Hacking Your Health
Hacking Your Health Podcast with Ben Canning and Dave Kennedy - Two guys setting out to hack body, mind, business and beyond. We are here to provide a single source, bullshit free guide to understanding your body and how you can live better, for longer.
Hacking Your Health
72 hour fast - 24 hours in // Episode 163
This episode dives into the nuances and benefits of fasting, particularly its potential to enhance health, longevity, and cognitive function. Our hosts explore personal experiences, scientific insights, and the misconceptions surrounding fasting, encouraging listeners to approach their health journeys with simple frameworks and sustainable practices.
• Sharing personal fasting experiences and observations
• Understanding autophagy and its health implications
• Discussing the overall health benefits of fasting
• Debunking myths surrounding fasting as a fad diet
• Tips for successfully initiating fasting practices
• Advocating for realistic health and fitness goals for the new year
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Yo, hey, what's up everybody. Welcome to Hacking Health Podcast. I'm your host, ben Conley, with Dave Kennedy. Yo, Welcome back to the show. Happy New Year.
Speaker 2:Happy New Year everybody. Welcome to 2025. This is the first podcast of 2025.
Speaker 1:It is indeed Dave and I are. We'll just get straight into it. Well, no, okay, how are you? No, we should get straight into it, just straight into it. Okay, dave and I are fasting. I am at. Where are we? 20.
Speaker 2:22 hours does it get any better, by the way, at 22 hours?
Speaker 1:because right now I'm really hungry I don't feel like it's been bad at all.
Speaker 2:Okay. I'm at 18 hours right now and I could definitely go for some taco bell, so no, I don't.
Speaker 1:I truthfully, I don't feel bad. I haven't really thought about food. I did have a dream last night, though, that I woke up and had breakfast and I forgot I had a dream.
Speaker 2:I had a dream that I ate some steak and I broke the fast on accident and I was like no, no, no.
Speaker 1:And I woke up like, okay, it's just a dream um, there have been a couple of times that have been I've just been to have dinner. All day I haven't really really thought about it, um, but I felt good all day. There have been a couple of times I've walked into the kitchen I'm like, oh yeah, no, I can't, I can't eat anything. So I think the the biggest thing is need to have it, like the how to just go and get something. Um, I will say I quite like I look forward to food all day, like I look forward to okay, right, I'm gonna eat this thing and I'm gonna eat my dinner. I've I've been a little bit sad today that I'm not looking forward to food, like I'm not looking forward to food until wednesday night, which is so far away it's so far away.
Speaker 2:It's funny because, uh, last last night I got back from the Cavs game with Aaron and I knew I was on a fast. I stopped eating at the Cavs game, so I had my last dinner at like 7 o'clock at night, and so at 7, that's the time I started the clock, and so I went home and I'm like, oh cool, it's nighttime, I can go get some food real quick. And I started walking to the kitchen. I'm like, oh wait, wait, no, what are you doing? You're not allowed to eat anything right now. And so, and then this morning I'll tell you, though this morning felt normal. I was like, okay, I'm not obviously going to eat anything I went to Orange Theory First time I mentioned that name today and I went to Orange Theory, did fasted cardio, went very good, and I came home showered and I've been fine ever since. I'll just tell you, though, I'm I'm definitely hungry, so, um, but, but it's not bad, like this is only one huh, it's lunchtime there yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's one o'clock right now yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think the biggest thing that I've noticed in the past is like when, like habitually, the time that you normally eat, your body has a hunger signal because it's used to eating at that time yeah, I've just been drinking water, so I I mean, I haven't really thought about it today, but I know, like at the times that you usually you will feed that hunger, it's not just, it's not a I'm hungry, it's a body of like. I usually eat at this time. What the fuck's going on?
Speaker 2:yeah, exactly in the mornings I don't usually eat when I'm doing orange theory, so I usually don't have a lot of stuff in my stomach and um, I will say, though, what was yesterday. So I eat usually late at night, and I've watched Dr Rhonda Patrick had a sleep protocol podcast recently. She said that you shouldn't be eating three to four hours before you go to bed because your body, basically, is winding down and then, when you eat, your digestive system ramps up, it has energy production and it's harder to sleep and you don't get as good of a sleep. So I would say last night is probably the first night that I haven't eaten. Probably at 8 or 9 or 10 o'clock at night, I'm usually trying to get my protein in. At the very end too, I might be down maybe 40, 50 grams of protein, or something like that. So I'll do a protein shake, or I'll do some Greek yogurt, or I'll do mac and cheese protein, which is, by the way, when you get here to try this, it's microwavable mac and cheese protein. It's amazing america, america. 20 grams of protein, 350 calories. It's got a good balance of carbs in it too. It's a great, great snack if you need it, um, but anyways.
