The Elite Trainer: Why You Are Not Loosing Fat

0:00So know that your heart is strong. Know that your muscles are strong. Know that your bones are strong. Know that your mind is functioning well. sleep well, don't drink too much, and just be generally moderate in most things all the time, and you will live for longer. We know that for sure. Arguably the world's most successful personal trainer, Matt Roberts has published 13 books in 24 countries and built a multi-million pound personal training empire from the ground up, training the world's elite and known as the original celebrity fitness trainer. You've been in the industry for 30 years. Yeah, 30 years.

0:35And you've transformed very famous physics. Can you name a few that I might know? In the politics world, I guess the one that's probably most well known is David Cameron when he was prime minister. And that was interesting because actually being around a situation where people say they haven't got time to work out. This guy's running the country and still he made the time. You could have changed the course of Brexit. You owe it to yourself to be the best version of yourself. That's what we're here for. We're not here to just dilapidate. We're here to do something. I've got teams of medics, physios, trainers, dietitians, hormone specialists, all sorts of different interesting people we bring into the mix from outside my own team.

1:22And I've got a team that deliver my vision of what the body needs to be doing and solve the problems along the way. Cheat meals. How often should we have them? Should we have them actually in the first place? Matt, if you had to compress all your knowledge that you have acquired in the last 30 years of your career into one essential advice that we should all follow what would it be? All of my life into one sentence fundamentally the key thing definitely is to

2:05Matt, how would you best describe the work you do? I would say my work has become one really a focus on how can we make sure someone is able to understand how to improve their health span. That's the fundamental goal of what I do, what my company does, what all those people inside my company do. It's not about going for purely an aesthetic. What we do is make people have the opportunity to live every single day of their life to the utmost until the end. Now, that might not be a longer end. It might be, but it's more about what can we do while you're living to make sure every day you're at your best possible point, place you can be.

2:48If I had a look at your CV right now, what would I see that would ensure me that you are a subject matter expert in this topic? so it's it's a good question in that i can't know all things um so i know a lot and i studied a lot and i've learned a lot and uh and that's great i have great team and honestly the the reality of looking at how bodies best work is that it's complicated i mean it's a very very interesting incredible working system and I've got teams of medics physios trainers dietitians hormone specialists all sorts of different interesting people we bring into the mix from outside my own team and I've got a team that deliver my vision of what the body needs to be doing and solve the problems along the way my own background is having trained with the American College of Sports medicine to do what I do many years ago now.

3:45And since then, I've been to endless seminars, given lectures at endless seminars, and I've been the person people listen to on this stuff. I've been a professor at universities on invitation, which is always interesting to see what the learning capacity is like at people's key learning ages. So I've seen a lot, done a lot. But I'd say, again, it's down to having phenomenal people who individually have studied their respective areas phenomenally well. I believe that in order for someone to become the best at whatever it is that they want to do, they need to love that thing. Why is this important to you?

4:27Well, I think there's two answers to that. One is that You can see what's happening to the state of the nation. You can see what's happening population-wise. What's happening? Well, we're getting significantly faster, lazier, and we're dying in ages that we shouldn't be dying. What's amazing is we actually haven't increased our lifespan as much as we should have and could have in the last 30, 40 years. It's increased a bit, but mainly off medication. We're seeing trend lines of children by the age of, by the year 20, 40 or 50, maybe half of our kids in this country in the UK being obese, not just overweight, but obese.

5:07We're seeing people with all manner of conditions that are highly preventable by being active and moving more. And I find it really important that we, as a nation, as Western nations, as this nation, we're healthier and we're better. So besides anything else, because I really detest the fact that we have to pay for all the medical services that we have to provide, the NHS may do good work, but it's just too big and too bloated. And the reason is that we're not healthy enough and we're not doing enough and we're not doing enough for our children. And I think economically as a country, we have a need to make sure we have an unbelievable, strong, healthy working workforce.

5:47and we're not going to have that if our kids are not healthy while they're in their key stage years being in primary school being in that development puberty years we aren't going to have people to be focused going forward so there's kind of a bigger picture thing which i think is important as a citizen of the country i think it's important we give back at the same time as well i'm a 51 year old male. My intention when I turned 30, I know you're getting to that point now as well, was to make sure I was the same shape as when I was 20, 21 years old when I was training as an athlete. And when I was 30, it seemed old, by the way, and it's not, by the way.

6:26And my goal was to make sure it was the same shape. Yeah, well, it's the thing, because you think it's crazy old and really, trust me, there's a long way to go on this stuff. And to get to 30 and be the same shape as 20 was my intention. Clearly, that's easy because you're 29, 30 years old. So I thought, okay, when I get to 40, I need to be the same shape as when I was 30 and therefore 20. I managed to do that as well. Really? When I turned 50, yeah. So what's good about having been quite a high-level athlete and getting into what I do now early on is I had lots of metrics and data from that time.

6:57So my muscle mass, my body fat percentage, my VO2 scores, and so on and so on. I got all that data from a long time ago. So it was very clear what the metrics were to sustain and maintain. So turning 50 last year, there was a clear goal to be at the same shape. And I'm within 1.5 % body fat to where I was when I was 21 years old. Jesus Christ. And I'm the same weight, and my strength is anything marginally higher. To what do you attribute this? So this is the thing. So the point about the reason why I'm passionate about this is finding and unlocking the answer to how you can actually slow down the aging process and make sure you stay exactly as you want to be.

7:41What's your body fat percentage at the age of 15? It's around eight. Wow. Yeah. That's incredible. When I was in my very, very peak sprinting years as an athlete, it was probably less than 2 % out of that. So within the last 30 years of your life, did you feel like you had to sacrifice a lot in order for you to retain these? Yeah, you have to be increasingly really careful. You have to make sure you do the groundwork. So the process of how I train has had to adjust. If I tried to do the same sessions when I was 21 years old, I'd be crawling out of bed every morning and screaming because you can't recover quite as quickly.

8:14Even with all the best supplementation, the right dietary approach and recovery strategies, you just can't recover quite as quickly. It's marginal, but it's slightly different. And how quickly does that change? So every 10 years, every five years? It's sort of ongoing. I mean, the thing is, the horrifying thing for males, and this is ahead of you, is from the age of about 35, unless you take care of yourself, things like your testosterone levels begin to fall. And again, I have my data from when I was in my 20s, and mine are within 10 % of where they were when I was in my 20s. Now, the average fall-off is you lose maybe 25 % in the ages of 35 to 45, maybe 25 % thereafter.

8:58It goes down rapidly in that 40 to 60 time span. Now, with that, you get then loss of muscle mass, sarcopenia. We lose 8 % of our muscle mass loss. So if you do just the basics and you tick along, you'll still be losing muscle mass. So it takes a lot of work to retain the muscle mass after the age of about 35 to 40. Before that, it's a bit easier because you're more pumped up with different hormones. There's a high blood supply, tend to be better sleep patterns. And even someone is out drinking, which does support muscle mass as well, by the way, even if someone's doing that, they still retain muscle mass.

9:38When you get slightly older, that gets much tougher. From the age of about 40, you lose 8%, 10%, 12 % muscle mass every decade. So by the time you get to being in your 60s, you've lost a whole chunk of muscle mass. Of course, the more you're losing that, the more you're going to retain visceral fats, internal fats, the dangerous ones around the internal organs. So then you've got to combine, therefore, beyond the age of really 30, really focusing on that muscle mass retention. I don't mean getting big. I mean getting strong. You've got to be really, really strong. Strength training for strength rather than size should be everybody's fundamental goal.

10:16Is it true that our body, our muscles have memory in the sense that if I've been training for the last 20 years of my life, is it going to be easier for myself to not go off the rails if I stop training for a week or two or to stay in shape for that matter? You create, yes, the answer is yes. You create nervous pathways and with those nervous pathways, they don't go anywhere. So once you've got them, you create them, they stick around, they stop working for a bit, they're dormant. The muscle structures you create, you're creating, with muscle creation, you're creating layers of fibers. And those layers of fibers, once they're created, don't really go away, but they can get just kind of diminished in size.

10:57So once you start to work again, they get more blood pumped into them, they get slightly larger and more activation, the nervous system starts to work harder again. So your body responds pretty quickly. There's always been an athlete in their teens and 20s and they stop for 10 years and they gain 15 kilos in fat and they look like crap and they feel like it's all wrong. If they start working out again, they've got a significantly better chance of being in shape, of course, more quickly than someone who has never done anything. The key years to actually protect for the future are where you are now.

11:30It's in your teen years through to being 30. If you build muscle strength, cardio capabilities, your whole nervous pathway, activations, so doing coordination stuff, playing sports, really important. Doing anything which is balance-based gives you an insurance policy for the future. With bone density, shockingly, our bones reach peak bone density. The strongest they'll ever be is when you're 24 years old. So from 24 years onwards, your bones are getting progressively weaker and more porous. So your risk when you're 30 is neither here nor there. When you're 40, by 50 and 60 and 70, because you didn't do the work you should have been doing when you're in your teens and 20s.

12:12Incredible. So my bones already peaked. You peaked already. You're going downhill already. But the thing is, but you're not because you're working out. So you can do all these things at prevention level to make sure that what we do is we step in and nothing changes. and the reality is our strength loss if you work on it over a 20 30 year period from being 25 to 45 can be a loss of maybe two three percent so if you really stay on it it's an insurance policy for the future but it starts when you're in your teens and 20s so so for me that's your answer question is that my goal within all this the passion side comes from i do not want to go backwards.

