How Peak Performance Drives Business Growth - Oliver Anwar

0:28Welcome to The Proven Podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. four or five people who don't know you. Who are you? What do you do? What's your claim to pick? Yeah. So my name's Oliver Amwar and I'm an executive health coach to some of the top leaders in the world. So we've worked with executives at Amazon, Meta, Tinder, Shopify, Accenture, one of the biggest news anchors in the US as well. And we're really about optimizing people's health so they can make their health a competitive edge when it comes to business and everything they do in life so they can dominate.

0:54Yeah. I love that your approach isn't just about getting healthy. It's so that you perform more effectively and you create better results. Because what people don't understand is if you're exhausted and you show up to the office, it doesn't really matter. So this is more about doing that, performing at a higher level here. And oh, by the way, you're also going to get in really amazing shape as well as a side effect of it. A hundred percent. And what we really focus on, it's that idea of performance over everything else. And the great thing about when you focus on performance is your business top line increases, you become a better leader, but as a by-product, you're healthier.

1:24You turn up more present. Spiritually, as a person, you feel better. And that, as a byproduct, helps other areas of your life as well. Yeah, I think you're the only trainer I've ever heard that talks about bottom line in the first couple sentences when you're talking. It's a very different ballgame. You're also someone who's driven by very specific metrics. Before you even start, you're like, I'm going to go after blood work. We're going to talk about blood work. These are things you need to do. Most people don't do that. Can you walk me through that? Yeah, absolutely. So when people run a business, everyone's data-driven, right?

1:51And they focus on everything that's going on with the numbers. But when it comes to health, for some reason, people don't approach it in that kind of granular, precise way. So the way we want to look at things is, okay, what is your internal blood work saying? Because everyone's got a different genetic makeup. Everyone's got a different environment or level of stress. They're going to be affected by different things. So when we do a comprehensive blood test, we focus on kind of four different areas that we call this. And if anyone's got a pen and paper, they should note this down now, because this is some free game that I hope you'll like.

2:20So number one, you've got your cardiovascular and metabolic health. So you're looking at your blood pressure, your triglycerides to HDL ratio. You've also got your blood sugar levels as well. So all of these metrics are going to be very important when we're looking at that side. You've then got your hormonal and nutritional balance. So think of this as your testosterone levels, your thyroid function, your vitamin and mineral deficiencies. All of these are going to drive things in your body that are going to help you perform. You've obviously got your strength and physical fitness. One of the big things now is VO2 max, your strength and flexibility, those play big things.

2:48And obviously your sleep quality and stress management. So we take these kind of four pillars of four areas of testing. And these are the key markers if you're an entrepreneur executive that wants to perform at your best. Now, typically, a doctor will say to you, oh, well, just, you know, check your BMI or make sure your cholesterol is not too high. These are very basic metrics when it comes to performance. And, you know, I always say to people, well, as a CEO, you're a Formula One car, right? And you're optimized to win. So if you want to optimize to win, you've got to treat your body like that and really dive into the granular metrics that are going to help drive that.

3:18Gotcha. For those of you who are playing at home, vitamin means vitamin for us American listeners. Oh, sorry guys. Yeah. So as you're going through some of these things and you're hitting them, there's lots of metrics that you touch that other people don't normally touch. So if someone comes in and they've got insulin resistance, for example, and their BMI is a little high, how does that change? Because getting the data is one thing. How does that change how you train people once you have that data? It's a really good question. I think the main thing is around the supplementation needs of people.

3:48So supplements are a billion dollar industry, trillion dollar industry. It's crazy how much money is put into that. But most people are flying blind when it comes to the kind of supplements that they need for their body. And there's one test out there called a lipoprotein A, which is basically a marker for heart disease. And not many people test for this. So I went and did my bloods about six months ago and got a lot of testing done. Everything was completely optimized. The one thing was my lipoprotein A was not optimized. and that this was due to a genetic disposition that i didn't know that i had it's hereditary in my family so i started taking a supplement called nasine and this nasine kind of gives you these hot flushes when you take it but this can actually reduce the impact of lipoprotein a by like 40 if you take the right amount for a certain period of time and my mind was kind of blown because number one i didn't know that i had this issue with someone that was pretty healthy and was optimized and secondly i didn't know that there was this amazing supplement out there that could actually reduce that likelihood of a potential heart disease or heart disease risk by 40%.

