This video emphasizes the importance of self-discipline, exercise, and diet in enhancing personal motivation and energy levels. It illustrates the need for a forward-moving mindset, which involves engaging in physical activities that foster psychological momentum. By pushing beyond comfort zones, individuals can harness the benefits of increased energy and motivation, ultimately leading to a more fulfilling lifestyle.

Intriguingly, the discussion also covers diet and lifestyle changes that can significantly impact weight loss and overall health. The speaker shares a straightforward nutritional plan focusing on unprocessed foods like meat, fish, eggs, fruits, and vegetables. This regime not only helps in reducing caloric intake but also fosters a healthier relationship with food and appetite control. Supplementing this with physical activity and resistance training enhances overall well-being beyond just weight management.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. satiating [ˈseɪʃɪeɪtɪŋ] - (adjective) - The ability to produce a feeling of fullness and reduce the desire to eat more. - Synonyms: (filling, satisfying, fulling)

Protein is very satiating. You have a rib eye steak. You don't really want a second.

2. caloric deficit [kəˈlɔːrɪk ˈdɛfəsɪt] - (noun) - The condition in which you consume fewer calories than your body needs to maintain its current weight. - Synonyms: (calorie shortage, negative calorie balance)

They're in a caloric deficit, as it's called, but they're very sated.

3. anterior mid cingulate cortex [ænˈtɪriər mɪd ˈsɪŋɡjʊlət ˈkɔːrtɛks] - (noun) - A part of the brain involved in processing difficult challenges, effortful tasks, and tenacity. - Synonyms: (neural region, brain area)

Very specifically, challenging endeavors that stimulate the growth of the anterior mid cingulate cortex are challenging endeavors that we would prefer not to do

4. tenacity [təˈnæsɪti] - (noun) - The quality of being determined or persistent. - Synonyms: (persistence, determination, resolve)

Willpower and tenacity are reflected in the growth of the anterior mid cingulate cortex.

5. dopaminergic [ˌdəʊpəˌmɪˈnɜːdʒɪk] - (adjective) - Pertaining to dopamine or its functions in the body. - Synonyms: (dopamine-related, dopamine-inducing)

I look at social media as initially being very dopaminergic, driving reward, surprise and excitement.

6. circadian [sɜːrˈkeɪdiən] - (adjective) - Relating to biological processes occurring at 24-hour intervals. - Synonyms: (daily cycle, biological clock, chronobiological)

That recognize sunlight exposure that deciphers into our circadian rhythm.

7. ultradian cycles [ʌlˈtreɪdiən ˈsaɪkəlz] - (noun) - Natural cycles of activity and rest that repeat multiple times within a 24-hour period. - Synonyms: (short cycle, frequent cycle)

Our brain and body operate within that day or within each and every day, I should say with 90 minutes ultradian cycles.

8. neuroretina [ˌnjʊərəˈrɛtɪnə] - (noun) - The part of the retina in the eye that is responsible for processing and converting light into neural signals. - Synonyms: (eye retina, visual processing part)

They will focus the light onto your neural retina and onto those melanopsin intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells.

9. melatonin [ˌmeləˈtoʊnɪn] - (noun) - A hormone that regulates sleep and wakefulness. - Synonyms: (sleep hormone, pineal hormone)

melatonin being the hormone that's involved in feeling sleepy and falling asleep.

10. obsessive-compulsive behavior [əbˌsesɪv kəmˈpʌlsɪv bɪˈheɪvjər] - (noun) - A psychological pattern where an obsession or thought leads to a compulsive action, often repetitive and lacking reward. - Synonyms: (compulsion cycle, repetitive behavior)

But the acting out of the compulsion merely serves to increase the obsession.

A Complete Morning Routine to OPTIMIZE Your Life - Andrew Huberman

We tend to have different baseline levels of these neurotransmitters and how they work. Dopamine. I think some people are just more driven. Some people are more forward center of mass. Some people need to kick their own asses psychologically to become that. I mean, I know David Goggins reasonably well, about as well as anyone who doesn't know him well could in the sense that he spends a lot of time with his partner. He's got his close circle. I'm not part of that close circle, but I've known David since, Gosh, I met him in 2017, long before podcasts. He was on podcast, I was on podcasts. He's always been the same. He's always been like super forward center of mass, like, get after it. And by his own account, he had to take his 300 plus pound self and basically scruff himself and force himself to become this other person who's highly motivated because previously he wasn't. Those are his. That's his report. So you can intervene in the self and become like that.