12:52I want to make sure that I can go and... I love playing tennis, so I like to play tennis. I want to make sure I'm playing tennis not just because I want to play some. I want to go and really hit and compete and be at it. I want to go maybe walk up Mont Blanc and do a hike there. I want to just go and do that and not think about it and be able to, when I'm 50 and 60 and 70, be able to do the same things. Otherwise, you take away the joy of living. I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie so i get a real kind of rush from uh driving cars fast around tracks and you know doing kind of mountain biking and going down hills at speed and all that kind of stuff i get a real charge up from it and it's been proven actually the best tests that i need not just i'd like it i actually need adrenaline to really get fired up so um i'm gonna make sure i can do those things and now and in 10 years time and 20 years time revealing shockingly interesting um you've been in the industry for just a bit over 25 years um 30 actually 30 years yeah 30 years and you've transformed very famous physics in the fashion sports even politicians um can you name a few that i might know there's a few you might know okay um in the politics world i guess the one that's probably most well known is david cameron when he was the prime minister um and that was interesting because actually being around a situation where if people say they haven't got time to work out, this guy's running the country and at a key critical time, as always is key critical times in politics.

14:23And still, he made the time, put the effort in. So you were training him while he was Prime Minister? Yeah, we'd be, I started a gym up in number 10 and we had that, we'd go running in the parks, we'd play some tennis and I'm sure he was opening up to you, you could have changed the course of Brexit. Well, we can go to that rabbit hole if you want to. That's fine. We're a completely different podcast, but yeah. But yeah, I mean, look, with any client, you are privy to lots of stuff that you wouldn't share. And that's really interesting on the inside. But the key thing within that is that you have to remember all the time that whoever the person is, no matter how important their role is at a point in time, how famous they might be, it's a person, it's a body.

15:10And what we're looking at always is how can we support the individual around this to make sure they can cope, survive, get through, be focused. If you're leading the country, you don't get much sleep. It's definitely quite stressful. Anybody else that I might know? Yeah, I mean, over the years, lots of people, Tom Ford, Sting with Adele. Yeah, we've had a lot of the big guys coming in, U2 some time ago. Madonna on and off. There's a whole long list. There's a lot I can't share with you as well. Lots of royal members. Look, these things are all interesting. And what's fascinating is that everyone assumes that they have life easy because they can employ someone like me and have a chef and have whatever else.

15:58It's never easy. Everyone has the same stresses, the same issues, the same concerns, the same anxieties, the same... The pronouns are a matter of perspective. Always, always. And that's why what I set in place is a framework of, okay, how do we get from point A to point Z and make sure we navigate the bits along the way and support you where you need to? And going back to David's point in time, we're never going to as an objective. And I know it doesn't matter if we're sharing this information. We're never going to transform his body from day one in power to the last day in power. The goal was keep you well.

16:34Let's make sure we're keeping you well to cope with the stuff you have to do. Now, if someone's getting ready for a tour, a concert tour, so he's a good example. Mel C from the Spice Girls. So a training Mel, Mel for a long, long time. If Mel's going on a tour, it's being ready for that in a specific way, to be endurance ready, to be shape ready. Ellie Goulding, same kind of thing, to be ready for performing. Lungs to be working. There are very specific goals to work on. For some people, it's survival. For some people, it's focus. For some people, it's transformations. expectations so but ultimately it comes down to how do we just map this out and structure your day what's the perfect week look like for you and what's our expectations with limitation

17:21let's go to that point a so the very beginning i feel like a lot of people if not almost everyone wants to be in shape they want to feel good but starting is the hardest thing what's the best way to start so you actually start well i mean there's no there's no easy answer other than um you know as you sit there thinking about it are you happy as you are i mean if you're happy as you are sit there wait that doesn't bother me i mean you can stay in the same shape and be there and not change yourself and not grow um or you can decide to literally as as point you're thinking about it just go and start to do something because we we definitely forget how good it feels to be healthy and to do physical things.

18:08And we lose touch with what it feels like to be able to move and to be able to actually breathe well and to be a fully functioning, existing human being. So if you're concerned about it and you're thinking, oh, I could start now, just get off your butt and do something to start. Anything? Yeah, anything. Because it's all about really, what's the basics? You will die if your heart stops working. So let's make sure your heart's doing something. So the easiest way to do something is just go for a walk. So if you want to give really, really basics, by doing that, you're going to be better than doing zilch.

18:44The other key thing is if your muscles don't function, then you can't hold your skeleton upright. So at some point, you're going to have an issue with that as well. And you will have a problem, you will ultimately degrade and fade away. So start to do some very basic movements. So you might just do, if you're on absolute basics, sit in a chair, stand up, sit down, sit for 30 reps, and then watch TV, and then do some more the next day. The reason why I'm asking basics is because a lot of people think that they should start with a very heavy, hardcore, complex routine, go five, six times to the gym.

19:18And, you know, that seems scary, right it's like I don't know to a baby you're not going to give it a piece of steak right you start giving it milk and then slowly and gradually you introduce that kid or you know that person into more complex foods so taking that analogy how does that milk look like for someone that is starting their fitness well that's really where um you know if anyone goes to the gym um if they sign on day one I'm going to do something now and get going and be on it then they will suddenly you go to the gym, do one day on a Monday, go on the treadmill probably for a bit and then go and lift some weights on a machine they recognize for a bit and then go home again.

19:53The next day, wake up, that feels a bit sore, that's a bit tight. Back on Tuesday, do something not dissimilar and then by Wednesday, Thursday, the body's in a wreck and the neck is hurting and the back's a bit sore and you'll wait out for four or five days to recover again. The start point is always just move. So we've got to be mobile and get the circulation levels to rise. So going to the gym initially and jumping into a five days a week program, and everyone does that same thing, is not the way to start. You have to be almost in the first month of starting a training program, feeling as though I'm not quite doing enough.

20:30I could do more. And actually, you feel that, that's great. That's a win. It shouldn't feel like in the first month, I'm really feeling the pain or discomfort. It's to feel like I could do a bit more than this and keep on growing it more. Because this is not a sprint. This is, we want to take a year to change someone in reality. A year. Yeah, yeah. So the idea you do - Starting from zero. Starting from zero. Or frankly, whatever the goal is in terms of even making some significant changes. If you have the transformation idea of, we're going to do something in four weeks, you're not really doing anything.

21:06I mean, if you're going to, how do we look at this? If you're doing a muscular change, a sort of transformation program where you get sort of, you know, jacked up, in four weeks, I can jack you up, I can make you look bigger and make that work. But it's all short term because you can't build muscle that quickly. Muscle builds phenomenally slowly. We can make the blood go to the muscles and make them look like they're pumped up. Would you be using a lot of supplements? Very. I mean, to be honest, if you want to try and increase that look, you just ram some carbohydrates in someone for a month and load a protein and then come off the carbs for a week, strip out the water, shred them a bit, take a photo before and after, and hey, Presto, there's your transformation.

21:45And then the following month, they go back to square one again. Sounds very unhealthy, though. It's terrible. I mean, it's the worst thing. So our goal is always, you know, we're going to take a year on this. We have a process where in the first three, four, five weeks, we're going to start to work on your mobility, make you actually able to move. We start doing some good cardio work, some good basic strength work, probably body weight based, some small weights as well, build the ability to be resilient enough when the intensity builds and will, then we're going to be having you in a situation where you can cope with anything we throw at you.

22:17Because we are going to make you by week six and seven and eight and nine and 10 lift heavy. And we're going to do some hard VO2 development work. So we're going to have you on a bike doing, you know, four minutes of hard, high intensity to almost failure. What is VO2? The oxygen volume that circulates around your system. So you're The score of your cardiovascular ability is your VO2. VO2 training done in the correct way is called a four by four as an example. And you do sat on the bike, four minutes, go to a level where by the last 90 seconds, you're wishing you weren't there. So it's super intensive.

22:55And then you get off the bike after four minutes thinking, my legs are dying, my heart and lungs are screaming. walk around for four minutes get back on again do it again four times through and that develops your VO2 your capabilities massively do that to someone in month one you'll kill them so you've got to wait until month probably three by the time you're asking them to walk for four minutes they're going to walk away they're going to walk away keep on going so it's all about it has to be developmental it has to be a process we have to make sure we're avoiding unnecessary injury there's always going to be tweaks in someone when they start a workout program things start to hurt and ache here and there.

23:31We're just finding mobility, finding ranges of motion that haven't been found for a while. So it's about waking the system back up and then create base stability, mobility, base cardiovascular capability, and base strength. When you've got these things all in place, a person can actually do things which involve some dynamism. They can do walking lunges. They can throw a ball, shoulder not hurting. They can lift the weight's up and back doesn't hurt and the neck's not screaming at them all that stuff's in check yeah okay now you're ready to kind of up the level a bit and push harder and then we can raise the game and then you can make some really big changes and if you have if you take a viewpoint of taking six to twelve months to genuinely rebuild a body then that work sticks around for years that's true transformation have you seen if there's a difference in between from a motivational perspective in between training in the morning or in the evening?

24:27Yeah, I mean, in scientific terms, there's not a massive difference in terms of what your body does. Your body kind of just responds to being overloaded. The difference is how you are as being, there are morning and evening people, I mean, there really are. And if you're someone who wakes up at naturally nine in the morning, then working out at 9.30 is not a good idea. So if you're a bit more of a night owl, then you probably want to work out later in the day. In theory, the optimum time when your body is at full alertness, high circulation is around 11 a.m. So if you're going to choose a time, if your luxury was you had all the time in the world, I would be working at 11 a.m.

25:12You're up, you've eaten, you are mobile, you're mentally up and sharp, and you're set for a workout. So that's the ideal. Now going to cardio, I've heard from a lot of people that cardio can kill your muscle gains. Where do you stand on this? Yeah, so if you're trying to... There's different types of cardio. So you have... Sex? I'm joking. Well, sadly, if you wear one of these things, for most people, what's funny with whoop data is that the sex data is depressing. It's not very long. it's not very intense. More work needed there, guys. The reason why I said sex is because I've recently interviewed a fantastic sex therapist.