Speaker 2:Um, I didn't eat anything last night and I had the most crazy dreams that I've ever had and I was talking in my sleep to where aaron's like hey, you're talking in your sleep. I never talk in my sleep. I was like fighting some like like ogre or something, with like a battle axe in the middle of my. I don't know what was going on, but I was like I was like screaming like in the middle of the night and aaron's like you're talking in your sleep. I'm like, oh okay, that's weird. I don't never do that. So maybe I had a good night's sleep because I didn't eat.
Speaker 1:I'll have to try that more often true, true, true, uh, no, but generally I feel good. Um, I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. I know from previous experience I used I've done 36 hours fast. 36 are fast and quite a bit. Um, so today would have been that day, and then usually tomorrow morning's time that I eat, so I think tomorrow will be a completely different story. Um, yeah, but I guess we should talk about why we're doing it instead of just we're doing it, because a couple people did ask on on twitter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there was some good, good discussion on it too and and, um, you know, I think you know fasting gets a bad rap because there's been so much uh, information out there like we've talked about this sometimes in the podcast about fad diets. Right, and intermittent fasting came out as one of those fad diets. Um, for a lot of people, and and and I'm not saying's a it's a bad way of doing things. Um, you know, based on what we know from data studies, that if you have what are called feeding windows, so you eat only during a certain period of time, so a lot of people will only eat during, let's just say, like noon and three, or you know, like a three hour feeding window or four hour feeding window, where during that period of time, you're trying to eat as much calories as you can, that you need to, but you don't eat the rest of the day, you don't eat at night, you don't eat in the morning, you only have a certain amount of time that you eat, and what the studies have shown is that that doesn't really have any major benefit as far as weight loss is concerned, because it's still, at the end of the day, calories in, calories out, and if you eat 4,000 calories in a three-hour time window, well, your body's going to use those 4,000 calories right. So there's no benefit of fasting from a weight loss perspective.
Speaker 2:However, there is a lot of benefits of fasting, more so in the 24 to 48-hour to 72-hour period, where you start to reap a lot of benefits of fasting and again, I'm not saying from a weight loss perspective. I mean we will drop weight. I'm actually the lowest I've been since I started this blog. I woke up this morning and I was at 241. I'm like shit. I was 220.
Speaker 1:So I'm interested to see what the Thursday morning was going to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too, but what the studies have shown is that there's some extreme benefits to longevity. So one thing that we know is that there's two things in life that we know of today that can increase your lifespan. One is working out Cardiovascular and resistance training will increase your lifespan. Keeping muscle mass on those types of things will increase lifespan. And two, caloric restrictions. Caloric restrictions being you're eating less calories than you typically consume, you will live longer, okay, um, but with fasting, what ends up happening is that you're and we talked about the reasons why fasting they don't die when you fast um, you know, if our bodies were like, hey, you know, we don't have any food, we need to shut, well, we wouldn't be able to go out and forge food or kill an animal to get the food, or to plant vegetables and things like that to get the nutrients that we need. So what our body does is it says, oh crap, you haven't eaten yet. We need to convert the process of carbohydrates, fats, things like that to ketones, process of of carbohydrates, fats, things like that, to ketones, and your body produces ketones which allow you to convert, uh, fat stores to energy very quickly and not burning carbohydrates and things like that. Now what ends up happening, though, is that your body goes through a, a, a really cool process, um called a, a, a, a, a, a I hope I'm pronouncing that right Autophagy and it basically starts to clean up bad cells in your body. It removes the weak cells in your body For one the highest consuming cells in your body, which cancer is the highest consuming cell in your body. So they've actually shown in data studies that if you couple radiation therapy, like chemotherapy, with fasting, the chances of that cancer reducing extremely goes up with success, because your body's removing the high energy cells. And what the current line of thinking is in the medical field studies is that if you fast for 72 hours which seems to be the kind of magic number that everybody's throwing around, it's kind of like the 10,000 steps thing If you fast for 72 hours once a year, you reduce your chances of cancer substantially. Now, they don't know the exact amount of that, but some doctors again, you get wide spectrums on all sides that are like hey, if you do three days fast once a year, you'll never die of cancer. And then you have the other ones that are like well, hey, it's probably more like a reduction of like 40% to 50%. I'm sure there's a middle ground there somewhere and the studies haven't done any long-term studies of those but one cancer reduction. But also it removes all kind of the bad cells. It's a huge antipotent antioxidant in your body. It balances your LDL and HDL cholesterol levels. It increases insulin sensitivity, which is what you want, and so there's just a lot of great benefits.