4:46So again, it's very specific and granular, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. It's funny because we just found out that I've got some mold toxicity in me because I grew up in South Florida, so there's a lot of mold. And the one way you get out of that is you do IR, you know, you get into it for red sauna and you do that. But unless I had spoken to a professional, they're like, you're taking the I-Cent as quickly as you possibly can. I was like, really? They're like, yeah, you need to have, open it up. You need to have a detox out. but most people don't even a know where to get these tests or how much they cost so if you're going in you're like hey i need this barrage of data which we which as entrepreneurs and founders we get barrages of data every single moment or every single day and we throw temper tantrums if we don't get them but we don't do the same thing for our body which is just wild to me so how much of the test you know do you recommend them all where do you get them how does someone actually implement this as quickly as possible yeah it's a great question so for a lot of guys that have their health insurance, if they have any maybe issues health-wise, a lot of stuff can be covered through insurance, which is a good thing.

5:42So that's good. But also you can get things done privately. There are companies out there called, you probably heard of Function before as well. They're very famous right now, but you can just go to a lab and as long as you've got the list of things to do, they can price things up and you can get these done from anywhere from sort of 150 to up to like$500 for all of the tests and you can bundle the packs. So when you look at it in the grand scheme of things is$500 can be that much when you're looking at the top performance that you're looking at or, you know, years of your life that you're going to gain back.

6:10It's a minimal amount to pay for the level of insight that you're going to get from it, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. So how frequently do you want to take these tests? Like say you come in month one, you get it, you find out that you're a dying flamingo and everything's going to fall apart. When do you then go get another test? Yeah. So for most tests, it's between three to six months to get them done. Now, what I'd recommend is if there's specific issues with something that's quite high. So for example, like me, my lipoprotein A is pretty high. I would probably want to get that done every three months just to get more of a benchmark of, okay, is this improving short term?

6:43So I can then look to improve that. But if things are pretty healthy and you're not too bad in a lot of the areas, I'd say every six months to do that. Typically, most people, they do an annual physical, which is great. It's better to do once a year than it is to do, you know let it go by for years but i think the older that you get and the more serious you get about it every three to six months is typically what i recommend and and if someone comes in they have something with protocols and supplements and all that how quickly will they start seeing results and what's realistic because we we grew up in an age where like i want to take a pill and then all of a sudden i'm seven feet tall and i can dunk a basketball and all that that's yeah not gonna happen kids so if you're running in this situation what's a realistic timeline if you're like hey i'm gonna start supplementing i'm gonna start doing these training exercises is how quickly do people start seeing results?

7:26It's a fantastic question. And we have to manage expectations a lot when people come to us because they'll be like, I've been running my company for the past 10 years. I'm not being exercised and I've been training. I want to get the body and health I want in 30 days. And unfortunately, it's not always that quick, right? When you've been beating yourself up for that long. But to give you a direct answer, six months typically we find is like a great period of time to get great results. And to give you an example, we had a founder come to us who was like a nine figure founder, huge company. And a lot of his markers, I'd say about 40 % of them were in the red.

7:57And it was due to the fact he'd had extra body fat. He didn't have as much muscle mass. He wasn't doing the functional activity he should have been. He wasn't outsourcing his nutrition and automating that, which we can kind of go on to. And yeah, he just wasn't in the place that he wanted to be. And one of the biggest things for him was he wasn't getting dreams at night. That was one of the biggest red flags for me because your dreams at night are the deepest part of sleep that you need. And that's your REM sleep. And this is where your brain and cognitive function comes back. And if you're making big decisions as a founder or anybody in life, you want to keep your mental capacity at the top of your game.