25:58I just thought about it because we spoke about cardio and sex. It's a good point. Sex is one of the key motivations for people to exercise. Interesting. Without question. I did a talk down in... To have more sex. To have more and better sex. To look better, to then have sex. It's all part of the same thing. I mean, sex is such a fundamental part of our life that... I guess a lot of people also want to make money for that, right? Yeah, well, there's that too, maybe. It's like a common denominator for so many things. Yeah, look, there's various spinoffs to how sex works. But from teenage boys through to whoever you like, sex is such a key central plank in our life and existence.

26:41Without realizing it, our physicality drives that ability, motivation, and enjoyment. so it really matters I feel like a lot of us realise it though I was doing a talk down in Dubai a few years ago it was a school, a boys school down there and these kids were all between 13 and 18, somewhere there and I said to them, what happened to you guys you're all working out, I guess, the gym over here you're doing it, what's your main motivation is it to get jacked up is it to lose weight, be in shape they're all giggling away and one of them said, because of the girls and it's just that they want to make sure they're kind of looking great and that's come about in teenage boys because there's the you know the footballer impact shouldn't be dismissed you know the footballers being in shape being iconic i mean it motivates boys to you follow that lead which hasn't happened in girls by the way girls actually are in that teenage category getting larger rather than in better shape boys are getting better girls are getting worse it's the the largest growing group of fatter individuals is teenage girls between the age of, I think, 14 and 16.

27:46Why is this? It's a really interesting question. I mean, there's not as many girls who are doing sport. So doing PE is definitely decreased in schools enormously. Sport's not just such a turn on for girls to go and do. The distraction of all the things that girls like of hair, makeup, clothes, social circles and so on is much more of a draw than sport has been. It's changing a bit. The gym thing has definitely got better for girls in the last probably five, six, seven years, but it's definitely a divergent group. So we need to work on that category. They're the ones that need to be really developed more for sure.

28:28And the abundance of, you know, sugary foods and drinks that are available and teenage girls in their social circles meet in the places where those things are going to be consumed so there's all that going on at the same time but back to the point in terms of the the sex input i mean the the key thing with um the drive for that is on a um a feel good factor to want to have sex you've got to probably feel good about yourself it helps anyway at least so part of this needs to try and be in shape is to go and make sure you feel like you're enjoying the process you want to take your clothes off and feel good about the fact rather than feel shy about the fact um from a cardiovascular point of view it is um it can be great if you you're fitter and healthier or it can be kind of short-lived and it's nothing the cardio training that we have to try and do and link to muscle mass there are a few types the zone two cardio zone two cardio is the stuff which is the the long boring stuff so zone two in your heart rate zoning uh is around 65 to 70 ish percent of your maximum heart rate level.

29:29Then you have zone three above that, zone four. Is that determined by the intensity or the length of the cardio session? Intensity. So zone two cardio is probably the best way to improve your cell mitochondrial efficiency. Okay. So each cell has a mitochondria, several, and that determines how your body utilizes and burns energy. So with good, healthy cell mitochondria, your body is very adaptive at burning away fatty acids, fat, and less glycogen, less sugar. If it's not very efficient, then you tend to steer towards burning away, consuming more glycogen or sugar rather than the fats. So we're not very good then at burning away our fat reserves.

30:18Healthy mitochondria are very happy sucking away fatty acids and glycogen, and you then can lose fat mass more quickly with healthy mitochondria. Zone 2 cardio gives you the best way to improve your mitochondrial health and efficiency. But it needs to be done in a very specific way. So Zone 2 cardio is, in the bike analogy, it's sat on the bike for 40 minutes, 45 minutes, at one level, don't deviate, one heart rate for the entire time. For you, probably around roughly 135, 138 beats per minute. roughly your level, and keep the same level the whole time. At that level, you'll feel like as though, yeah, this is kind of, I'm working a bit, but it's not crazy.

31:01This is all kind of very sustainable. But as you're doing that, your body's saying, yeah, this is fine, sustainable, and I'm adapting to this is good. I can just burn away. So the zone 2 cardio level is an intermediate level of intensity. Yeah. Now, the reason why that level is important from a muscle gain point of view is it will not take away from the amino acid structures within your muscle cells. So you aren't going to be asking for any more breakdown because it's all kind of low-level burn adaptation rather than sucking tons of energy. So if I'm going for a run, it's better to run at a lower pace, longer and enjoy it rather than doing these sprints and, you know, burning myself.

31:40It's a complex answer. So you've got part one is the zone two stuff, and that's good to do. If your goal is to retain muscle mass, forget gaining size, retain the muscle mass you've got. And lose body fat. And lose body fat at the same time. Then zone two cardio done probably three to four days per week at that tick along level, 40 minutes, will not take away from the muscles. On top of that, create really good cardiovascular fitness and health, which will aid your muscle development and structure. You've got to have really good nervous system responses, got to have really good blood feed into the muscles, so high VO2.

32:20We need to do VO2 training. So that VO2 model I said about before, doing the four minutes on, four minutes off approach, that should be done once every two weeks. No more than that, because it's super intensive. It will raise your capacity, but it will definitely not take away from the muscle structure. Are you familiar with Barry's boot camp? Yeah. These high intensity trainings. would you consider that this type of cardio workout? So that's a, Barry's is a circuit training class. So Barry's will, you go there, you get beaten up. It will test your cardiovascular fitness. You'll do some strength work, but it's a mixture.

32:56And you're not going to max overload. You're going to generally more high rep range, short recoveries. It's circuit training. So that's a way to get cardiovascular fit. That's going to burn energy. That's going to burn calories. It will not aid you massively. in retaining muscle mass, it'll keep you ticking along. If you did more cardio alongside that, then you would have a hard time retaining the muscle mass. Nothing wrong with it, it's just the start of training. You've got to be doing the VO2 work every two weeks, and in a normal week alongside your three to four times doing the Zone 2, you should be getting onto a rowing machine or a ski erg and doing 20 to 40 seconds of blasting.

33:38like a barrier, something blasting, hitting it really hard, fast as you can, rowing like crazy. How often, sorry? Once a week, twice a week. Once a week or twice a week. And that high intensity of doing, say, 20, 30, 40 seconds with a double or triple the duration of your work time of rest. So if you're doing 30 seconds of work, it's a minute, minute and a half of recovery. So really long recovery. So your peaks of that intensity can be super hard every single time. that's going to give you really good cardiovascular strength power and that again will not strip away muscle mass it will aid the development and this is the same for men and women yeah because i was discussing this with my girlfriend and years ago so i i i do and i've been doing heat trainings for quite some time um and years ago she was doing that with me too um and obviously as i developed relationship developed and we started to consider having kids so on and so forth she started researching and and she found out that it's not good for a woman to be doing these heat high intensity cardio sessions because you're adding too much stress to your body and that potentially can impact you having a child because your body is basically telling you you're not a safe space to yeah it's absolutely right so there's there's no doubt at all doing too much of the high intensity work all the time produces vast amounts of cortisol so this stress hormone and with that there can be dangers of not being able to create as much muscle mass strangely enough so actually reducing the ability to gain muscle mass from a reproductive point of view high cortisol can impact on the other hormone levels whether that's on estrogen testosterone certainly on estrogen so yes definitely most training most training programs in my training program for example 80 % of it is sub-maximal for sure 20 % is maximal going for it only 20 % maybe 15 % now the rest of all sub-maximal it's all ticking along I'm within my zones even on lifting days I'm not going into the gym every time I'm doing a big lift all the time it's the biggest lifting stuff maybe once every as maximal level every two weeks but I overload the muscles to a degree every couple of days, but not maximum.

35:55So if we're doing maxing out all the time, we can't keep up with that. There's too much oxidative stress, too much cordial creation. There's too much the body just can't recover from unless you've got unbelievable recovery strategies and you're doing an IV every day and you're doing an infrared sauna every other day and you're doing an ice bath every third day. And so if you do all that stuff, maybe, maybe, maybe, but even then too much. But this is so revealing for me because I do work out very regularly, five, six times a week. And because I live quite a complex or stressful life because of my work, sometimes I feel like if I overwork out, so if I go to the gym, but mostly with my cardio sessions, if I just run a few more kilometers, that's going to help me with my stress levels because I'm going to release them, I'm going to feel more tired.

36:49but from what you're saying is that if I'm overdoing cardio I'm increasing my cortisol levels and hence increasing my level of stress so it's counterproductive what I'm doing depends on the intensity so if your intensity on that extra few kilometers is that low level yeah zone two thing then you're absolutely fine to do that that's all going to benefit you actually if I'm not tracking that with a whoop or with an apple watch in terms of feeling tired should I not feel overly tired after the run so yeah my zone 2 level how should I feel after after I finish a zone 2 level cardio session like you could have kept on going like you could have kept okay yeah if you get the end of the run or the bike ride and you're thinking I'm done that's it then it's probably a bit too intensive it needs to be you get to it say yeah you know that was nice that was a good feeling I feel it's a nice run I could have gone another 3-4k and that's that's zone 2 it shouldn't be it's not it's far from maximum so three times a week zone 2 cardio and then twice a week a little bit more of a high intensity.

37:45Yeah and then once every two weeks doing the really high intensity four minutes on four minutes off VO2 training. Yeah. Probably on a bike because you can then measure directly your inputs and your levels and that's a really good cardio blend that won't take away from the muscle mass if you're doing the muscle gaining program or strength program alongside it. And how many times per week should we hitting the weight room? So in theory your muscles, if you really go for it and you break a muscle down, it recovers within about 12 to 24 hours. So in theory, in lab conditions, you could actually work out on one day and the next day in the same muscle area.