I also think there is a very beautiful relationship between physical activity and psychological forward motion. When you are pushing into the morning, like, all right, get up. It's so tempting for many of us, myself included. Like, start scrolling in bed, don't do it. Get out of bed. If you need more rest, do a non sleep, deep rest, go back to sleep, whatever, but then get out of bed. Use the bathroom, get outside, drink some water, skip some rope, do some push ups, swing your limbs, whatever. Get into forward center of mass, and then try and avoid passive activities that just waste your life. It's fun to get on Instagram and kind of answer a few things, but then, like, get out and go do something. Check in with friends in the morning. Like, when you start doing these things that are physical forward center of mass, you start noticing you have more energy to do that. And then settling down and stopping becomes more challenging. Like, when I went on Jaco's podcast, we went the first time, five and a half hours. He came on my podcast 5 hours. The other day, I did a podcast with Lane norton, who's the guy in nutrition and training. It's a ton of energy, and we went 6 hours. But, you know, I'm basically. It might surprise you, I'm a pretty mellow guy, drink a lot of caffeine, be alert. I sleep well at night, and, you know, there's days when I feel lazy.

Yeah. So am I an addictive personality? I don't know, but once I get fixated on something, I'm highly fixated. I have to remind myself to enjoy the process. Some people, again, I don't want to make, I don't know what his inner landscape is like, but some people are more Ray Barbie about it. Right? Carl Watson seems like a happy dude. I'm sure he has his down days. But there's some people that are always doing things. They're always kind of cheerful and going. Those are fun people to be around because it's very motivating to be around people who are the motivated and are happy in the process. It's kind of annoying or difficult to be around people or the. Yeah, but, yeah, but you know, you got to stop and smell the roses every once in a while. But sometimes the roses are forward movement. It's not about just basking in what you have. So, you know, it takes all forms. You know, we're a lot like dogs. Some dogs are like another dogs are like my dog, you know, my old bulldog. I'm probably going to get another one soon. They just like chilled to just like, why move, you know, like, it's great right here, you know, so I think know who you are and then kind of, I would say it's wise. I think you can create a much better life for yourself and people close to you by being a little bit more forward, center of mass around a few key pursuits and around the rest of the stuff. Just like chill. Like, that's my advice.

Other guys have lost a lot of weight and women have lost a lot of weight the following way. I just give the following instruction. Just say you can eat meat, fish, eggs, fruit and vegetables. You're not going to eat bread, pasta, rice, tortillas. Anything else. If it's not in that short list, water, coffee or tea are fine. You're not eating it. Now that, you know, then people always start the negotiations like, well, can I have salsa? Okay, well, salsa's tomatoes. Yeah, I guess if it doesn't have sugar in it, okay, but how about just like eggs for breakfast and some fruit? How about a ribeye steak for dinner and a salad or two ribeye steaks? I don't care if you eat two ribeye steaks. Most people don't want two ribeye steaks. What you find is that people who've been eating a lot of processed foods and excess carbohydrates and fats together when they switch to eating meat, fish, eggs, vegetables and fruit and nothing else except, of course, drinking enough water, coffee. No, you're not drinking alcohol. No, you're not drinking milk. Etcetera. What you find is they lose a lot of fat very, very quickly, very fast, mostly because they bring their caloric intake down below what they need each day in terms of their activity.

They're in a caloric deficit, as it's called, but they're very sated. Protein is very satiating. You have a rib eye steak. You don't really want a second, but you could have a second one and a salad, and you're good. Then watch you eat one bite of pasta or bread, and all of a sudden you're hungry for more of that. And this has to do with the way that carbohydrates impact our appetite. I'm not demonizing carbohydrates. This is not a ketogenic diet. But what you find is, and Jacob will attest that they lose ten pounds in the first week. Some of that's water weight, but that gets them headed in the right direction. And then, of course, they should also walk. If you can't do cardiovascular exercise, like running or biking or skateboarding or whatever, they should walk a lot. Everyone should probably walk a lot, unless you're pushing a lot and skateboarding around a lot or cycling a lot or something.

Then they start exercising a little bit, and then they start doing some resistance training, and they start realizing, whoa. Like, this is quote unquote easy. And they're recovering from exercise, and they're sleeping better, and they're feeling better, and everything's better. You know, libido is better, mood is better. It's like, whoa. And they go like, how come everybody doesn't know about this? Well, it's not like a specific diet that you could market. I don't even know what you would call it. And again, I have nothing vested in this. There's no book about this, but there must be a dozen or more people that I've handed this idea off to directly that have lost, and again, anywhere from probably 20 to, in Mike's case, 60 pounds and kept it off for years. Now, Chris Ray did this recently. He was like, I want to get in shape. I'm feeling kind of heavy. So Chris is a naturally strong guy. He's got thick joints. He's got a lot of natural muscle build there. So he immediately started going to the gym as well. But when we were in Australia on tour, I was like, here's what you can eat. And I told him those food groups, that guy lost, like, 30 pounds in two months. He also lifts. We have to, like, restrict his lifting, because he, like, he'll go to the gym, like twice a day, every day. This is a guy where if you have an appointment to start filming at 09:00 a.m. he's there at six, waiting outside.