Speaker 2:Cardiovascular health, heart health you know all of that stuff starts to come through during fasting, so it's a really awesome thing for your body to go through every so often. And this is the first time I've gone through a 72 hour. I've done what the I've done a 32-hour fast before and then after that. I've never done anything past that. So this would be over double of what I've done before in the past, and so we're just trying it out.
Speaker 2:It's a challenge, but it has a lot of health benefits to it that I think are really important for folks to understand that hey, if cancer is something you're concerned with, it's a concern of mine.
Speaker 2:I'm healthy, obviously, I work out a lot, I eat great food and I try to do everything I possibly can to reduce the chances of cancer.
Speaker 2:But you never know, you have perfectly healthy people that end up getting cancer and passing away.
Speaker 2:And if there are things that we can do to live longer, I'm going to go and try those and the data seems to be pretty awesome on I'm going to go and try those and the data seems to be pretty awesome on, mechanistically, why this works.
Speaker 2:Because it literally targets your highest producing cells that are acting abnormal. Your body has a regulation system on cells on what it should be using from an ATP perspective in your mitochondria, the energy levels of your cells, and cancer exhibits a much higher level of that. So your body basically starts neutralizing and nuking all of your your cancer cells in your body under those certain periods of time. So it's really neat how it goes through and does all that kind of cleanses your system, your body. Plus, there's brain benefits. You know your body goes in like high gear mode, you know, because you need to again forge for food, get food, so you have to be mentally acute and sharp, so your brain activity goes up in nature. So it's a really cool thing, I think overall from a health perspective, of what you can do with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think again from previous experience. I did away from about three months, maybe longer. I did one 36-hour fast per week and I always find on the like, so I used to eat dinner on a tuesday and not eat again until thursday morning. On wednesday afternoon I was so dialed into whatever I was doing in terms of work and I think that if you think about what actually happens whenever you eat food, your body obviously needs to use energy to digest the food, so obviously it has the additional energy that you're not using from digestive foods available in terms of, like, cognitive function, everything else. So that's one of my favorite benefits of fasting is actually just being able to be a little bit more focused and get some more stuff done.
Speaker 1:Back to your conversation about intermittent Fasten. Yes, I agree it's a fad and yes, I don't necessarily think that the benefits are what people make them out to be. I think it is beneficial to people who understand that they. Like example, whenever I used to coach in the gym floor, I used to always look at my schedule. Uh, I used to start at six and if I didn't have a break until like one o'clock I wouldn't have eaten breakfast. If I did have a break, then I would have.
Speaker 1:I would have had breakfast and then have my food at like 10 or whatever, whatever the time was. The reason being is because as you eat the, your body starts to process and digest food, which obviously burns energy, which obviously in turn makes you more hungry. So I would have found that if I had got to like 11 o'clock and I was with the client, I'd have been useless, like I just would have been like thinking about food and unable to like, actually concentrate on the session. Um, and I think the benefits come is if you can use not eating breakfast, for example, as a tool to reduce your overall calories on a daily or weekly basis. Absolutely that's where the benefit comes. It's not necessarily anything about the science or there's some sort of magic about time. It's just a case of you're eliminating five, six, seven, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, so it works for you and a lot of people have a lot of great success, uh, with with intermittent fasting, because it's a just like the system that you have been for. You know putting people into how many calories you can eat. Calorie counting goes like that. It's a system that you have been for. You know putting people into how many calories you can eat. Calorie counting those like that. It's a system that you can be put into and if that system works for you, then it's highly beneficial and it's a great framework, by the way, because you literally probably can't eat. Maybe you can, but you probably can't eat 4000 calories.