38:22But we all know that can't be done. We all know that's kind of impossible. So in reality, it takes solid 24 to 48 hours to recover from a really intensive session. So if you lifted really big on your chest on a Monday, by Wednesday, you're fine to do it again. Are you optimizing yourself doing it on the Wednesday? It's looking increasingly like as though if you're doing really high-level lifting, to lift on a Monday, your best day to lift again in the same area is on a Thursday. Three days of recovery, lifting the same area twice a week is enough to create the same growth as doing every other day.

38:58So rather than do it multiple times, you can actually save yourself some time, do it really effectively every third day rather than every second day. So there's a way to break it down, which means you've got more time to work on other areas. So you might do, rather than doing a split of doing chest and quads on one day, and then the next day doing your back and your hamstrings, and then on the Wednesday again doing the chest and the quads, and repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. And would you recommend to do two muscle groups per session? Well, if you're going to break it down as being, what's nice, if you're breaking it down as being every third day, doing the same thing again, you have more time to actually do more things.

39:34so on a Monday you might do your your chest, your shoulders maybe your quads, maybe your abs and on the next day shouldn't we be doing abs every day that we go to the gym? so it depends what you're playing alongside it so for example you're a tennis player then you're working your abs seriously hard playing tennis when you're lifting when you're doing even a squat, when you're squatting with a bar on your back or a front squat with a barbell you should be gripping your abs so hard that they're getting a workout anyway. So if you're not feeling your abs working out when you're squatting, you aren't doing it right.

40:11So everything we do should be, you always brace, brace hard, and then lift. And it should be that feels, gets a workout in itself. Alongside that, yes, you can do lots of other floor core work. Pilates done with the right person in the right way is phenomenally good at getting those core areas to really engage and be the access point that they should be. So we can add core work in, but good programming, good lifting, that gives you a really strong core work at any rate. Personally, I do core work specifically once a week, twice a week. Okay. And the rest is all within the rest of the programming.

40:48But bear in mind, if I'm not in a machine, in the gym, I, with a cable, we'll do various work on functional training with cables or do work with kettlebells. And you're doing kettlebell work, then the nature of doing movement-based work is you're engaging the abs as you go. We're a flowing system. We shouldn't just be, today's going to be pumping out the chest. Today's going to be doing a pull work. It should be we flow. They should be doing cable work. You're doing rotations and doing chopping movements and doing sort of pull down work involving using your core to move. We're a flowing system.

41:19We should be thinking, how could I train my body to play a sport well? And it wouldn't be Saturn machine just doing a push because you have to go in multi-direction changes and therefore should be designing our programming to be based around how can we move. You know, when you go to the gym, at least when I go to the gym, I see a big disparity in what everyone is doing. Like there doesn't seem to be a consensus on what is right and what is wrong. So you see a very skinny, small guy lifting very heavy. And I'm thinking, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm thinking you're going to break your back.

41:53I mean, you're going to injure yourself. and then someone incredibly big and bulk and heavy lifting very light weights or just maybe lifting their own body and working with their body weight. Is there a best way to do this? Or maybe other people, they work out until muscle failure. Some others, they just follow a specific amount of reps. That's goal-specific. So if someone is looking for, again, it's down to really what's the... This is where the nuance in your training is interesting. You can do strength work for power. You can do strength work for straight, absolute strength. You can do strength work for muscular endurance.

42:32You can do strength work for size. And each of those four different arms has a different approach to how you go about it. Some of the things within it are the same. Some things are slightly different. And the number of sets that you do, lifts that you would do, resistance you would do within that lift will vary. so the straight pure strength gain athlete to lift literally to be able to lift up a weight once what's the biggest weight i can lift once will train a very specific way on creating just that thing they'll build the absolute level they can lift again and again and again over a long period of time and they won't do multiple sets of eights and tens and fifteens or is it 20 or forget that it's largely doing just i'm gonna lift this heavy weight i'm gonna warm up get myself going i lift this thing twice or four times probably no more than that to create just pure strength um the power lifter is different they'll go through multiple sets to train the body to get used to movement um they'll then build up the the absolute strength and same as the strength athlete would do um but engage um a whole bunch of other areas to create more rounded strength so if they're a straight power lifter doing clean and jerk, they'll do a lot of leg lifting work or squatting work.

43:52You put a pure strength athlete, might just focus on one area, just doing, I'm going to do just my chest. I'm going to be the best chest in the world and that's all I'm doing. A power lifter is more rounded as a program and they split their routines up in a different way. The muscular endurance person, probably an athlete, will do multiple sets, higher rep ranges, some pure strength work within it, some high rep range within it. So it's going to be a mixture of all sorts within that as well. And the size gain program is a blend of all, again, a lot of sets, a huge amount of sets, with combinations on different days of doing high rep ranges, short recoveries, burn out, burn out.

44:35You're trying to break fibers. You're trying to just rip the fibers up and then feed them to regrow multiple sets. And some days are pure strength to get that base right, but it's about doing a lot of volume, high, high volume. So each thing varies so much. You go in the gym and look at thinking, what the hell is going on here? Because each person is doing a different thing. It's like going to a restaurant and everyone is eating a dish from a completely different country.

45:02So now as we are approaching summer, I think almost everyone wants to lose fat, right? To look skinnier, look fitter. Is there an ideal workout routine that you can describe to me from let's say Monday to Saturday or Monday to Friday that anyone can follow in the gym to lose belly fat? So, yeah, fat's just fat. So it doesn't burn from one area. It's the whole thing where if we could spot burn it, we'd make a fortune. So the program would be you'd opt to do that zone two cardio four days a week or five days a week. You'd do that for sure because that's that burn, burn, burn, burn thing. you want to be doing the short intervals probably three days per week so that approach you're doing 20 to 40 seconds high intensity double the time of recovery and do it again eight to ten times that's going to be on three days per week on the resistance training side for really the optimized weight loss specifically weight loss and fat will go within that you'd probably go for PHA training, peripheral heart action.

46:11Very simple way you go for doing an arm thing, leg thing, arm thing, leg thing, barriers, basically. You go for that three to four days per week. And that should be doing an arm thing, a leg thing, an arm thing, eight exercises, rep range of probably 12 to 20 reps, somewhere in that zone. Rest for two minutes and do that same routine again four or five times. And don't drink alcohol. completely take away refined sugars. Zero alcohol. Zero alcohol. Yeah, if you actually want to lose weight, then you should not be drinking. It's debasable drinking full stop anyway. I mean, actually drinking is, there's not one shred of scientific evidence or papers out there that gives you anything that says alcohol does anything positive.

46:58What's worse for you to stay in shape? Alcohol or sugar? Refined sugar. given the abundance of sugar that we have um in our systems and available um and the the fine balancing act between how much sugar we can actually take on board and we should have in our bloodstream um sugar arguably is the bigger killer um and the biggest detriment to being healthy um alcohol has a unique capability of crossing a crossing into our uh our brain and crosses the blood barrier and gets into a system in a way which is intrinsically destructive. It has phenomenally bad impacts on how our gut microbiome functions.

47:42It is a suppressant and therefore a depressive. It strips away amino acids so your muscle cells have a hard time regenerating. I could go on. I mean, there's a whole bunch of things there. I like a drink, by the way. You do a drink? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing is, it's something which is such an inherent part of our life. that we shouldn't dismiss it. So for all the things that are bad about it, what is good about it, and this is not a scientific thing, there's not a physical entity with this, is socially and psychologically, it does have a benefit. So if you find that a good glass of wine with friends relaxes you and you feel good and it's engaging, then clearly it has a benefit.

48:23Are there some alcohols that would impact us physically more than others in terms of gaining fat or the sweeter and darker it is the worse it is for you and darker so red wine also uh lesser red wine on the spirit side on the spirit side yeah you take on some rum or you know sherry and port and those things uh then they're pretty pretty intense or like cocktail sugary cocktails because you have you know the worst you might as well just kind of say you're a diabetic and go with it yeah i mean they're really bad um any any liquid sugar Any liquid sugar is the way to most quickly gain fat and to become borderline diabetic.

49:02So liquid sugar has pretty much, again, no positive elements. It's the quickest way to increase your calorie intake. It's the fastest way to produce a... That includes juices, right? Slightly different, to a degree, yes. but refined sugars suspended in water are the quickest way to ensure you're going to have some form of a insulin resistance which means you can't process sugar quickly you'll become diabetic. So when you see someone going to supermarkets picking up those two liter bottles of fizzy drinks that's the reason why the kids when they're going to be in 2050 are going to be half them obese.

49:40That's exactly the reason why. I have some friends that they don't go to the gym and they work out from home. They used to go to the gym but then through COVID lockdown happened, they started working out from home, they're watching these videos from YouTube and then they retained that. And I always think, can you actually get fit by doing that and not going to the gym, like properly fit? No. No, honestly, no. Unless you're phenomenally well set up. You just impacted the pockets of a lot of my friends. Yeah, quite exactly. So there are ways you could potentially do it. So for example, I use chest as an example because the chest is easy to work on.

50:20If you were to do super slow training, press-up position, let's say, and you spent 15, 20 seconds lowering yourself down through that press-up movement and then 15, 20 seconds going back up again and did that for as many reps as you can do. And you'd burn out. I mean, you're going to get a huge burnout. So it's 40 seconds per push-up? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you can take a minute if you like. That's very intense. Yeah. so you do that and that's going to be really burning away so if you did that arguably and we've shown it scientifically too that produces enough of a breakdown of muscle structure that it might create the strength gain they would do going to the gym until muscle failure you should do that yeah it's a failure how many can you do i don't know for a while uh yeah it's been a long time that's the thing is slow training is technique and it is very very hard but it's really boring i I mean, it's unbelievably boring.