By the way, phenomenal skateboard. He's won all sorts of awards. He's the best. And he wins the award of just being an awesome film, an amazing guy. And he was over this morning doing the sauna and coldplunge. When he's in, he's all in. But he started eating this way too. And then he has an interesting story that he told me I could share, where one day he decided to break to cheat. So he had all this pizza and ice cream, and he just threw it up and it kind of tasted. Some people like Jacob has told me when he. He's like, oh, I really miss. After he lost a bunch of weight, he was like, I really miss whatever it was. I don't know, sandwiches. He likes hoagies and stuff like that. I've known Jacob since we were kids, and he's always liked snack food. So I was like, go for it, try it. And he did it and he was like, ugh, it tasted terrible. And I'm like, exactly. First bite feels okay, and then you're craving it, but you don't actually want that. It's some brain thing that we don't quite yet understand.

And when you start eating clean in that way of the meat, fish, fruits, vegetables kind of thing, you start to develop a really nice relationship between taste, calories, satiety, and nutrients. And you're eating high nutrient food. Meat, fruit, and vegetables, super high nutrient food. And he's like, it's just transformed his life, you know? And I don't take credit for this. This is well known for ages. It's just that people are always like, oh, I'm gonna do this diet, or I'm gonna do that diet, or what supplement should I take? It's like the supplement you should take is stop eating processed foods and highly processed foods, start moving more, start eating really great quality protein and fruits and vegetables, and you're gonna feel like a million bucks. And there it is. And he probably is putting years on his life now. And so the discussion around longevity and all this stuff, it's like, sure, there's stuff we could talk about NMN, and we could talk about PRP, and we could talk about Brian Johnson and all the stuff he's doing to live forever. And, you know, but if you do the right things consistently, like 80% of the time, you are going to get outsized, positive benefits.

Yeah. So you need a stance, like a life stance. And for me, it's. I have very close friends and family, people that I love and that love me. So that's like, the circle is really small. That foundation is really real. Yeah, that foundation is real. Right. And so I'm very blessed to have that. And I've worked hard at it, and I put a lot of work into it. I check in with people in the morning. I do it out of love. I like to think they do it out of love for me. So my foundation is that right? It's not the podcast. I love the podcast. I love my work. But I have that, people that really know me, that I feel safety and acceptance with, and then I hope that they feel safe and accepted with me. That's the key. You don't need many of those people, but you need a few. And if you don't have them, you need to put some work into building that. Those few are really going to tell you how it is. Yes. Yeah. How it is. And I just can rely on them. I've got people that I love and I love them.

I've got things that I love doing, like getting that morning sunlight for me is more about, you know, just touching in with life. You know, I think, like anybody, my mind can start drifting into the past. Things have happened, good and bad. I can start future tripping. It's about getting, like, really present. We have the unit of the day leaning into that. You know, some of the best advice I ever got recently was, you know, wake up and just think, what can I do to make today a little bit better for me and for the people around me and for the world? Just that. That's probably the best advice I've ever had ever gotten. Because it's not about comparing yourself to yesterday or these little mantras. It's like, what can I do to make today better for me, for the people around me, for the world, right? If it's pick up a piece of trash, I know people like, oh, God, this guy sounds like a grade school dude. No, actually, a little better. You can do those things, and there are a lot of other things you can do.

Okay, so there's that. There's that. That core, then there's the work. And the fact that the work is public facing. And I do believe because it's zero cost, because it's science based, and because 90% of what I talk about are do's and don'ts that are behaviors, you don't have to purchase anything to do them. It's a give. It's my offering. And people have agency. They don't have to do listen to it, let alone do the stuff. Right? They don't have to listen. If I'm popping up in your feed anyway, like, don't blame me, but the algorithm's working. Exactly. The algorithms work, you know, and it is zero cost. And people say, well, but the ads are intrusive. If you have thumbs or even if you don't, you scan past them, it's okay, you know, that makes it zero cost to people. Now, the supplement piece, cold plunges, that stuff tends to become the focus people like, he's the cold plunge supplement guy. It's all about selling this or that. And look, that we run advertisements, so it can be zero cost to people. I do only advertise things that I truly love and use.

