah, it's true. I appreciate that because I've spent a lot of time in the sun and I think the face does not lie about that. But anyway, non-negotiables. I mean, like I don't eat breakfast. So you intermittent fast. I don't even call it intermittent fasting because I think it's more like intermittent eating, but it's a restrictive eating window, right?

2:32So what it means is I wake up and I do an assessment. Like, I have all this energy and I don't feel hungry. Why would I want to eat? You know, so I have a cup of coffee when I wake up. I do. You put milk in the coffee? Cream, heavy cream. Heavy cream. Yeah. Okay. So I know you're also in the ketogenic stuff. Yeah. But wait, can I ask you a question? Before we even go into this, I think this is an important thing to ask. Are you someone who lives to eat or eats to live? Because if someone who lives to eat, like I love food. Yeah. It's really hard for me to intermittent fast and to do all these things, right?

3:01Because I love food so much. There are other people who don't give a shit. They can eat. They forget to eat. I'm not one of those people. So it's easier for them. Are you one of those people? Yeah. No, I'm someone who I don't live to eat. I eat to live. Right. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy every single bite of food I put in my mouth. So I don't eat stuff just because it's supposed to be good for me, for instance. If it doesn't taste good, like you could make me the best kale salad you ever made with a lemon, vinegar, whatever, dressing. I'm like, thanks, but no thanks, not having it. I eat what I want to eat and typically when I want to eat it.

3:38And then I think one of the great skills is to realize when it's time to finish. You can push the plate away and say, you know what? I don't need to finish that 12-ounce steak. I don't need to finish all of the salad that was put in front of me, even though it might be considered ultra healthy. Right. So you limit the amount of intake, food intake. I don't do it out of some sense of anorexia, you know, whatever. Orthorexia or anorexia. Yeah. I just do it because I'm so in tune with when I'm no longer hungry for the next bite. And it's, you know, so many people, you're a great example of what I would say most people who look at life and who really appreciate food and who would say, what's the most amount of this meal I can eat and not gain weight?

4:26What's the most amount of this dessert I can have and not feel like a gluttony? Or I pick food that has big volumes. Or how can I really fill myself up here and not feel like a pig or not feel like I'm overdoing it and feel good about myself? How can I gorge? No, no, no. How can I gorge? And then over a lifetime, how can I eat a lot and not gain too much weight? Yeah. And so you see people who are, I've seen over the years, decades, see people at the gym and they're on the treadmill like five days a week burning 450, 500 calories on treadmill. I'm like, what? Like, first of all, it's beautiful outside.

4:58You could go run outside. Why are you in the gym burning, you know, on this treadmill? Well, I like to see how many calories I burn on the treadmill. Why do you do that? Well, I love to eat. So wait a minute. You're kidding me. So you would rather put yourself through all this struggle and suffering and sweating and misery so you can have a few more bites of something you probably shouldn't have in the first place? Like how bizarre is that as a motivation? So true. But haven't you ever heard of the saying common sense isn't so common? Yeah, yeah. So I took an opposite approach a bunch of years ago.

5:29And I said, instead of seeing what's the most amount of food I can eat and not gain weight, what about what's the least amount of food I can eat? Maintain muscle mass or build muscle mass. Have all the energy I want. Never get sick. And most importantly, not be hungry. Because the hunger part of it destroys everything. And if you do that experiment and you start to really pay attention to how much food you used to eat and how much you don't need to eat. And if you break it down, it's like nobody needs more than 120 grams of protein a day. You really don't. You don't need more than 150 grams of carbs.

5:59And even if you did, it would mostly be in the form of vegetables. And if the rest is fat, we're talking about less than 2 ,000 calories a day. So most people could live on, and I could live well and maintain my mass and my energy on 1 ,750 calories a day and working out for an hour a day. I can get away with more, and I do, and I eat more, but I eat cyclically. So some days I don't eat that much. Some days I eat not twice as much, but I eat more. Right, right, right, right. But you're not eating for emotion. But I'm not, I'm not, and, and, and again, I'm, I'm back to this notion that if you appreciate when, first of all, if you understand that you, that you don't need to eat that much to maintain all this stuff.

6:36So you don't need to, that's not a requirement. And so what, what it becomes is a luxury, like, okay, how much can I eat and not gain weight? And how much can I eat? And so most people find out that, that the 3 ,500 calories a day that they're consuming breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, they would be well-served at 2 ,200 calories. 30 % less than they're consuming if they were just a little bit more judicious about their choices, which also means more nutritious food. So when you're judicious about your food choices and you're not eating the bag of Doritos or the Ding Dongs, the Ho-Hos, or the whatever, and you eat food that is nutrient-dense, as they say now, you wind up not being that hungry anyway.