51:13And we've tried every method over the years to see if they work. And slow training specifically, God, it's like having your teeth pulled out. You just get so utterly bored by rep number three. And it hurts. It really, really hurts. But there's no fun in it. So, yes, you could do it. But to do what you need to be able to do and be effective, honestly, life's too short. Going back to changing our training routine as we get older. so I'm soon going to be 30. What should I be doing in my 30s and then in my 40s that I shouldn't be doing on my 20s? Is it the resting period? Is it how heavy I lift? So you need to, yeah, look, you need to sustain the heavy lifting.

51:57So don't let that drop back. The point at which, because you're now an old man, you're going to have a sore back in the morning or anything else. You went for a long, long time. But if you start to have the feeling of something's aching or I'm not, I don't know, not as good as I felt before. That's not the signal to say I should slow down. That's the signal to say I should step this up and keep on pushing. People often get to their 30s and they say, well, I just awake in the morning feeling a little bit stiff, so I thought I'd just take it easy. Yeah, well, fine, you're going to slip away quickly.

52:30So you've got to make sure that you don't slow down. So the 30s are a point where you actually sustain, maybe even amp it up a little bit in certain ways, in the right way, clearly. And don't let it drop and work very heavily on your flexibility, your mobility and your core strength. And OK, then I was thinking maybe that that's something that would happen gradually over the course of time. But then within shorter time frames, let's say a span of one, two, three years, if we follow a workout routine. and this is something that I experienced, my body gets used to it and then I stop seeing results or the same level of growth as I used to see before.

53:19How often should we be changing our training program? About every 8 to 12 weeks. So every 8 to 12 weeks should be periodized so you have a structure within that program. It's not a case of just on a Monday I do that machine and that machine and that machine. it's probably for two or three weeks you do the same things and then you add in a different thing in the fourth week and then back to the same thing before in the fifth week and you kind of periodize it through. So over the course of a three-month period you're doing a number of different approaches. So rather than just doing, again, chest example, just going to the barbell.

53:54My Monday session is my barbell. Then I do peck flies afterwards with some weights. Maybe on the third week of that you've already done that or the fourth week you've developed some strength within that. So I'm going to just do cable work. in week number four. And we go on there, I get some cable crossovers, I'll do some pullovers with cable, I'm going to do some other ways of attacking the chest in a different angle and change resistance. So maybe week four might be a lighter week rather than just going up and up and up and up. I'm going to take it down and do just a week of doing 25 reps per set and five sets rather than three or eight rather than four and change it up in that way.

54:30And then the fifth week, back to where you were again, back to that strength work in the third week that you were doing, so you're going to get back on the same linear approach. It's linear, do the same, change it up, do something different, linear, change it up to something different, linear. And that's for three months. Yeah, and then you reassess where you're at. You might just kind of completely mix it up in different ways. Now, inevitably, there's repetition in workout routines because we're working in the same areas effectively. But you have to have a three-month look at how we construct that programming.

55:00And within that, it's not just the same thing. It's why there's not a perfect workout week. Because you'll be able to repeat every single week. Effectively, it's a good week you're creating, and the next week's a bit of an advancement on that, and the next one's the advancement again. By the fourth week, let's just mix it up. We might just do a cardio week and do lots and lots of high rep work, even if your goal is strength. Just to change how your body's getting some rest and recovery, get the head back in space again, look forward to going back into your lifting heavy routine the following week.

55:29It's just playing with your head a bit to make sure you feel motivated. And within that as well, It's why it's important to have something else to focus on. And back to myself again, me, me, me, it's, you know, I like playing tennis. So for me, my goal is to be able to be fit to play tennis. So it breaks up my reason to do something. So I want to make sure I've got power in my game. I've got speed. I've got agility. So it gives me another focus of why I do something. And we all need that. So it should be, we set a goal within a three month period of, I'm going to go and walk the mountain. I'm going to go and take part in a 5K event.

56:02I'm going to go and play some tennis. I'm going to, whatever it might be, have something else as a reason within it to stay motivated rather than just, I'm just going to go to the gym. I'm just going to do that. The gym is a means to an end. It's not the end. It's a tool. Yeah, for a lot of people, it's an end for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And then when it comes to measuring our performance or our results, I think almost everyone, the first thing that they use is the scale. So am I gaining weight? Am I losing weight? And then perhaps the second thing is the mirror. How do I look? Are there any other markers that we should be looking at?

56:38Especially for someone that is just starting, like body fat or all of these things. Yeah, there's about 250. Let's say for someone that is starting. And again, going back to the American analogy, let's give milk to this. The basic ones really are, the weight's one we know well, of course. BMI is useful to a degree. Can you really simplify BMI as if I was a 10-year-old boy? So the equation is, it's your weight divided by your height squared. It's basically an equation that correlates your height and your weight. Okay. But the problem with it is, if you're high muscle mass and you're heavier, then you come out as being more on the obese end of the BMI scale.

57:19But criticisms aside of the BMI, if you're overweight, and you know you look like you're overweight and overfat, then BMI is a useful scale to look at as being a way to say, I was 33 BMI and now 25 BMI. And that's a positive change. Body fat readings are really important, definitely. So our composition is critical. The best ways to do composition, whilst you can stand on a scale and it gives you a readout on certain scales, they're a little bit erratic. So any sort of a bioimpedance test, which it runs a small current through you to actually look at resistance in the tissues because fat and muscle stored in wet and dry states, kind of.

57:58So the bioimpedance gives us a reading of your fat, but if you're dehydrated, it thinks you're more fat than you are. So they're slightly inaccurate. There's a thing called a DEXA scan, which is really good for looking at a really accurate way of getting your composition reading. So DEXA scans are the gold standard way to get scanned to look at your... And where can you get that? There's a few specialist places in most cities that have them. They're worth doing every year and see where you're at. It's a small sort of an x-ray type thing. It gives you a look at your bone density as well at the same time.

58:34So it's good, worthwhile. We do a thing called STIKU. STIKU testing is where we have you stand on a rotating plate and you have your arms to your side and a laser scans your body up and down and gives you an algorithm based readout of what your body fat percentage is. And that's accurate. It's pretty good. So there's ways you can do it and can access it. Those are important. Your clothing is a good sign. So if the trousers that you wear don't fit anymore, well, we know you've changed shape. Is that in a good way or a bad way? So those are all key things for sure. I would recommend people get their blood tested every year, if not more often.

59:09The blood test gives you lots of really important key health markers. And you do need to know your key data of your white blood cell count, your red blood cell count, your cholesterol levels, we'd like to know your blood pressure and your glucose level within your bloodstream. So all these quite simple markers. In fact, you can get tests for your blood sugar within any chemist and do that. And that's worth doing to know if you've got some problem with your blood sugar. You should get your blood tested there every six months to a year. Not too much, not too crazy. There's a Brian Johnson approach to this.

59:41Brian Johnson's the guy who's spending a gazillion bucks a year on living forever. His blood's tested, I think, every three days or four days. It just doesn't change much in that time. It just can't. It's impossible other than boosting in vitamins, which is going to have a spike clear where we know it's going because you can see it going in. So every three to six months would be at the upper end of the testing frequency. Every six, 12 months is about right. And that's worth doing. Want to revisit the topic about fat loss, but approaching it from a slightly different angle. Again, as we were approaching summer, people want to lose fat.

1:00:17is there a particular diet that you might recommend that will help us achieve this okay um yeah uh so fasting is probably a way to actually get um some responses in the short term um so different fasting there are different fastings yeah as we speak right now we're in middle of ramadan funny enough so people are fasting uh naturally and actually weirdly doing a 16-8 approach the way that it's fallen this year is about 16-8 so you have um you know 16 hours of not eating uh and eight hours in which you can as your window yeah and it's interesting i wouldn't do that all the time i do it all the time unless i really can't but let's say 80 of my life i follow that what's your reason for doing it two reasons number one is i do feel like it's the easiest way for me to stay in shape for sure.

1:01:12The one that I feel like I'm sacrificing the least and getting the biggest results. And then the second one is because the first hours of my day, which is when I'm predominantly fasted, is when I need the most energy and I feel like I'm consuming a lot of energy when I'm digesting if I have breakfast. So I feel like I'm sharper, I feel lighter while at the same time very strong the first hours of the day. Like, for example, right now I came fasted to this episode. So that works for me. Obviously, there are some days that is harder than others, but ultimately I got used to it and I do see the benefits and the results.

1:01:49Yeah. So for most people, it's been successful because it's a control and it gives you distinct patterns of how you eat. Everyone then knows you have breakfast and you have dinner, more or less, and that's really it. so it works it's consistent it avoids you then snacking so you're controlling calorie intake quite successfully the downsides to it and the upsides within it as well so if you're looking at the approach of how the the system responds there is a a degree of a lot of evidence about how fasting can assist the the dumping of senescent cells dead cells we have these senescent dead cells in our system and any anything that's dead in your system will make the thing next to it you are not very healthy either.

1:02:32So dumping out dead cells, whether that's in the body or in the brain, is critical, crucial. So it's where keto eating and fasting approaches have been touted as being the ways to make that speed up and happen. And there's evidence to it for sure as well. So definitely having a fasting approach helps that process. For those who don't know what keto eating is, what is it? So keto eating is low carbohydrates, actually relatively medium protein, quite high fat. And within that process of eating, there's lots of evidence over possibly, possibly improving our lifespan. It's an anti-inflammatory. It's a touted, I have to clarify this.