Okay, so the anterior mid singular cortex, for those of you that may not have seen the episode on willpower and tenacity, but even if you have, is a region of the brain that is involved in leaning into difficult challenges of all kinds. This is an area of the brain that gets larger when we embrace effort that leads to a bit of internal anxiety, but it's something that's good for us, an adaptive thing. And this is an area of the brain that gets smaller when we don't engage in challenging endeavors. Now, we need to define challenging endeavors. Very specifically, challenging endeavors that stimulate the growth of the anterior mid cingulate cortex are challenging endeavors that we would prefer not to do. We may want the end goal, right? So we may want the consequence of the exercise, the consequence of the learning, the consequence of whatever the challenge is, but that the challenge itself feels uncomfortable. And here, of course, we want it to be uncomfortable, but safe challenges is what's going to grow the inter mid cingulate cortex. Now, another thing about the intermitting cortex that's important is that for people that end up being successful diet or successful pursuit of fitness, for people that complete a degree or finish an exam or things of that sort, the anterior midcingulate cortex gets bigger for people that fail to do the work required to prepare.

So the preparation that is the anterior mid cingulate cortex actually shows a bit of atrophy. So the anterior midsing like cortex, is an anatomical and neural reflection, willpower and tenacity. And I think what people get wrong over and over about these sorts of findings is that the anterior midcingulate cortex is really responding to a variety of inputs, as a lot of different inputs and outputs. We know that based on neural circuit tracing, but it absolutely responds best to things that feel like that they are indeed difficult, that they are a challenge. So if you're like me and you enjoy certain forms of exercise, and it's just pure bliss for you the whole way through, that's not going to grow your anterior mid cingulate cortex. However, if you add a bit of, let's say, higher intensity work, I like doing a long run or hike on Sundays. I don't do sprints too often at the end of that, but if I were to do a couple hill sprints at the end, and I really was like, this, this is rough, this sucks. That's actually the sort of thing that's going to stimulate the anterior mid cingulate cortex.

The anterior midsingulate cortex, since Carolyn, you asked about studies, was actually discovered in cases where people were stimulating this brain area. And the subjects, these were people receiving neurosurgery for other reasons, reported feeling like something was impending, some not impending doom, but there was some challenge, like they were going to head into a storm, something challenging was coming. But the other subjective feeling that they reported was feeling like they could lean into it, like they're ready for it, they're ready to meet that challenge. So what you're looking for, when you are interested in growing your interim and cingulate cortex, and I'll tell you why that's a good thing to do, is you're looking for that feeling of leaning into challenge, that friction. If something's too easy or it's too delightful, that's not going to contribute to your interim insingulate cortex function and growth. It might contribute to other things. Indeed it will. And life isn't all about leaning into challenge.

But why would you want to stimulate your anterior mid cingulate cortex in this way? And by the way, those challenges can come from physical endeavors and come from language. Learning it come from a hard conversation that you've been putting off that's hard for you to have. Lord knows, we all have those aspects of our lives, the things that we're putting off or that are hard for us or that feel difficult. Again, keep these endeavors safe. Never want to do anything that would damage your mental health or physical health. But leaning into challenge in that way does seem to activate and grow the anterior mid cingulate cortex. Now, the advantage of that is that there are studies, excuse me, showing that the so called superagers, the superagers, I don't like that name so much. It's a bit of a misnomer. They call them superagers, but they really should be called super nonagers because these are people who seem to maintain healthy cognitive function much longer than most individuals. Their memory, their iq remains stable into their much, much later decades of their life or even improves over time. And then the correlation, and again, this is correlation, but these people's anterior mid cingulate cortex does not atrophy.

And in general, what the studies point to, and there still needs to be more data collected on this, is that these people are regularly engaging in things that are hard for them and challenging, and they've embraced that challenge. So, lots to say about interior mid cingulate cortex, but I think that grabs the top contour. And I'm a big fan of trying to do something difficult, at least one thing, ideally every week, and perhaps even every day a little bit. It doesn't take much, maybe in just five minutes. It's that friction, that feeling, oh, I don't want to do this. I can't do this. And then continuing to practice or continuing to lean into that challenge safely, of course, that is going to grow that intermittent signaling cortex. And I just think that's amazing. Right? We hear so much about brain atrophy and memory loss and et cetera, et cetera, as we get older. A lot of data now about how to preserve healthy physical functions. Here we're really talking about how to maintain healthy cognitive function. And the interim cellulite cortex seems to be a barometer of how well we are doing that.