Speaker 2:But you probably will be in a caloric deficit if you're only doing a three-hour feeding window or a six-hour feeding window or whatever that ends up being. So I'm not saying you shouldn't be looking at intermittent fasting as a way to help with the weight loss components of things or to put you into a framework that you can follow that you're methodical with, that you're successful with. That brings you to success. Brings you to success. You just got to realize it's not like when the whole keto thing was coming out and all this other stuff. They're like oh, keto is superior to everything else because it burns more fat. Well, yeah, technically it burns fat, but it's still calories in versus calories out.
Speaker 2:If you're still eating a bunch of food that's going to get converted to fat, it's still got to burn that fat. It's still got to use that fat. It's going to use all the fat that you eat. There's no additional thermogenic, additional activity. That happens, um, during those periods of time. But again, frameworks, you know again if keto works for you and you can just eat you know, meat all day long, meats and cheeses fantastic, I tried it. I love meat and cheeses. I got sick of it, like in month two. I'm like I can't eat any more meat and cheeses. I need like breads and things like that.
Speaker 1:Like I can't handle this you just want to eat a bagel give me a bagel, some hot oatmeal no, not hot, um, but I think that, again, talking about frameworks and what works for you, the reason that I initially started was I had a very short timeline to prep for a photo shoot and I spoke to callum that was coaching me at the time and we basically just took a full day's calories, right, and it's the same thing as doing that, whether you do a daily basis, daily basis and you take you know, bragging, like I said breakfast out, you take that out and then it reduces your total weekly consumption.
Speaker 1:So, whatever way you look at it, you're still reducing your overall consumption, whether it's taking a meal out a day or taking a day's worth of food out, and it gives you that sort of freedom and flexibility to not be in that lower calorie bracket on a daily basis if you take it out and in that way. But again it's, it's just rules to follow. I mean, if you know that you eat between 12 o'clock and eight o'clock and that's the window that you eat at and that's how you can stay within your calories, that's cool.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna tell you otherwise yeah, and two additional added benefits that I didn't mention you'd mentioned. You'd hit on the surface of it, which is um the immune system, or giving your um digestive tract time to relax and not have to continuously be working over time all the time on it. Um allows your body to kind of recover, regroup and give your digestive system a whole new. You know, kind of break and relax and everything else which allows you to be more efficient as you're eating food again. Um, also, it boosts your immune system substantially, so you'll see a massive increase in immune system um performance. So you know, getting sick things like that uh usually not happening during those fasts, which is great. So you know again, sick things like that uh usually not happening during those fasts, which is great. So you know again a lot, of, a lot of great benefits to it. And uh, you know, so far, so good.
Speaker 1:You know, 17 hours in, I'm doing fine um, you know again I had a group call earlier on and sir asked me how it was going. I was like, I mean, I feel fine, but I'm only 28 percent of the way there.
Speaker 1:So like I still have a long way to go, um, but I'm interested to see. I think that that my next couple of days we'll be thinking, okay, right, what is my first meal is going to be like. I'll be building that out in my head over and over and over you already got mine.
Speaker 2:Okay, you got mine. Go, it's gonna be. It's gonna be steak, rice and, uh, broccoli. I I. I know that sounds super simple, but like I love steak, I love rice and I love broccoli, so like those three things to me are like the perfect meal, um, that I would eat, and probably some bread, you know, like like some wheat bread with butter on it and some salt. Perfect cool.
Speaker 1:I haven't established mine yet, so I will let you know, and actually I'll tell you this. I wasn't going to say but so the fast finishes at eight o'clock. Mine does finish at eight o'clock on wednesday. I might wait until thursday morning, so I might push it an additional 12 hours, which will take me to 84 all right, we'll see how I'm feeling at that point. I'm probably I've said it now and it's on the internet, but like I don't know, we'll see how long is the time tune in on wednesday to find out.
Speaker 1:I'm getting on because we'll record on wednesday and it might be a little worse for work yeah, well so.
Speaker 2:So on the topic of of of fasting you, this is something new that we're trying here. Well, obviously we've done fasting before, but doing a challenge, I think is important, right One. You have somebody that's committed with you in it, You've got the same interests, and I think that helps out a lot. I'm not going to let Ben beat me in any way, shape or form, so I have to do this, or else I'd probably be eating right now, to be honest with you, people ask me why are you doing it?