8:30And he was realizing, hey, I'm leaving so much on the table. I'm still running a company worth nine figures. Imagine how much I could be doing if I could fix this. So we put him on the protocol. And within six months, all of his markers were in the green, 30 pounds down. He had way more energy, more focus. And the biggest thing was he told me on one call, I'm starting to have dreams again. I'm starting to actually have these things happen. And I was like, well, that's a huge breakthrough because you're actually in a place where you're healthy now, sleep apnea have dropped and things like that.

8:56So yeah, I would say for a lot of people, like a six month mark, if you're on something structured is where you can make a lot of meaningful progress. You mentioned a word there that I haven't heard before. It's called sleep. I'm not pronouncing it. Sleep. Sleep. I don't know what sleep is. I'm not a slur. I have no idea what sleep is. So I'm someone personally, because again, I've built multiple companies, have multiple exits. We always go into the idea of like sleep just doesn't matter. I'll deal with it later. And I've abused my sleep for an exceptionally long time. How, when you run into that, and this is just me being selfish, how do you fix that?

9:28How do you start reversing that? I mean, other than there's certain hygiene that you need to do when it comes to sleep, like, Hey, set your clock at us every time, turn your internet, like in my house, a free trip for everybody. You know, those little, those little things that you have that turn lights on and off in your house. Yeah. I have the old fashioned analog one that's plugged into my router. So at 9.30, it will turn off all of the internet. It's my house. It's a non-negotiable and it won't turn back on until seven. Because what I was doing was I was going in and I'd sit there and I'd play on it.

9:56So what I've done instead is I put that literally in a locked box. Like I cannot get to it. It's a non-negotiable. So if something's really bad, I can go to my phone, but I force the internet to go off. So I know those basic things. What are some of the things that you found that have radically improved sleep? Fantastic question. And just before I go into that what we always kind of preach up to our clients and the main message we have is that sleep is the foundation of everything and people will say you know is nutrition the most important or is exercise the most important or supplements most important the number one is actually sleep because if you think of a house right it's built on a foundation sleep is your foundation and if you don't have that everything comes falling down and you know this right when you have four hours sleep you don't want to eat healthy you don't want to train properly you get irritable and everything kind of comes crashing down so we obviously like to say that sleep is the number one when it comes to specific things that you can do with sleep lifestyle optimization typically has had the best roi for people reducing their sleep apnea so people will come to us with sleep apnea or sleep issues and losing weight building more muscle actually getting a good amount of sunlight each day and all of these things they seem very basic but these actually have a huge roi when it comes to not having issues with sleep.

11:09There's also alcohol consumption as well. And alcohol consumption obviously impairs your REM and deep sleep as well. And that's why people struggle in the middle of the night and wake up and stuff like that. It's because of the fact that the alcohol is impairing their sleep quality, which is a huge one. Also, marijuana use can do that as well. And there's a lot of controversy around marijuana, right? And we have entrepreneurs that have taken it to relax and to sleep. But again, that has such a big impact on that REM sleep as well that you might think that it's helping you relax at night but the second and third order consequence of that is you're not getting the REM sleep that's going to allow you to perform at your best so those ones are are huge from a supplementation point of view magnesium glycinate is one of the best supplements that you can actually take to aid in sleep quality and if you follow a lot of the biohackers now they're very much on this kind of magnesium train and number one magnesium a lot of the soils that our food is kind of created in are kind of fertilized with a deficiency in magnesium.

12:07When we're under high amounts of stress, we deplete through magnesium. When we drink coffee, we deplete magnesium. So the majority of the population is actually magnesium deficient. So just getting that in can be great. The reason why glycinate is so good is the glycine actually helps you with falling asleep and help you hit that latter stage of sleep, that deep and REM side of sleep. So taking a magnesium glycinate can be great. But one of the big hacks that we found is actually coupling the magnesium glycinate with a form of glycine powder alongside it now when you take the compounds individually they actually have more of a profound impact on the body kind of absorbing it the utilization of it and that leads to actually a better impact so those two little supplements there can actually have a big big impact and i love that you're sharing all this for those who are playing at home this is not medical advice these are just podcasts so of course please please go talk to a doctor enter at your own risk all the other legal stuff.