I'd love to hear more about an evening routine and not just morning, especially when it comes to light. Oh, I love this question. I love this question because I've made a lot of changes in the last year related to this, because, you know, there's this guy on the Internet that talks about the importance of. Of getting morning sunlight. Just kidding. There are several of us, but. And gals. But I suppose I've been quite vocal about the importance of getting morning sunlight as soon as possible after waking. And of course, of course, of course. Unless you have powers I'm not aware of, if you wake up before the sun comes out, people always ask, what do I do? You wait till the sun comes out. If it's overcast, you get outside a bit longer. If you want to wake up before the sun comes out, turn on bright artificial lights. These days. I've actually been playing around a little bit with some bright artificial lights before I. Because I tend to wake up before the sun is out. It's the winter months, but in any case, I've talked a lot about the morning routine in the early part of the day and a bit about the afternoon part of the day. Evening routine.

Okay, well, I'll tell you ideal, and then I'll tell you what I do. I'm always shooting for ideal, but I'm human. I think there's this idea on the Internet that I've seen that, you know, my whole life is protocols, protocol, protocol, protocol. And indeed, sometimes it looks like that, and indeed, sometimes it doesn't. I'm human. Things happen. We all encounter different challenges. So, to answer your question directly, Mark, I think it's. I know it's very important that, if possible, that you get a little splash of sunlight in your eyes in the afternoon and evening. Why? Why is that important? And what we're really talking about here is not necessarily seeing a sunset at the beach, although that would be great if you could do that. But getting some sunlight in your eyes before the sun goes down, maybe for 510 minutes, it's not as important as the morning sunlight, but it does have a great benefit. And the benefit is it adjusts the sensitivity of the neurons in your retina and your brain such that it protects you against brighter artificial lights later in the evening.

Now, it doesn't protect you completely, but what it does is if normally, and this is true, bright light viewed for 15 seconds or more between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 04:00 a.m. i'm talking about somebody on a standard schedule, not shift worker. Bright lights viewed for 15 seconds or more between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 04:00 a.m. can dramatically quash melatonin levels. melatonin being the hormone that's involved in feeling sleepy and falling asleep. It does other things as well, of course, is secrete from the pineal. We know, based on a really nice study published in Science reports, that if you view that afternoon, late afternoon, evening sunlight, you don't have to be too strict about the time. Get, you know, pop your sunglasses off. As long as you can do that safely, get some sunlight in your eyes, or if you can't, look directly at the sun. And by the way, never stare directly at the sun. At least getting some daylight in your eyes before the sun goes down, that can offset that melatonin reduction by a about 55 0%, which is pretty impressive. Now, you would still do well to dim the lights in the evening.

And one thing that I've been playing with recently is using red lights. So a lot of people, when they hear red lights, they think, oh, you're talking about, you know, red light panel, which that has its uses. Those tend to be very bright red lights or, you know, portable red light. I actually use a small, portable red light. Looks like a piece of thick piece of toast. I use that for other reasons. This is not what we're talking about with evening routine. With evening routine, it can be beneficial and very, very cost effective to get some red bulbs and put them in, say, the bedroom where you read before you go to sleep or in a particular room in your house you tend to spend time in, in the evening. Makes for a nice mellow feel, but also does several other things. First of all, it, if they're the correct red bulbs, and I'll mention the ones that I've been using in a moment, they eliminate all the blue wavelengths that tend to be stimulating for the, what we call the noradrenergic system. So adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, etcetera. Indeed.

There's a study that shows that when shift workers who have to be up at night use red lights of the type that I'm describing, when they work under red light, they have less of a cortisol increase than were they to work under standard fluorescent lights or even standard led lights. So number one thing would be dim the lights in the evening and at night, as much as you safely can to perform whatever functions you need. Don't fall, you know, don't burn yourself at the stove, you know, if you have to write and do work, as I often do, you need light. But to the extent that you can shift to red lights, that can be helpful. And many people, many people, and myself included, find that you get sleepiere when you do that. So I might just do this for the last hour of the evening, even if I'm up till ten or eleven, or if I do it earlier, then I tend to get really sleepy. But those red lights, you know, I put a little lamp above my bed, I'll do that if I'm going to read in bed. I make it much easier fall asleep, probably because of the reduced cortisol associated with eliminating the blue wavelengths. And they tend to be fairly dim.