7:20Well, yes. But also there's a difference between need and want. Like, I know I don't need to eat that much, but I want to, because also I think what you're saying also, the treadmill situation, let's just use that whole conundrum, because the more you work out, the hungrier you get too. Yeah. That's an issue. Right. That's an issue. It's an issue. So what I've had to do, and this is like a trick, I guess, that I, you know, if I work, if I like run super hard, like I do like hard sprints, I end up eating way more during the day because I'm starving. versus if I went like kind of slow and more moderate, I won't eat as much.

7:55So it actually makes more sense for my body to go slower so I won't have that appetite that's like ravenous. I get it. I get it. But, you know, again, we talk about genetics. Yeah. You know, as Blake Shelton would say, you're so little. Yeah. You know what I mean? So you have the genetics that allows you to get away with that. And you say, mm-mm, but you do. I mean, it's like, you know, how it can manifest itself in some people. It's pretty impressive how quickly people can gain weight with just a little bit of extra food daily over time. So maybe now we're talking about some mental adjustment to your emotional attachment to food.

8:36And what does it mean that you have to feel like you have to finish what's on your plate? Or you look at a size of, you look at the buffet, which has 12 slices of cheesecake, and you pick the biggest one because it's still one serving. A hundred percent. This is like a therapy session now. You're a hundred percent right. That's exactly what I do. But it's so true. A lot of it's behavioral and also psychological. What about your supplements? Like, are you taking, are you on? I want to ask, are you, you're not, I've heard you also talk that you're not into all the biohacking nonsense, right? so does that mean you're not like are you are you doing the sauna you're doing the cold plunge what are you doing in terms of modalities yeah yeah okay so in terms of supplements i i do take testosterone and i've been doing testosterone okay you know dr trt yeah for almost 10 years just uh a minimum interesting only for 10 years so when you're 60 i started when i was 60 yeah a little after 60 yeah so it's like you know that's become a huge craze now like people in their 40s yeah my like people are in even their 30s are taking it yeah but you said you didn't start until you're no no i didn't start until i felt like i i held off as long as i could okay until i thought all right now i'm at a point where if i don't do this my muscle mass will decline at a rate that i can't keep up with and it had more to do with the practical application of my being able to go play ultimate frisbee or ride you know with with the guys and to be competitive still in that regard.

10:03So did you see like your ability kind of getting less and less and that's why you decided at 60? Yeah, I mean, I just, I saw my muscle mass go, my weight dropping a pound a year or something like that. And I knew it was all muscle because, uh, you know, I've, I've had the same body fat since I was 19. Wow. So you knew, so that's why you went on. So you started that and then what did you see happen? Did you like become like, cause now you look very muscular again. Did it make a big difference in your life? Five pounds. So, so over the course of a year, I put on five or six pounds. I worked hard at it.

10:33And then I just, now I've maintained that for almost 10 years. So you've been doing that for 10 years. And you do a shot yourself every day, I guess? No, no, no. Once a week. Just once a week, yeah. Once a week, okay. And then I do collagen because I'm a big fan of collagen. I make a collagen supplement. The reason I make a collagen supplement was because I'm such a big fan of it. And I think everybody ought to supplement. Collagen should be a fourth macronutrient. Yeah. There should be protein, fat, carbohydrate, and collagen. And collagen is different from protein because it's different. They're different configurations of diantripeptides.

11:02Yeah. And you can't get them from like organ meat. You can't get them from a chicken breast. You can't get it from lamb, beef, pork. You have to either eat the gristle, the skin, bone broth. Right. Chicken stock. And since we don't do that regularly anymore, I mean, we did a generation ago or two generations ago, but we don't now. I mean, there's a whole generation in the 80s of people, bodybuilders, skinless, boneless chicken breast and white rice. Do you remember that? Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. That was like whatever. By the way, people still do that. You know that. I know. I know. So collagen, I think, is important as a...

11:35And you need to get like 10, 20, 30 grams a day in my estimation, because it's the only thing that really supports connective tissue. And so much of your body is collagen. It's the most prevalent actual protein in your body between fascia, ligaments, tendons, cartilage. So what do you do then? You supplement for it? I supplement. Sure. So that's a supplement. So I take the collagen supplement. But the supplement, wouldn't it be better for you to actually do the other natural things, Sure. You want to come over to my house and make some bone broth and do some chicken stock and stand over that stove and simmer all day.

12:05In my spare time, I'll be more than happy to do it. Right. So you do that, you take how many spoonfuls of that? 20 grams a day.