13:00Don't, don't do stupid. We're just sharing information. 100 % educational. This is just us talking. So please, please understand that really quickly. From there, you mentioned red flags before. Yeah. What are some of the red flags that most of us aren't looking at that are terrifying? Yeah. And specifically to sleep or to health. To everything. Like when you get reports back from someone and all of a sudden you'll get it back, you're like, oh my God, he's a penguin or whatever it is that comes in. What are the things that hit you that you're like, oh, we need to talk about this? Yeah, the biggest red flag that we see, especially kind of like male executives or male clients we work with is testosterone levels.

13:33Testosterone levels are one of the biggest things that impact performance as an entrepreneur. And, you know, traditionally people think, oh, testosterone is, you know, me running around as macho as possible shouting from the rooftops and doing crazy things, right? But the truth about testosterone, it's one of the biggest drivers of brain fog. So the biggest symptom of, you know, having brain fog is the fact you've got low testosterone now when we apply this to a business context or personal contact it's that fuzziness you can't make decisions you're not as decisive you know you're not as tenacious and there was actually a 2023 study that came out where it basically said that those people with higher testosterone are less likely to compromise in regards to the opinions of others in certain situations from a pro-social leadership point of view so typically people that have lower testosterone from this study are more likely to be more agreeable that are likely to be more of a pushover if you're in a leadership position you've got to be decisive maybe you're building something that not a lot of people are going to believe in and it's your willpower and you know your drive that's going to take that forward having that testosterone as optimal as possible is going to help that drive forward so that has a huge impact but it also has an impact on just general mood irritability as well and the motivation to want to do things if people say you know what's the motivation like metric that you should be looking at testosterone is a big motivation molecule right because if you've got high levels of testosterone you've got the drive and the energy and the focus to want to do things but when it's lower you've not got that and if you put that into like a business context if you're working 12 hours a day and your testosterone is not optimized well maybe you're getting four hours out of the 12 that you're actually optimized whereas if you can get that testosterone in a good place you've then got that baseline of energy throughout the course of the day that's allowing you to perform at your best which could be millions of dollars to your business each year if you're looking in that kind of roi context gotcha so 12 hours a day so like a light day for most of us entrepreneurs.

15:19Light day. Yeah. Yeah. If you're having a light day. Yeah. I'm just being honest. It's 16 hour days are normal. So I love that people like, I don't want to work nine to five. Congratulations. You work five to nine. Enjoy. Exactly. Yeah. That's the renown. It is what it is. So when someone comes in, they've got low T and they're running that hurdle, there's a lot of controversy around testosterone being injected versus doing it a natural way with, you know, just there's people I know who have done it just by sit down, do squats, do squats as much as you can every single day, get your legs, build the muscle mass up.

15:49That will, that will start rising on its own. And there's other people I know who do inject and the long-term ramifications of that is something that, again, I spent eight years in the hospice watching people die. So I'm very like, oh, if I wasn't born with it, I don't want it. So don't, don't put it in me. Now, with the exception of stem cells, that is a completely different podcast that's coming up. So when you're coaching your clients and they have low T because for whatever reason, their age or whatever the other factors that come into play, what are the ways that you advise your high performers on how to do this?

16:22100%. No, it's a great question. And firstly, there's a lot of controversy around that in regards to if you are taking testosterone as a injectable, it is a synthetic substance that you're putting into your body, right? Like as much as people want to say it's just testosterone, well, it's not the natural testosterone that your body is producing. So the way in our ethos is always let's try and fix the low-hanging fruit first how do we do this naturally to ensure that we can max that and we've got had clients that have gone from 250 300 up to 700 by literally using the approach that i'm going to share so i think the first one again being boring is going back to that sleep quality now one of the biggest uh impacts of uh chronic sleep deprivation is your testosterone can actually drop significantly so if you have four or five hours of bad sleep you can have testosterone of five or ten years your senior so for example if you're a 35 year old entrepreneur, you've got bad sleep and things like that.