And now there's one brand of red light that you actually can, that actually will work on a dimmer. So this is important. I suppose you could use red party lights or Christmas lights. Those could be very affordable. Some people do that. It's kind of festive feel in the room. Other people, like myself, will use a red light that's dimmable I want to mention that what I'm about to say, I don't have any financial relationship to this company in terms of the bulbs. Red light panels are different. I use the juve. I use Juve type. But for red lights, that, for the purpose I'm talking about, that would go into a standard lamp and that you dim where that's a very different purpose. Right. The red light panels have a very different purpose than red bulbs that you would put into a standard light fixture. The dimmable ones are called. You can find them as red light. You just put Bon. It's the technical name of the company is. Sorry, forgive me for googling this now. Yeah, it's a bond charge, bon. Separate word.

Charge. And those are dimmable, and they have the proper wavelength, so that's what I use. They're not super cheap, but they're not expensive either in comparison to most red light therapies or something. So we're not talking about red light therapy, we're talking about reducing the overall amount of blue light in your environment, etcetera. Now, for many people who don't want to purchase something new, and again, I have no financial relationship to bond charge, so I don't glean anything. I buy them with my own money, and I just have one or two of them, and I dim the lights. Even those red lights I dim while I'm reading at night and then fall asleep. If you don't want to use red lights, for whatever reason, then you would be wise to just dim the lights that you have and where possible, to have those lights be set fairly low in your room environment.

Now, why would that be? Okay, well, first of all, the cells that activate the alertness system in the, via the retina, your eye tend to look up into your environment, and that makes sense because they're essentially there to view sunlight and the presence or absence of sunlight. But in addition to that, think about it logically. If I take a flashlight and I shine a beam on the ground or at a tree in the yard, it looks very bright, but you're not getting all those photons in your eyes, right. You're seeing it at a distance as opposed to shining the light in your eyes. It's very, very bright. Okay. So when you have lights that are overhead and going into your eyes, it's very different than the light being on the floor or on a surface. This gets back to something that I often get asked. How could it be that viewing sunlight through a window takes 50 times longer to activate your circadian system than it does when you step outside. Well, let's think about that. When you step outside, there's sunlight everywhere. If you face the sun, there's even more coming at you.

But when you're inside, unless there's a beam of light coming through that window and the window is very clear or open for that matter, you're not really getting the light in your eyes in the same way that if you were outside with the sunlight in your eyes. Right. It's the same thing as like looking at a beam of light from a flashlight against a wall versus the beam of light going at your eyes. Okay, so we talked about dimming the lights, setting them low in the room. The red, it's not red light therapy, but changing over to red lights. Pawn charge is probably just one of many out there. I've seen it done pretty nice nicely with just somebody. People grab red party lights, go on, whatever your favorite search engine sales site, red lights. And you can do that. That's going to be better than any blue lights.

And then if you're going to be on your screens, here's what I suggest. There's a shortcut function in your phone where you can triple click to switch your phone over to eliminate all the blues. This is very different than just using the nighttime function. Very different. And I think we should probably put out a video on how to do this. What you do is you go into the accessibility function on your phone. You go into color filters and then you drag down the blues. But that's not how your phone is going to be set all day because then you don't see anything that's in blue. But you can introduce a triple click function. I'll put out a clip soon on how to do that. So when I go to sleep at night or in the evening, what I'll do is I'll triple click and I'll switch my phone over to red only. And that's completely zero cost, by the way. It doesn't cost anything. And then in the morning when I wake up, click, click, click, I turn on.

Although I try and get the sunlight in my eyes before I look at my phone, I wake up in the morning and I want to reach for my phone. But I know that even if I were to crank up the brightness on that phone screen, it's not bright enough to trigger that cortisol spike and for me to be at my most alert and focused throughout the day and to optimize my sleep at night. So what I do is I get out of bed and I go outside and if it's a bright, clear day and the sun is low in the sky, or the sun is, you know, starting to get overhead, what we call low solar angle, then I know I'm getting outside at the right time. If there's cloud cover and I can't see the sun, I also know I'm doing a good thing because it turns out, especially on cloudy days, you want to get outside and get as much light energy or photons in your eyes. But let's say it's a very clear day and I can see where the sun is. I do not need to stare directly into the sun if it's very low in the sky. I might do that because it's not going to be very painful to my eyes. However, if the sun is a little bit brighter and a little bit higher in the sky, sometimes it can be painful to look at. So the way to get this sunlight viewing early in the day is to look toward the sun. If it's too bright to look at directly, well, then don't do that. You just look toward it, but not directly at it. It's absolutely fine to blink. In fact, I encourage you to blink whenever you feel the impulse to blink. Never look at any light, sunlight or otherwise, that's so bright that it's painful to look at because you can damage your eyes. But for this morning morning sunlight viewing, it's best to not wear sunglasses.