Speaker 1:and I was like, well, dia said he was gonna do it. I wasn't gonna let him do it by himself. Like I didn't, I haven't had planned. It was like you mentioned. I was like, okay, I'll do it with you. Um, so that is my reason for it. But I agree, having someone there, because there are like I would kind of imagine that there will be times I'm like, no, I'm not in for this, but I think, well, it's doing it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, well. So so it's a competition, but also those types of challenges can go a long way in your success. So, like you know the, the program that you're coming out with this this year, the new program right, you know it's a is it a three month challenge? Right? Eight weeks, eight weeks, eight weeks, yeah, sorry, two months challenge that you go through and you know it's a commitment to yourself to go through those. And I think you know, starting off the fresh you know, 2025 here we wanted to kind of have a little bit more discussion on you know why the basics work and going to kind of your roots and then going from there. And it's interesting, I'll allay it to my training blocks that I'm doing right now with you.
Speaker 2:When I first started off lifting, ben would Well, ben has always programmed my lifting criteria, but I've always asked Ben for more and I've done a lot of volume, a lot of strength, things like that development over time and what I'm realizing now is I'm getting a lot more value with less in the type of movements and exercises. I don't need to do 12 to 15 sets per muscle group a workout session, really more around eight to nine is perfect and you get the value and benefits that you would anything else. And Dr Lane Norton, bioolane uh, they just did a study um. One of his cohorts did a study um and they, they, they actually did hypertrophy training with set ranges, um, and they had experienced lifters that were doing this over a span of a period of time, and they they looked at like the diminishing return aspect of things, and what they saw was that between 10 sets and 20 sets is the perfect range of sets before you start getting into that kind of diminishing return area where you still grow a little bit, but it's so minuscule in nature that you're probably doing more damage to your body's ability to repair faster than anything else, and so doing less actually means a lot, and so I challenge folks to take a look at what you're doing today and to say, hey, is there things that I can do, that I can change up or do differently that will help me be successful in this year with your goals and everything else?
Speaker 2:I saw a picture of somebody I can't remember the individual offhand, but he had a picture of before. It was like a 2024 picture and a 2025 picture, right, and he said I don't notice any difference. I'm going to have to push it harder next year. And that's my biggest fear, right, you know is going into next year and saying I don't notice a difference between previous years to this year on my progress and training, starting for things that actually worked.
Speaker 2:And you and I had this conversation was it last week or the week before? We were on a call, talking back and forth, and you were talking about how you were going to go back to a specific trainer, because that trainer you've always had a lot of success with and you just go back to a known quantity of things that work. And we've tried a lot of other things, we grabbed a lot of knowledge, but what has been the most successful for you to get into a regimen, to be continuous with it, to be repetitive with it, that allows you to hit the gym or to eat appropriately to get your body, to nourish your knees, but to get the desired results that you want to. And so I think for 2025, for me it's going to be going back to basics and looking at my whole program overall, obviously with you and what I need to do to, you know, hit the next level for next year, and I will say, like right now, with this, this current uh surplus cycle, I'm the strongest that I've ever been.
Speaker 2:I just did uh 505 for seven um, which I've never hit before, which means I'm well past the 600 deadlift mark at this point in time. Uh, I'm not. Haven't attempted it yet because I don't want to break my back, but I won't break my back. We're going to wait until the lift to see if I can get it.
Speaker 1:You need a hype bomb. I need a hype train.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're getting there, we're close. It's great because I'm the strongest I've ever been, but I've actually been doing a lot less volume than I've ever done before, a lot less cess, I should say, than I've done before, and that has been very good for me. So, just reevaluating what I'm doing and going back to what I did really well and I think that has a big, big impact on making sure that you're successful moving into next year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the thing People often overlook the basics because they think it can't be that simple. If you're someone who has struggled with your weight for 20 years and someone tells you that these are only the things that you need to do, you're almost like, well, that sounds too easy, like if it hadn't been that easy, I would have done it before. I actually had this conversation with Justin a few times. When people sort of ask him what he's done and why he's had the success and he tells them they're like, they almost are in disbelief. I was like, well, that doesn't, you know, it doesn't sound that difficult.
Speaker 1:Um, I think the thing about it is the basics are simple, the process is simple and people try and overcomplicate it and, like yourself, you've always wanted to do more, because sometimes you felt, well, okay, if I'm getting these great results and I feel this way, with this amount that I'm doing, if I do more, surely that's going to be better and I'm going to get more. But I think, like you said, it's more with training, with cardio, with your nutrition. It's more the quality of the stuff that you're doing versus the quantity. So if you can do 10 really quality sets versus 20 mediocre sets. You're going to get much more from those 10 really quality sets. So, taking it right back to that, and I think probably one of the biggest things that I see people struggle with or complain about is time. So it's like if you're trying to pack six sessions in a week and you're doing, you know they're an hour and a half long like it's unrealistic, whereas if you go right, like I can do four or three or whatever, um, and they take 45 minutes to an hour.