17:12You could have a testosterone of a 45 year old, or if you're a 45 year old, you have testosterone of a 55 year old. So you're aging 10 years just from the fact that you've not got that sleep dialed in. So that number one is a big one. And I'm going to go back to this again. Body composition is such a big one. And again, going back to that testing, one of the first things we do is a body composition test to check your visceral fat levels, your lean muscle mass, because the more that you can bring that body fat down and build as much lean muscle as possible, that's going to raise your testosterone levels naturally as well another huge thing is around alcohol consumption as well so alcohol consumption really does reduce that testosterone down and specifically for busy executives it's a tough one right because there's a lot of business dinners that you're going out to there's a lot of social events you've got to go to so it kind of conflicts a lot with the lifestyle that you're potentially living but there has to be a way in which you've got a way to control that whether that's using a specific alcohol that's a bit better for the body reducing the frequency and the amount to we increase testosterone.

18:07So that can be really big. There's also foods as well. So when it comes to testosterone, you want to ensure that you're eating foods that have a decent amount of fat in as well, just to help with raising that level of testosterone naturally as well. So cholesterol isn't always bad when it comes to that as well. That can be really important. Then from a supplementation point of view, it really is recommending things around zinc, which is one of the biggest ones, magnesium. These ones will have an impact on testosterone. There's also some controversy around ashwagandha there are some people saying that it can be good other people feel that it helps with testosterone um the two big things that i've seen personally is actually taking tonka ali um as a supplement which is like a herb and that really does help with naturally boosting that testosterone up so especially if you want to go from that mid-level up to sort of 700 that can actually really help you give that boost with those lifestyle integrations as well which is an interesting find from what we've done so so yeah i love it so when it comes to supplements are all of them created equal or there's some brands that are better versus not brand again this isn't sponsored i never take sponsors but what are the what are the the paradigms here when it comes to supplements are there better ones are there which ones what is the stuff you recommend and what should someone's daily take be even if you've never been tested you have no idea and you just want to say okay i'm gonna get the ball rolling today what should people be buying 100 so just from a quality point of view i'll i'll tackle that first and then go into the specific so from a quality point of view typically what we find is the supplements that are more regulated and actually a little bit more on the premium side tend to have a bigger roi so just because they've gone through more rigorous testing it's also the fact that the way that the body absorbs those supplements is probably a lot better just for the fact that they're a higher quality so that's a really important thing to first dissect the second one is like what should people start with as a baseline well typically we find that creatine is a fantastic supplement and there's a lot of news out there recently about creatine.

19:59There's a, was it Royal McElroy said he was taking 20 grams of creatine a day, which I don't think there's that much research actually specifically around that now. There's starting to come out, but it's not really been peer reviewed. But for most people, five to 10 grams of creatine a day are going to be great. What this is going to do is obviously reduce, help you reduce body fat if you're training, because you're going to be training at a higher intensity, have more strength, but there's also the cognitive impact as well. You're able to actually get more focus. There's a lot more research out there to show there's more neurological benefits to having creatine.

20:26So again, creatine is one of the most tested in the world. If you go on to examine or PubMed and search creatine, it's one of the most researched supplements out there. It's also really, really cheap. So again, if you don't want to spend lots of money, but you want the best bang for your buck for the money you're going to spend, then creatine is 100 % up there for sure. Sorry. Yeah. Which brands are you looking at? I'm going to hold you back to that one. Oh, sorry. Which brands? Okay. I'd have to get, I've got a list of about five. I could pull them up but i don't have them off the top of my head that's all please but i mean we'll take the time because i think yeah people are guessing all the time like we're going to go on this side or we're going to go on that side and you're going to buy the cost or all these different things and say oh maybe i'll get it here get it there but having someone because again your your clients you are not cheap and your clients are these high performers and you're paying for access because most people on the planet will never get access to you so being able to come in and say hey i want to get that very specific brand maybe it's stone or thorn or whatever it is and say this is what i'm supposed to get, this is what I need to buy.