1:03:18It's promoted as being anti-inflammatory. It promotes as being good to reduce the stress to the gut. By being anti-inflammatory, our senescent and dead cells have a better way, easier way of ridding, extracting my system, we regenerate well, we therefore can live longer and healthier and be more energized. Does it work? There's evidence either way. And the jury is still very much out on whether it does. Of all I've seen and read for sure. With fasting approaches, so the 168 approach to fasting. it's not dissimilar. You're producing an environment in which for a large part of your day you aren't adding any stress.

1:03:59So your body has a chance to then have to break its own resources down. The danger with that is that, and this is the debate, is that when you're someone who's working out really hard and working really hard, you know, our brain is a, it's the highest calorie burning thing we've got, by the way. So when we're busy working, we do burn more energy. When we're busy working out, we clearly burn more energy. If you're a generally busy person anyway, we burn energy. If you are taking on board the exact amount of food that you need at each end of that fasting process in the right format, then it's possible you could actually have enough energy present to cope with the rest of the day and all that goes with it.

1:04:40If you're doing anything which is especially cardiovascularly testing, then the chances are you start to run out of steam within that training session. So it depends on what you're doing in a certain day. So in days, if you're going and lifting heavily in the gym, for example, or just doing lifting in the gym, then fasting is fine. You have plenty of energy you need for lifting, totally fine, a lot of sugar available, the protein is in the system anyway, you've got fats there regardless. On the days where if you were to go and do, say, for argument's sake, a 10K run, I would challenge anybody to get the best performance out of that 10K run because there's not the ability to keep on going beyond around probably 35, 40 minutes before you start to deplete your level without having fueled it appropriately beforehand.

1:05:29So it depends on your days that you have set up, depends on the intensity of them. We know, for example, that there's a great study done recently was in somewhere in America, I forget where it was now, but there were two groups of people, I think 10 athletes in each group. Both groups did the same training session of hard interval training on day one. Group A ate then carbohydrates within half an hour finishing their session. Group B ate the same number of carbs, but five hours later. So effectively like doing a fasting day where you trained and then you ate later on. The next day did a training session of intervals again.

1:06:09Those that did not eat after they had worked out the day before were 40 % down in their performance level on day two compared to those that did eat in that half an hour afterwards. So on days when you try to do a fasting day, if your workout program is such that you're going to be overloading cardiovascularly, then you won't be able to perform very well the days thereafter. So then the days when you're doing cardio work, you want to be having... That includes also the zone two cardio that you were mentioning. So any kind of cardio? Zone two a little less so because the intensity is so much less that the burn rate is much, much lower.

1:06:44And the demands on it to do it again the next day are just not as high. If you're doing high intensity work, then you'd need to have on the day you're training, day one, carbs after that session to allow day two to work well. Now, there's no data I've seen over whether day two, if it wasn't cardio, it was strength work, how much of that would dip. but I've got to assume the output on the day two strength work after day one cardio would also dip. But I haven't seen any data on that, I don't know. So basically to summarize what you're saying is in simple terms, you shouldn't be fasted if you're going for a high-intensity cardio session, as simple as that.

1:07:19But if you can and if you're not going to be doing cardio, intermediate fasting, that 16 to 8-hour window, it is actually good for you. yeah great evidence as well with that on preventing and reversing uh diabetes and pre-diabetes um so and the weight loss effects of that um anecdotally are good so so yeah has a place for sure now going back to your overall mission which is increasing the lifespan of people so in order for us to achieve that what type of diet should we follow um it's a um so it's you have to have a good amount of protein for sure. So for a male who is in their 30s, 40s, about roughly 1.3 to 1.5 grams of protein per kilo of body weight should be the intake.

1:08:14For females, a little bit less, but not very much, probably 1.1 to 1.3 grams per kilo. As you get older, you got to keep the protein levels up it's probably a little bit less people in their 50s 60s 70s because they can't absorb it and utilize as quickly but if you're if you're training still hard and you're doing the right things that protein intake is critical and that's where people go slightly wrong is diets tend to be in the main quite carb heavy so we have the energy we need but not the rebuilding structure you know protein are the bricks so we need to have the bricks there to build and if we lose the structure then we age so focus on the protein but don't get wild on the protein either so i know people who take on two grams per kilo of body weight so if someone weighs 100 kilos that's 200 grams of protein per day for context that's you know 10 12 breasts of chicken consumed in a day that's a whole lot of chickens try and get through so your body can't cope with that either and some evidence coming out as well of too much protein being maybe harmful for the body because it just sits in the bloodstream and causes some other bad effects of trying to be healthy, regenerate cells.

1:09:27So getting the blend right is important at all ages to ensure we retain muscle strength, structure, rebuilding processes, all the collagen we need as well to rebuild. We need protein to help collagen production. Collagen keeps the skin cells and the hair and the bones all functioning well. so we got to have that going in for sure uh taking on collagen as a supplement is a definite must um it's an absolute given from what age uh in your 20s into early 30s there are plenty in your system when you're in your teens and 20s for sure you should be taking collagen right now as a supplement yeah you should be yeah and probably taking on creatine as well really yeah the thing about creatine at least for me is that because i don't want to become very bulky and big i feel like creatine is adding water it can to my muscles and i would it's a danger yeah yeah it's danger let's trade off within that so i think that's absolutely right so if you take on five grams of creatine per day um then it's low dose um five grams is that particularly for me because i'm 29 um 180 that's that's a pretty much a given for all people it's such a low dose that it gives you what you need to make sure you get this, what's called ATP production.

1:10:41So the adenosine triphosphate. It's a way in which we are able to access our energy, ATP, and creatine produces ATP. So we need to be taking it on to make sure we keep on being able to produce energy where we need to. So for everyone, it's a key thing for sure. As you get older, maybe a little bit more, but not by much to be honest with you. So five grams is about the right level for all people. Interesting. So creatine, you should increase the dosage as you get older, but protein, you should reduce it. We can't, yeah, we can't absorb, we can't break down protein quite as well as you get older.

1:11:10And when should we be taking creatine throughout the day? It doesn't matter too much, actually. The boy just takes it on if you had a choice in the morning, maybe, but if you took it on in the evening, it wouldn't matter. You're talking about a creatine supplement, right? Okay. Yeah, absolutely.

1:11:28It's interesting because you've been talking mainly when it comes to the food that we should be eating in order for us to live longer about macronutrients you haven't mentioned calories whatsoever do you think we should be counting calories no no no so you're telling me that you are at an eight percent of body fat and you've been more or less in that range for the last 30 years and you don't count calories i i couldn't tell you what I had calorie wise when I was 25, 35, 45 or now. I have no idea. So I have a rough idea. I could guess it. I can work it out a piece of paper for you roughly now. But in terms of what the actual numbers are, I don't begin to count it.

1:12:19Okay. So can you get a six pack without counting calories? Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, you just keep looking in the mirror and then you look at, is it there yet? No, I'm going to make sure I just kind of work a bit harder and my protein intake critically, enough protein going in. With enough protein going in, your body automatically balances out what you need anyway. Let's come down to as well, you can look into this as being how our gut responds to certain things too. So if you've got good gut health and you've got good gut ghrelin, which tells you when to stop eating, and that's a key thing as well.

1:12:49So things like the most recently, you know, GLP-1 agitators. So Wegevee and Zempik and all the Manjaro and so on, these are all giving your gut something, which you probably already have. I know I already have it, which is a high level of ghrelin. And the ghrelin is what stops your body from eating. So, you know, if I eat, I sit there and I sort of have some food and I'm full, I'm kind of done. and that's it where some people see food as being if the food's here I'm going to just finish every single piece of it and then think about food for the next hour as well and what GLP agitators do when you inject with a ZenPic is that they give you the thing to say stop eating now if you've got that naturally you've drawn the lucky straw in the lottery of life but when should we stop eating because I feel like there are two places within our body that basically are the decision makers when it comes to eating more or less.

1:13:54One is your brain and the other one could be your stomach. And I've heard so many people say, listen to your body, listen to your body. Damn it. Sometimes if I listen to my body, I'd be massively overweight. So how can I know that I'm not overeating? So if you're not counting calories, are you measuring the grams of every food that you eat more or less? It's broad brush. so if you know your protein intake per day how much do you weigh right now? 72 so for you, if you had a target of around 120 grams of protein per day so you're going to focus now on having in terms of chickens it's about 6 chicken breasts 7 per day, somewhere there I eat more or less that so 3-4 breasts of chicken maybe 3-4 eggs that kind of thing maybe something else that kind of stuff by having that kind of intake of protein or marginally more than that maybe 140 grams it's a lot of food to take on board and that focus on the protein makes your gut respond in such a way where it starts to tell you to stop eating not true for all people but the protein gives you a much better way to actually regulate how you eat if you give the body sugar especially refined sugars then the body asks for more quickly we get this increase in blood sugar level slightly then a drop, it asks for more and keeps on going.

1:15:16Any calorie dense food tends to make you want to eat more. So calories, if fat calories are the most dense calories you can get, roughly 10 calories per gram, protein is about 4.5, carbs about five, alcohol seven. And if you take on board fat, for a small little bit of it, it's super calorific. So you can, yes, take on more of that because it's easy, but then you're increasing calories. If the focus is on the protein, the protein means you fill on probably a fairly, you know, it's dense enough, big enough, slow digesting enough to actually say, I can't eat more for now. And it regulates you in that way.