Speaker 1:And again it's something that that I had to re-evaluate myself.
Speaker 1:Like I think I was just in the habit of training for an hour and a half or two hours whenever I work in the gym, because I was in a gym all day. I realize I'm in a gym all day now, but it's different setup, um, because I was there all day. It was the only thing that I really had to do. And then, whenever I sort of moved away from that and had less time, I was like I can't, I can't fit these sessions in and I got to the point where I was like avoiding the sessions because I just don't have the time and that's the only. It does not need to be over complicated and if you sort of look at your week and your sessions, how many sessions you have, how many sets you need to get per muscle group, and just divide it across those sets or divide the sets across the sessions, that's, that's your recipe for success and and in what they did show in those, those studies too, is that the more frequent that you can hit those muscle groups, the more growth you will receive.
Speaker 2:So, for example, let's just say you hit chest three times a week. That was far superior than hitting chest twice a week versus one time a week. So the more muscle stimulus you can get. But even on the lower set range so let's just say you did four sets on a Monday, you did four sets on a Wednesday and you did four sets on a Saturday of chest or Thursday or whatever um you would you would experience more growth on those sets in comparison to where they only did it twice but did more sets during that that week. So, um, you know it's it's.
Speaker 2:It's interesting how our bodies work to that stimulus. Right, it knows that, hey, I'm under heavy load right now. You know that total volume is the same for the week, but you spread that signal of muscle growth throughout that week. Longer you have more chance to build more muscle during those periods of time. So it's interesting how you know the stimulus is really important for that body, which goes to show you you know, getting being active every day is really important to send your body that stimulus of hey, I'm active, I'm moving around, whether it's just getting steps in or doing cardio, or whether it's just doing something active like Airsoft, for example. If anyone wants to come to Airsoft, let me know. I had a killer, killer weekend, by the way. I went Friday and Saturday.
Speaker 1:I thought we spoke about it not going two days in a row.
Speaker 2:We spoke about this all the time, I know, take, I had to help the kids out because, um, mason could only go on friday and gavin can only go on saturday, um, and so I had to switch. I had to do two different. You know, poor me crying uh the airsoft twice in a row. But there's this. I guess I could tell you this one story really quick. So I got this grenade launcher and, uh, it shoots 200 bbs at once. It's got tracers in it, so it shoots a uv light that that shoots 200 bbs at once, and it it's, it's like a spray of bbs, right? So you get 200 bbs that are spraying the area and it doesn't, this one doesn't actually hurt. You know, like if you're getting hit with 200 bbs from a, from an airsoft gun, you would be really pissed, um, because like it hurts, like hell, and um, but this is, this is like a lower velocity, so it's more of like a kind of like a shotgun burst, you know type of thing. But it sprays bb's in in a wide direction and, um, I, I flanked this, this corner, and there is these six guys with their backs turned to me right there, and I shot them all and it killed all six of them with the one grenade launch and I went back really quick and I reloaded and there's this guy, ryan, who's a good buddy of mine over there I play with all the time. He's awesome.
Speaker 2:I see ryan like peek around the corner, but he can't see me because I'm kind of tucked away to the side and he goes around the corner. I'm right there, like right as you know, like five feet from him and I blast them with the great launcher. We just start busting out, laughing like just just dying, like we had to stop playing the game for like five minutes because we're just laughing our asses off. So good times. But you know um. But again, you know being active is is really important and you know I enjoy the cardio work, doing the HIIT training monday and wednesday and then, you know, doing the um airsoft stuff on the weekends with the kids. So I try to stay as active as possible throughout the days and it's really difficult because right now we're under mass. Probably bring lots of cold weather gear with you. It's cold shorts, I'll.
Speaker 1:Shorts.
Speaker 2:I'll be wearing shorts, yeah definitely shorts but lots of snow. It's hard to get outside and go and get your walks in and your steps in, so figure out other ways of being active during the winter time frames. Make sure you're getting ample amounts of vitamin D as well, but still it's one of those things that, as long as you're being active frequently, your chances of living longer, your probability of being healthier, your mind working better all of those things come into play as you're going through and doing it Again. It's all just going back to the basics and just moving around.