That's right, to not wear sunglasses. At least for this morning sunlight viewing, it is absolutely fine to wear eyeglasses or contact lenses, so called corrective lenses. In fact, those will serve you well in this practice or this tool, because they will focus the light onto your neural retina and onto those melanopsin intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells. If your eyeglasses or contact lenses have uv protection, that's okay. There's so many different wavelengths of light coming from the sun, and they are bright enough that they will trigger the mechanisms that you want triggered at this early time of day. So try and get outside, ideally within the first five minutes of waking, or maybe it's 15 minutes, but certainly within the first hour after waking. I want to share with you three critical things about this tool of morning sunlight viewing. First of all, this is not some woo biology thing. This is grounded in the core of our physiology. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of quality peer reviewed papers showing that light viewing early in the day is the most powerful stimulus for wakefulness throughout the day. And it has a powerful positive impact on your ability to fall and stay asleep at night. So this is really the foundational power tool for ensuring a great night's sleep and for feeling more awake during the day. Second of all, if you wake up before the sun is out, you can and probably should flip on artificial lights in your internal home environment or apartment or wherever you happen to live. If your goal is to be awake, if you wake up at four in the morning and you need to be awake, well then turn on artificial lights once the sun is out.

However, once the sun has risen, then you still want to get outside and view sunlight. Some of you will wake up before the sun comes out. And if you're asking whether or not turning on artificial lights can replace sunlight at those hours, unfortunately, the answer is no. Unless you have a very special light. We'll talk about what kind of light the bright artificial lights in your home environment are not, I repeat, are not going to be sufficiently brighten to turn on the cortisol mechanism and the other wake up mechanisms that you need early in the day. The diabolical twist, however, is that those lights in your home or apartment, or even on your phone are bright enough to disrupt your sleep if you look at them too late at night or in the middle of the night. So there's this asymmetry in our retinal, our eye biology and in our brain's biology, whereby early in the day, right around waking, you need a lot of light, a lot of photons, a lot of light energy. And artificial lights generally just won't accomplish what you need them to accomplish. But at night, even a little bit of artificial light can really mess up your so called circadian, your 24 hours clocks, and all these mechanisms that we're talking about. So if you wake up before the sun is out and it's still dark, please turn on as many bright artificial lights as you possibly can or need, but then get outside once the sun is out.

On cloudy days, you especially need to get outside. I repeat, on cloudy days, overcast days, you especially need to get outside and get sunlight. You just need to get more of it. Now, how much light and how much light viewing do you need? This is going to vary depending on person and place, literally where you live on earth, whether or not there's a lot of tree cover, whether or not you're somebody who has sensitive eyes or less sensitive eyes, it's really impossible for me to give an absolute prescriptive, but we can give some general guidelines. In general, on a clear day, meaning no cloud cover or minimal cloud cover, you want to get this sunlight exposure to your eyes for about five minutes or so. It could be three minutes one day, could be seven minutes the next day, about five minutes. On a day where there's cloud cover, so the sun is just peeking through the clouds or it's more dense cloud cover, you want to get about ten minutes of sunlight exposure to your eyes early in the day. And on days that are really densely overcast or maybe even a rainy, you're going to want to get as much as 20 or 30 minutes of sunlight exposure.

Another key thing is do not forget about, just don't try and get this sunlight exposure through a cardinal or a window. Whether or not it's tinted or otherwise, it takes far too long. It's simply not going to trigger the relevant mechanisms. You would be standing there all day trying to get enough light into your eyes from the morning sunlight, and by then the sun will have already moved from low solar angle to overhead and it simply won't work for all sorts of mechanisms related to your circadian rhythm functions. So just don't try and do it through a windshield, sunglasses or a window. It's just not going to work. Get outside. If the weather is really bad or for whatever reason, safety reasons, you cannot get outside, well then I suppose try and get near a window. That would be the last, last resort. But you really want to get outside to get the sunlight exposure.

A question I often get is how long should I try to focus? Well, the research literature point to the key importance of so called altradian cycles. You've all probably heard of circadian cycles or circadian biology. Circa the day circadian is about 24 hours cycle. Well, our brain and body operate within that day or within each and every day, I should say with 90 minutes ultradian cycles. So my suggestion would be anytime you're going to sit down and try and focus, you're going to try and do a focused bout of physical exercise or skill learning or musical learning, or maybe you're even just having a conversation. Maybe you're a therapist or you're attending therapy or a class. How long should it be? And the ideal duration is about 90 minutes. Not exactly 90 minutes, but we can reliably say 90 minutes or less. Okay, it doesn't have to be the full 90 minutes.