1:15:55You've mentioned, okay, so in terms of supplements, you've said that we should be taking collagen, five grams of creatine on a daily basis. Is there anything as that we should be taking 100 vitamin d vitamin d especially if you live in the uk right vitamin yeah yeah god yeah i mean vitamin d uh it should be d3 and k2 is combination um probably about three to five thousand iu of vitamin d3 because we just do not get enough light and without enough d3 um it hampers our fat utilization it hampers our testosterone production and then we're in trouble with trying to then create muscle growth to create fat loss is it safe to say that if you don't take vitamin uh vitamin d3 you're going to get fatter because you're going to store more fat it's it's a distinct possibility yeah you're setting an environment up in which actually yeah yeah let's say well it's thing it's it's one of the things where it's one of the ways in which you would make your body get to a place where it's less able to burn away fat yes definitely so it's one thing we have to do and we know that if we when we do blood testing we do in my clubs the blood tests in march are always on the floor of people i think 80 percent of all tests we do throughout the entire year are deficient in vitamin d significantly so we are all super low and it takes a lot of sun to actually convert to get vitamin d into your system you need roughly about 30 to 40 minutes of direct sunlight to your arms and your chest and your face on a really sunny day to get what you need every day.

1:17:31So we don't get that. What about protein shakes? I feel like that's the number one supplement that everyone goes to. So you have to ask the question, what are you drinking? So which protein is it? For me, it's an isolate whey protein, so like no carbs. And where did that come from? I laughed somewhere. And what's in it? And is there arsenic in there? Or is there other stabilizers in there? Or is there something else in there we don't know about? And by the color of it, probably all of those. Yeah. So that's the thing. We don't know. And you can get great products. You can get great whey. You can get great pea protein.

1:18:02You can eat collagen. Not so good. You don't take whey protein as a supplement? In my club, one of my clubs, we have an amazing, healthy drinks bar there. I've got great, great protein smoothies there. And I do have them, but I don't form my diet around them. So I have all my protein from real food. Organic has to be organic. It has to be definitely not super farmed. My fish has to be wild fish. Nothing which is on a large-scale basis. So it means going and sorting good quality product, and you've got to get that protein. if you're eating chicken again about the chickens that are from a a mass-produced chicken sauce you might as well eat the package it came in because there's no goodness in that chicken it's limited you are getting the protein you think you're getting you're getting a hold of other things that made that chicken survive for a short period of time and then be slaughtered and i'm not pro-vegan i'm all about eating all sorts of different animals for good reasons but But what you get, how you get it is really, really, really important.

1:19:14So when you're buying, it has to be free-range eggs, has to be organic beef, has to be grass-fed, has to be all the right approaches. Yes, it's more expensive. It just is. But to get what you want from a quality point of view to then get your system to respond, your body to grow, it has to be the same thing. What you eat is what you are. Right. So, okay, organic protein. Now, when it comes to carbs, what are some foods that have, let's say, good carbs? So let's say, should we be eating potatoes with potatoes, but maybe not rice or bread? Yeah, I mean, they're all okay. So you can pick your way through all of these things.

1:19:54Is rice bad for you? No. Are potatoes bad for you? No. If you fry them, are they bad for you? Yeah. So are they part of your overall structure of how you consume through a day? Absolutely. So how do you pick your way through all those things? You want to really have carbs that are high in fiber, ideally. So you keep the skin maybe of the potato and those things? It's useful, definitely. New potatoes are particularly good. They're quite low glycemic. Everybody likes them. Sweet potatoes are the same thing. They're great and the skin's really rich in fiber. Brown rice has more fiber. Brown is better than white?

1:20:27A little bit. A little bit more fiber. That's about it, really. And again, it depends where you source your rice from, how they grew it, how they looked after it, how they treated it, how they sprayed it afterwards to keep it okay for packaging. Jesus, should we be looking at all these things before we buy everything? If you know too much, it's really hard to go huge shopping. You need to have A, a lot of time, and then B, a lot of money. Yeah, it gets, I find it, there are points where I go for dinner somewhere and I'm pretty really annoying. I do ask, is the fish from X, is the chicken, happy chicken?

1:21:00and often the restaurant, you know, they don't know or don't know or don't care. I don't know what it is, but, and therefore it gets really hard to pick through where to eat and go into a supermarket. Forget it. I mean, I order my food from places that I know are organic sources and they're well sourced. Is Whole Foods a safe, you know, choice? At the risk of litigation, I'm going to, it's a mixture. No, no, it's not. It's a mixture. So if you go somewhere like in London, if you go to Daylesford, Yeah. Organic. Really? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Tailspot is expensive. For a reason. Yeah, okay. But it is for a reason.

1:21:39Go to a butcher. That's a good answer, for a reason, okay. Go to a good butcher. The best thing you can do is rather than get your meat from a supermarket, is go to a really good local butcher and they get good meat. Okay. Cheat meals. I think there's, again, not a consensus on how often we should have them and how much should we go like sort of all in? How often should we have them? Should we have them actually in the first place? So I'm a bit out on cheat meals in that eating shouldn't be a question of good and bad and structure my week. So I know where it comes from. I get the cheat meal scenario and it's one that without question should be used, can be used.

1:22:24My ideology has always been, my background is my dad was a footballer. I grew up in a household that was just, it was just exercise, sport, and eating well. And it was very much the norm. So my entire life has been structured around, this is just normal. This is not an unusual amount of eating pattern. This is just normal eating. So the notion within that normal eating of it being a cheat thing is that if you pick a food, if you decide that on Friday night, it's a big curry night, it's just Friday night dinner. So is that a cheat night? No, because it's just part of the mix of all of it. So your ideology needs to be, I'm not so focused on...

1:23:03For me, that would be a cheat night. Am I wrong? Here. I wouldn't put too much of a label on it. Okay, let's put it in a different way. So for me, like 90 % of my eating is healthy, clean eating, ideally also organic. And 10 % of it is less clean. Sometimes it's just a random Friday night, curry night, But some other times it's a proper cheat meal where, yeah, it's proper. It's a blowout. Yes. Yeah, okay. I think my honest opinion is I wouldn't stress about it. I think people, the danger with having a label of a cheat meal is only that we attach too much importance to it. And in a sense, it's just a day where you just have some more food.

1:23:51And the next day you're going to have just a balance again. So if you know within the rhythm of everything that these moments come along where there are foods that you're going to just consume and take, what's going on? This week on, today we're filming this on, are we Wednesday today? I think we're Wednesday. And I ordered from a well-known fish and chip place in the middle of Mayfair, which kind of a posh fish and chip space that I never, ever, ever get food from. I ordered a Deliveroo version of the fish and chips. I haven't had this for years. and I thought, yeah, I'm going to try it. Someone told me about this thing, so I tried it.

1:24:24It got delivered, ate that, tasted great. Did I view that as being a cheat meal? It's just a thing that I had because the rest of my days always, by nature of just being healthy, eating, are fine. So I don't have the label attached to it. Was it a cheat meal? I guess it was a cheat meal in the context of being a different meal. But how often should one reward, you know, how often should I reward myself with one of these things? Like once a week, once every two weeks? That was the rule of thumb. It's such a hard question to answer. Considering that I live a healthy lifestyle, both exercising regularly and then the rest of, let's say, my day-to-day, I eat clean.

1:25:07If you were to, yeah, I mean, in context of if your goal is to, is goal-specific again? Because, all right, let me frame this in a slightly different way. So for me, when it comes to cheat meals, I look at two different things. number one is the effect that it's going to have on my body so how much is this going to you know stop the my my goals my targets yeah and then on the other hand is more from a psychological perspective so do i need this once a week or do i need this once every two weeks so then i can actually carry on and continue this level of discipline with everything else that I'm doing it's a really funny thing it's something which I hesitate only because um if you go back to the athlete perspective on this um athletes don't look at this stuff at all so um it's really you know a good example would be Usain Bolt at his prime when he was you know world champion Olympic champion sprinter would eat chicken nuggets regularly um was that his cheat meal well it can't be a cheat because it was all the time and he was burning at such a rate and was such a highly tuned machine that the food became just part of the process was it optimized no um was it was ian bald was eating chicken nuggets all the time regularly yeah but this is his interview this is what he said he was doing and should you have a little less of them by the way yeah so it's but those revelations and you look at your most um performers most athletes and they're not so rigid in everything being perfect all the time you want to have something I'm gonna have something knowing that's in the mix of all things okay they're burning at a completely different rate than almost everybody else it's like they are yeah it's like if someone has excess of money they are also able to spend at a different rate because they're earning at a different rate so I would assume it's the same with calories yes it is it is yes absolutely but I think the key thing within that is purely simply, what do we have to shift and move here?

1:27:07So is it a case of, we need to increase our activity to allow then just food to be seen as being food? I'd say it comes back to being quality of food again. So we're focusing on, where's the win with this? If you're trying to go for a cheat food because you want to just have a big refined sugar blowout, then that's never a good thing, clearly. Is that part of our strategy? Never. So if I go, so if I want to, cheat meals are important in my life. I can see. So if I want to have a cheat meal, it's always better to do it with, you know, fats and carbs and whatnot, but no sugar. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But it's also going to be better for my body to not go off the rails, off track.

1:27:54Right? Yeah. So if it's, honestly speaking, if it's now and again, it makes such a tiny difference. What's now and again? Because that's a matter of perspective. I need to know this. Let's say someone did it every day. So every day clearly would be a bad thing. Okay. There's fast many calories going in if the balance is out. If there's more calories in than out, we're going to gain weight. As simple as that. Every day, no. If it's every other day, is that going to be a big deal for you? Again, calories in, calories out, did it matter for you? What was the differential? Let's say you're burning off a rate of around 2 ,500 calories per day and you ate 3 ,500.