21:25It's going to be important. 100%. So the top three we have, you mentioned the first one already is Thorn. They're very, very good. Very high standard. We've also got pureformulas.com. They're also great. And then designsforhealth.com. So those are the top three that we find. I believe they ship in the US and Canada as the ones to go to. So if you're looking at like premium, top level, your platinum level, then those are the three that I would personally recommend. Gotcha. So, and then someone goes and they buy those, which by the way, any of those brands, if you just want to send me free stuff.

21:53Thank you. So, you know, you go to those brands and then you got to start building your stack. So for those of you who don't know what's going on at home, a stack is the stuff you take throughout the day. So there's like a morning stack, there's an evening snack, there's a midday stack, and it just depends on what your needs are. What do you break down? So listen, I don't know you, I've never met you, you've never had any blood work. This is your stack. So here's creatine, go get some creatine. And are all creatines the same because there's creatine myohydrate and there's a couple different ones.

22:20100%. So firstly on the creatine, definitely go with creatine monohydrate. So that's typically what we find is the best one to go for. I'm going to break down sort of a list of maybe ones that we can look at when we're looking at focus, energy, and longevity. So number one is vitamin D3. So what this is going to do is help with testosterone support and immunity. That's great. We've got B12 as well. So a lot of entrepreneurs we found, D3 and B12, they're very deficient in. So the B12 is going to help with brain health, also energy production. Another great one, if you're somebody that's quite stressed and you want to learn to relax and focus more l-theanine is a great one so you can actually couple this with like your morning coffee have a coffee pop an l-theanine um you know it's better than popping another type of pill right and you do that and you get this kind of like smooth focused energy and if you're doing a deep work block in the morning then that can be great there's also ashwagandha as well so this helps with stress management cortisol control which can be awesome you've also got rondo rhodesia so what this is i believe it's a russian supplement i'm not 100 % sure the origin but there's a lot of research on this for mental resilience and fatigue resistance so a lot of russian athletes were actually taking this as a you know a legal supplement uh for them to perform so that can be great and then obviously that final one there is magnesium glycinate that we've covered so again that helps with sleep quality muscle recovery and just general performance so those are the ones i actually personally take as well so uh yeah i'm standing on my words with these as well so yeah i'm actually curious what your what your stack is but maybe we'll get you to email both the lists over and we'll give it to everybody and sure sure so normally people come in and you know people are going to want to know supplements and how many they should take should they just follow the bottles or should they recommendations or what do you think yeah so it can be specifically like for example if someone's got a very big deficiency in omega-3 for example they might have to take a little bit more than you know the recommended dose for that and again i don't want to just generally blanket what that should be for somebody but this is why blood work is so important if people have the access to do that get that blood work done because if you know how deficient you are that you then know how much ieu or whatever it is of the dose that you need to take per day so it is very individual if you know for for instance you do have a specific you know deficiency somewhere then upping that dose a little bit can help with that but again i don't want to give medical advice right now again it's very specific to you know you as a person so so yeah a lot of the time they can help but you know again if there's deficiencies there has to be that increase to help counteract that.

24:39So yeah, I mean, I think off camera, we're talking about the best medical advice. Go do as much crack, cocaine, opium, have fun, go nuts and drink. It fixes everything. I get to when people tell me that problem to their computers. I'm like, your computer's thirsty. Put it in the toilet for a little while. It'll never give you a problem again. Obviously, we're being smart asses. Okay, so with that said, now let's get into diet because there's every diet found on the planet. There's vegan and there's keto and there's paleo and then there's people just eat cardboard and then there's just all these different things all over the place.

25:08When it comes to carnivore versus vegan versus where do you sit? We're like, listen, this is what works the best. This is what's going on. Or is it dependent on what your goals are? 100%. It's a great question. And the kind of cop-out answer is every diet works, right? Which is to a degree true. But more specifically, what we've seen work really well is more of a whole foods diet engineered towards a Mediterranean diet. And there's a lot of research out there to show the Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest. And when you look at people that have lived the longest and sometimes you look at them and they look the happiest, it's the Mediterranean people, right?