Speaker 1:But I think to your point. Yes, okay, I know that you maybe send it a little bit too far with yourself, but that's just you as a person. But I think finding something that you can enjoy do you know what I mean? I don't imagine you see that as like finding something you can enjoy, do you know I mean like that's, I don't imagine you see that it's like, oh, I'm going to the exercise, do you know I mean, but the amount of output that you have and the amount of calories and that you burn during that, like it definitely can count towards your total overall expenditure across the week. So, like finding something that that you enjoy doing that can count as exercise that isn't necessarily just sitting on a fucking elliptical machine yep, yeah, it's a total.
Speaker 2:Uh sorry, I spaced out for a second there. What'd you say?
Speaker 2:it will account towards your total expenditure for the week by just going to yourself like you're doing something that's fun, but you don't see it as you're going to the exercise no, and and that's the thing that that I had remember when I was, uh, losing weight, I couldn't figure out why, and I was like I didn't account for burning like 1500 calories, you know when I'm actually going and doing it, but it's just a ton of fun. You know, like, if you ever listen to my videos, I post my youtube videos of me doing airsoft and uh, you'll hear me just just breathing really heavy because I'm I got all those videos of you shooting people and breathing heavy in the background.
Speaker 2:That's literally it like, literally you can hear me go. You're like you're just dying. I said the thing here but um, but like I didn't realize how intense it really was. I mean, for one, you know you're in a, a tactical situation, right, so your adrenaline is, is is amped up. So you're, you're, you're focused to crazy. You know if you go around the wrong corner you're gonna get blasted, it's gonna hurt. So your, your mind is like, hey, I don't want to get hurt. So it ramps itself up. You know to be as good as you possibly can be at it.
Speaker 2:And then you know I, you know I'm a very aggressive player. I don't like sit back, and you know, pick people off. And you know, do things, I'm, I'm up in the up in the fight. You know like that, you know I'm charging doors, I'm going through corners, I'm busting through grenades, like that's just how I work, and uh, and so, like you know, if you hear my videos, you see me, like you know, when we start off at our spawn, I'm sprinting to get to a specific vantage point that I can take out some of the team that's coming in from the other side and that has a big impact, because one I'm carrying probably 50 pounds of gear on me. I'm carrying a rifle, I'm carrying a flak jacket, I got grenades on me, I got extra ammo. I'm dressed with long sleeves so it's already hot in there because I have long sleeves, I don't want to tear up my arms, and so I didn't realize how big of an activity that was.
Speaker 2:But I was monitoring my calories and what I was losing and it was about 1500 calories that I was burning at Airsoft and I'd go from 10 to 5. So you're there for 7 hours running around and on Saturday I totally forgot to even eat. Saturday I realized that I had a breakfast in the morning and then I went and I played all day and I got back at five. I'm like, oh, I didn't even eat the rest of the day. I probably need to get some calories in me here. So it's one of those things where I did have a protein shake in between. But it's one of those things where doing things that are fun for you, that you enjoy doing scuba diving, know, those types of activities can be a huge thing for you to get into. Uh, to have fun with pickleball. I know a lot of uh, uh. You know, gentlemen in their 30s and above like love pickleball and that's actively going around. There's a lot of pickleball places here. I don't know if pickleball is big, big where you're at, but it's massive.
Speaker 1:Not yet, but it's coming. I have I have noticed the trend increasing the more everybody everybody I know plays pickleball like I.
Speaker 2:I'm staying away from it seems like a cult, but, um, but it's a pickleball called my dad's all into it. He's got. He's got like all these like specialized, like, like you know, paddles and all this other stuff. He's got a trainer. Now he's like doing pickleball training with pickleball experts. I'm like, okay, well, this is yeah good, good for you, man, my dad's out being active, so, and the fact that my dad can be there he's, you know, in his 60s and, uh, you know he could be out there playing airsoft with us is amazing, so I hope I can do the same thing too. So, um, you know, again, it's all about just staying active, moving around, um, and and also going back to things that work for you. And if you haven't found that thing that works for you, that's really where you can use some help, like a trainer, like the stuff that's going on with Ben's eight-week program, getting you into a framework to allow you to find something that actually works for you, to allow you to be able to be successful.