1:28:36You are going to gain around a pound of fat per week, approximately, somewhere there. Let's say that every third day you had a cheat day in that perspective, or say 500 calories more than the normal. So you're eating 3 ,000 rather than 2 ,500 that your body might have needed, without counter-counting too much within this. in the course of a few days, that 500 calories extra every third day is about 150, 60, 70 calories per day difference. Does that matter? Could you just walk another thousand steps to burn it away? Yeah, you could do that. So you're like horse training, right? So the next three days, you need to be on 150 deficits.

1:29:17It depends on how much you had and how much you're doing. And you can work it out there. So calorie counting becomes part of that to a degree. we have more just the ideology of I had one day it was once every third, fourth, fifth day if it's there somewhere if my goals are where they should be my body's where I'd like it to be it's developing I'm okay if your body's not changed as you want to then you spread those cheat days out some longer How many calories do we burn let's say in our 30s without exercising just to function during the day? Well if it's different So that's down to your size, muscle structure.

1:29:57What's the range, more or less? If you did nothing as a base metabolism, between 1 ,200 and 1 ,400 calories probably somewhere there, roughly-ish. And if you are moving to one extent, so let's say that you don't go to the gym, but you go to the underground and you walk to the office. Yeah, people rarely burn more than 2 ,500 in a day. 2 ,500. Yeah, that's a high level for most people doing a normal day-to-day existence, unless you're a big frame structure where you burn more calories at that point. But the average frame person, it's there somewhere. It's quite easy, though, to think about. If you look at that calorie counting too much, look at how we consume those quick things.

1:30:37So if you go and pick up frappe latte with a caramel topping and you have a muffin with that, well, bang, there goes 1 ,200 calories. if you go and pick up a Big Mac and some fries and there's another 1 ,200 calories. Pretty rapidly on things like that, you can actually amp things up. In restaurants now increasingly, then there are calories on the menu because they kind of have to have it there. And it's fascinating looking at what's in certain meals that you thought might've been okay and are really not. Yeah, there's a huge amount there. So putting calories in is really, really easy. That's why going for the quality of calories you're consuming makes the process much easier.

1:31:18Let's stay away from food for now because I'm getting a bit hungry. What's the relationship in between exercise and our mental health? How does exercise contribute to our mental health? So it's huge, enormous. So the effects of it are very significant from a release of production of serotonin from within the gut, actually, and in the brain as well, but in the gut specifically. We respond, produce serotonin by exercising outdoors in particular, being in the sunlight. We get a rush of endorphin, epinephrine, adrenaline, all these things give our nervous system a way of firing up. And the synapses in your brain become more engaged by exercising full stop.

1:32:10And actually, it's all exercise. So that applies to cardiovascular and resistance training in slightly different ways, but both do it. So it's vital. So we do know that people with forms of depression, it's not to say it will cure depression, but the forms of depression, it's one of the aids and benefits towards making sure we can try and find the answer to improving it. So on a lower level than that, someone's just feeling generally a bit kind of flat exercise does scientifically in lab conditions it raises mood it increases our self of um self our sense of self-concept or self-perception so it's really critical alongside that what also does is it uh it makes you tired and you sleep better so by sleeping better we we suffer less with mental issues the sleep process is vital critical without good quality of sleep and duration of Sleep is a bit debated, but the quality within the sleep that you get is really, really critical.

1:33:05So we need to get quality deep sleep and REM sleep, recovery sleep, to make sure the brain has the chance of having this autophagy, the dumping of the senescent dead cells, and the chance of the hormones to redevelop within the system, whether that be your cortisol levels, that's your testosterone levels. It's all part of our sleep process to regenerate ourselves in that way. And all those things are creating mood changes. So exercise helps to get tired enough to sleep better. I've seen in friends that when they are at a low point over a period of time from an emotional point of view, it becomes harder for them to stick to their workout routines and also to a healthy diet.

1:33:55how can someone stay or stick to this level of discipline when you're at an emotional low yeah it's hard i think people shouldn't give themselves too hard time so i think that um when someone's feeling low we got sort of slightly defined between feeling a bit low and being actually depressed um so um and being stressed so i think there's um i'm generation x so for me you could throw me through a wall and just say, yeah, I'm going to go with it. It's all fine. I think increasingly over the last 20 years, there's been the ability in a positive way and some negative ways of being able to actually be in touch with your emotions and respond to those things.

1:34:41And the danger with that is can drag you up or drag you down. So I think that there has to be a degree of not dismissing your emotional self, but actually not being swayed by it too heavily and remembering all the time as well that the only way to try and solve a thing is to take action and we can't just wait for things to go away or change if we're affirmative then things do change so this idea that you when you're feeling down i can't get my act together to go and be good to myself whilst i understand it it is of course we know the thing that will help so it's that rational self-approach of you know what's the what's the why within this why would I go and do exercise?

1:35:19Why would I go to the gym? Why would I bother with this stuff? What's it going to do for me? Well, we know that it's all positive. There are no negatives mentally to exercising. There are negatives mentally to pushing the point where you have to go too extreme while you're not feeling your best. So if you're feeling highly stressed, your body's in a highly stressed state, then exercising at a very high level just produces more cortisol, which is not a good thing. If you're feeling down, we know that cardiovascular training in particular, the walk in the park, simple, simple, or run the park, produces this increase in serotonin.

1:35:59There can be, if it's with a friend, it could be some oxytocin. You might get this kind of good, feel-good hormones released. You might get some adrenaline push, some epinephrine push, all this sort of feel-good stuff. So you've got to remember and be just a bit strict with yourself over, I'm not going to push hard. I'm not going to do nothing. And by doing something, you also probably take away the temptation of doing other things that are going to make you feel worse. You know, those people that do nothing, probably going to drink a glass of something to try and feel better or have a treat, snack to feel better, knowing that they make you feel worse.

1:36:33But if you go and do something, it mitigates some of that. At least it fills some time and the effects can to be good. So it's not easy. Look, when things are tough and you're down and you're feeling like your worst, lowest ebb, there's no easy answer. And do you want to go for a walk if it's raining outside? God, no. But doing something, just make sure you're actually physically moving is good. Or worst case, it's points at which you think about doing something else which is good for you too. So it takes some time to meditate. You learn a meditation practice and do that regularly and give yourself a chance to mentally take a break and reset the meditation process does fire up the brain activity in a very positive way so a friend of mine who's a a fellow at imperial college specializing in the brain i said to him look if you're going to scale through the things you can do for your brain that would be good and you started with ayahuasca here and then psilocybin here and so on yeah where where what's the best thing he said well do The ayahuasca, whilst it's interesting, is like throwing a device into your brain.

1:37:39And it just goes, and then it might rebuild, but we're not quite sure. Psilocybin is a way which actually you put a device in there, and it kind of gives you something to change and get some synapses working. And it's probably good, probably, and quite interesting as an area. So there's one thing you can give to people to make their mental health get better. It would be meditation every day. And that's scientifically proven to make the brain function in a way which staves off some depression, gives you more focus. So of all the things you could do that are cheap and simple and less brain exploding, probably meditation.

1:38:22Matt, if you had to compress all your knowledge that you have acquired in the last 30 years of your career into one essential advice that we should all follow, what would it be? All of my life into one sentence. I think fundamentally, the key thing definitely is to be totally conscious of what you are, the shape that you are, the health that you are, and don't assume that the chronological aging of time means you're getting older. so be very wary and conscious of the fact that time is purely simply that it's just time passing and we have the ability to stay as we are slow down the clock and have age be literally just a number and be healthy and well the entire time but that takes diligence it takes looking at every single facet in detail and don't be forgiving of yourself in terms of saying I'll be okay because if you do nothing you won't be okay doing nothing is the way to ensure you will die 10 years younger doing something is chances of living 10 years longer so it's really being very highly aware of um maintaining and being the very best version of yourself you owe it to yourself to be the best version of yourself that's what we're here for we're not here to just dilapidate we're here to do something and within all of that I would say as well, it's really important to remember that what matters overall, having said that, what matters is not the aesthetic.

1:40:05So the aesthetic is interesting. It's fun to play with it. I play with it. I work out for shape stuff. It's not what matters. What matters when it comes to it, when you get to being 50 and 60 and 70 is how healthy you are. The focus has to be on your health span, not the aesthetic. The aesthetic is a side product, a byproduct. It's not the main goal. So know that your heart is strong. Know that your muscles are strong. Know that your bones are strong. Know that your mind is functioning well. Sleep well, don't drink too much, and just be generally moderate in most things all the time, and you will live for longer.

1:40:44We know that for sure you're definitely the living proof of what you're saying i mean you don't look 50 so age is definitely just a a number and i don't think i remember a person that looks as healthy as you do thank you um but thank you thank you matt thank you for coming and sharing all your knowledge fitness as probably you can tell right now is a fundamental pillar in my life and the reason for this is because it is the one thing that had a profound impact in multiple aspects of my life. So usually in every other thing that I do in my life, there is one thing that I do and there is just one result.

1:41:25But in this case, the result is really across multiple aspects of my everyday life. It helps me develop a very disciplined mindset. It makes me a better boyfriend, professional, brother to my brother, and the list goes on. And I thank you for being at the forefront of this and helping people get on this incredibly important life-changing journey. Thank you. Well, look, what you're talking about there actually is creating resilience and your physicality, your health and well-being creates resilience. And to be successful in in business. And beyond that, successful actually reality in life. And it's not just business makes you life successful, it's other things, it's family.

1:42:14It's how you spread what you learn with those around you as well. And that's living a good life. It's not just the amount of money you make, it's about everything else that goes underneath all of that. And when you get to the point in your life when you're 60 and 70, and you know that your group around you shared that with you, it shows you've been successful. It takes resilience to go through all the highs and lows it takes in life to get to that point, and that's tough, and being healthier lets you get there. 100%. Thank you very much. Pleasure.