25:41And, you know, it's quite funny because the Mediterranean lifestyle is, you know, people are going out, they're smoking, they're sometimes drinking a bit of wine and these guys are living for thousands and thousands of, you know, times, right? For years they've been living. Exactly, right? Yeah, so it's crazy. But again, it's not down to the smoking per se or down to the drinking the wine. It's the fact that they do have a lot of healthy fish in their diet. A lot of their food is organic, that they're cooking it's a lot of whole foods they're getting a good amount of protein a good amount of vitamins and minerals and again this aligns with that whole foods based approach because the foods that we've had for thousands of years that weren't processed that our ancestors were living on science has advanced a lot since then and there's a lot of things and changes you can make but typically that baseline of okay was it healthy was it from the earth was it you know minimally processed with a good mix of and this is why i'm not kind of strict keto strict vegan or strict with a certain diet because you know if you get all of these balance of nutrients within your body, typically it's going to give your body everything that it needs to perform at your best.

26:37Do you need to control the portions of that? Do you need to have an idea of, okay, specifically for you, what you need? Definitely. But if I was to just say, typically, what is the best, that whole foods and Mediterranean diet is really, really good for optimal health. I'm going to add it in there, and this has nothing to do with you, Oliver. For you guys out there who are learning into this, sauerkraut. Please take sauerkraut and just don't take two cups of it. I was taking two cups of it and I was wondering why my heart was hurting, the doctors I could be doing. Pay attention to the things. Sauerkraut has been an absolute game changer for me as far as just got my gut health and my biome health and literally getting things moving, but that'll be TMI for another show.

27:13So we've got the supplements under control. We've got the blood work under control. We've got the food under control. What are your thoughts on intermittent fasting? And is it different for males versus females? Yeah, fantastic question. So intermittent fasting, I've changed my opinion a lot on intermittent fasting over the years. So Now, one of the things with fasting that happens is obviously stress hormone gets released when you're fasting. Now, again, I want to contextualize this. If you're somebody that is maybe hugely overweight and one of your biggest challenges is restricting your calories throughout the course of the day and you need to restrict that eating window, your priority number one should be how can I restrict the calories as efficiently as possible because you being very overweight or obese is the biggest detriment to your health.

27:53So I would say if that works and you can reduce your food down through that, then great. Now, what we found typically with a lot of the CEOs and executives we work with, intermittent fasting doesn't always work because what happens is as a CEO and entrepreneur, stress hormone gets spiked in the morning straight away. Your employees are doing some crazy shit. There's some fires to put out within the business. There's lots of things going on. So this spike kind of happens. And what we found works is having like a protein-fueled breakfast. So this could be whether that's a protein shake or some eggs with some smoked salmon or something that's protein-based in the morning, so they've got a bit of food in their stomach, actually prevents that sort of spike in stress hormone.

28:29And that actually allows them to have a bit more of a consistent hit of energy throughout the course of the day. So again, it's individualized to the person, but I'd say if you're in a very high stress environment or you've got a high stress career, try having some breakfast in the morning, maybe protein-based if you're sedentary so you're not eating too many carbohydrates. That can actually really help with the results that you want to get. Yeah, we were talking about this before we started recording. The first trainer I ever worked with that gave me advice. He's like, you need to be racist. If it's white, don't put it in your mouth.

28:55No carbs, no sugar, no right. He goes, just don't put it in your mouth. It's not a good idea. He goes, you want to keep that stuff out of there. Again, I spent eight years in a hospice watching people die. Sugar is pure cancer. Sorry, sugar industry, it's absolute toxic poison. It's rat poison. It's how I've had every doctor explain it to me. Sugar is rat poison. So it is what it is. So now let's get into the next part, which is exercising. And you're going to run into people who, you know, we don't have a lot of time. We jokingly said this before that a 12-hour day is a light day. It just is what it is.