Speaker 2:I had a friend text me over the weekend and was asking about the program because he uses Jeff Nippard's stuff online. He's wondering what are the differences and things like that? And I said, listen, anybody can go and download. I've done Nippard's programs. They're great. Anybody can go and download an Excel spreadsheet and work through those consistently. But you have somebody there that's looking at your schedule, that's looking at what you do every day, your lifestyle habits, what works for you, what doesn't work for you, your job load, everything else and then builds that into a package that works for your type of life situation. You're not going to get that from an Excel spreadsheet. Right, and being able to figure out what works in your life, I think is really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it doesn't actually start until the 13th, but I started to put everybody into Discord and we had a call today and there's 46 I think 46 people, um, and then it was cool to just sort of get a bit of an insight. There's like what people's expectations were, and I think the the sort of general consensus for me is I want this to be an education around the basics, like each week will be something different. So this week is just about collecting the data, like collecting you know how much food you eat, how many steps you do and whatever. Next week we'll move into a little bit more nutrition. Then we'll move into the training side of things. We'll do some mobility stuff. We'll talk about sleep, we'll talk about stress management. We'll talk about when you fall off, because everybody's hyped at the minute because it's the first week and they're like fucking buzzing about everything and that's cool. But three, four, five, six weeks in, people will start their energy will start to dip or they're like you know, the life will get in the way or whatever. So it's about how do you navigate that as well, and not just the sort of managing the good times, um. So I'm excited to see what comes of it, um, and it's cool. It's cool group of people, some familiar faces and some people who I've spoken to in the past, so it's cool to get actually working with them.
Speaker 1:Um, but yeah, for me it's. It's coaching in general is an education thing. It's not, like you said, an excel spreadsheet. It's someone who can look at you as a person, look at your lifestyle, your commitments, your job, your family, whatever it is, and go right, it would be cool to be able to train, you know, seven days a week for two hours a day, and not have to do anything else and live the life that I lived when I was 26, 27, yeah, but it's not realistic for everybody and sometimes it's just a case of okay, right, I only have 240 minute slots. Like how do I make that work? How do I balance my calories? I struggle with sleep, I have back pain, I'm exhausted throughout work, I can't focus whenever I'm on work, like all those things are the things that an excel spreadsheet can't handle 100.
Speaker 2:So so tldr from this episode, one give a 72 hour or even let's go like two weeks, two weeks fasting.
Speaker 1:Just kidding um, I would recommend start with 24 hours um I think I know you and I are stubborn probably is is the best way to put it. Um, I will say, though, just given the time difference, like, if I do decide to eat on wednesday, I will eat before you and I will definitely be sending, I'll just like facetime you and eat my dinner, um, but I do. I recommend starting a short period time, like try 24 hours or 36 hours first, just to get a feeling for it. I sort of know what to expect and I'll obviously move into uncharted territory from tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep. And then the last thing is moving back to the basics, right? What has worked for you in the past? Look at that and do that again, start it off from scratch and build it back up again and it's a reset, right? We've talked about resets before in the past that allow us to, you know, go back to what's worked. Sometimes we get too complacent in what we're doing currently today. Um, you know, um, we, we build a comfort level with certain habits and things like that. Sometimes it's time to break those habits, even if they may be ones that work for us. And's kind of the evolution of learning and getting better with what you do, and kind of refining your skills, and you know, those are the things that will make you successful going into 2025 and having a good year, you know, with your health, fitness journey and mental health and everything else that goes along with that. So you, know.
Speaker 1:If you want to burn some calories, go and join David Airsoft join David Airsoft anytime.
Speaker 2:I'll say how do you? There's a lot of folks there that that that are in cybersecurity, that play as well. So it's great to have folks in different areas and meet new friends and folks and things like that. It's been great. But find that kind of community it's a great community of people, great folks that are there and I enjoy going there and seeing everybody. It's like again, it's kind of like the hacking, your health community People that are like-minded, that are good folks, that are doing good things, and you get to go, you know, have fun together and play together, just like the meetups that we have and everything else. Um, it's those types of things that make a big difference in consistency and because you have other friends, you know friends or family or people that are invested in the same type of thing that you are, it creates that type of synergy there.
Speaker 1:So, um, yeah, with that, that's this week's podcast we will record a podcast in two days time and see how we see how we're getting on with the fast, see what our energy levels are like Could be through the roof, which I think would be funny. That'd be cool, cool, right. See you next week Later, see ya.