But trying to push yourself to be able to drop into 2 hours of focus or 3 hours of focus while possible, is not really in line with what we know about the underlying biology. Everything from our sleep states or the different stages of sleep and our waking state is divided into these 90 minutes cycles. Or so called ultradian cycles. So what I like to do is set a timer for 90 minutes. I acknowledge and accept the fact that under most conditions, unless I'm really pressed for a deadline and I'm optimally caffeinated, etcetera, the first five to ten minutes of that 90 minutes are a transition time. It's like the warm up for focus. But I do include it in that 90 minutes, and then I really try and drop into doing focused mental work or learning of some sort. Again, this could be physical as well, motor skill learning or anything. We're running or lifting weights, et cetera, and really try and drop into that across the full 90 minutes. Again, accepting the fact, okay, it's not just an idea. The fact that occasionally our focus will flicker, it will jump out of focus.

And then a big part of being able to focus is to go back to focusing. The way I'd like you to conceptualize this, perhaps, is that arrowhead suddenly getting very, very broad, that you're focusing on many things, or that arrow shifts to a different location in the room. The key is to be able to shift it back and to narrow it once again. And that's an active process. So much so that it requires a lot of metabolic energy. Your brain is the chief consumer of metabolic energy. The calories that you consume is so called basal metabolic rate. Most of that isn't related to movement or heartbeat or breathing. It's related to brain function. Your brain is a glutton with respect to caloric need. So understand that at the end of 90 minutes, or maybe even after 45 minutes, you might feel rather tired or even exhausted.

And it's very important that after about a focus, that you take at least ten minutes, and ideally as long as 30 minutes and go through what I call deliberate defocus. You really want to focus on somewhat menial tasks or things that really don't require a ton of your concentration. This is starting to become a little bit of a movement out there in the kind of pop psychology and optimization world. This idea of not looking at your phone as you walk down the hall to the bathroom, certainly not looking at your phone in the bathroom. And I should mention, by the way, this is a particular annoyance of mine. Have you noticed that wait times for restrooms in public places has increased substantially in the last ten years? The reason for that is not digestive, okay? It's not the gut microbiome. It might be the gut microbiome, but chances are it's because people are on their phone phones in the bathroom. So you're doing yourself and everybody else a favor by staying off your phone in the restroom, staying off your phone while walking down the hall. Try and give yourself some time to deliberately decompress, to let your mental states idle, to not be focused on any one thing. That period of idling is essential for your ability to focus, much in the same way that rest between sets of resistance training or rest between exercise is vital to being able to focus and perform during the actual sets or during the actual bouts of running or cycling or whatever your particular form of exercise might be.

So deliberate decompression is key. And I know this is hard because we're all being drawn in by the incredible rich array of sensory information available on our phones and other devices. But I can't emphasize this enough. Our ability to focus is not just related to what happens during the entry and movement through those focus bouts, but after those focus bouts, we really need to deliberately decompress. And of course, the ultimate decompress, the time in which we are not directing our thinking and our action is during sleep. And so it's no wonder, or I should say it holds together logically that that deep, long lasting duration of not controlling where our mind is at is in fact the ultimate form of restoration, even if we have very intense dreams. The thing about cell phones is when you first get on there and you have, let's say, you're no wifi on the flight or something, and you land, it can actually be quite stimulating. You get a lot of dopamine. Oh, there's this. Oh, there's that. But very quickly, when you're scrolling on social media, you're no longer getting the novelty, but you're continuing to do it.

You almost don't know why you're doing it. At that point, it shifts over to something that's a bit more like an obsessive compulsive behavior, where we can define an obsessive compulsive behavior where the obsession leads to a compulsion. So the obsession is a thought, the compulsion is a behavior, but the acting out of the compulsion merely serves to increase the obsession. Right. This is very different than being obsessed with food or obsessed with cleanliness. There's no payoff. Right, exactly. There's no anxiety relief by carrying out the compulsion. With OCD behaviors like scrolling social media, the dopamine quickly wanes and then you find that you're just sort of. And we've all been there, you're scrolling and like, why am I doing this? This isn't that interesting. That is. This isn't that interesting. Now, the algorithms for social media are very clever, and I don't want to demonize it. I provide a lot of a lot of my life, especially on social media now. But the algorithms that they've incorporated function on the most powerful way to keep people doing a behavior, or an animal, for that matter, is intermittent random reward or random intermittent reward that you don't know when you're going to hit the jackpot.

So you're scrolling, you're scrolling, and then you see something. Typically, it's very high. What, you know, in nerd speak, we'd say signal to noise. So if I. You're reading some interesting things. This came out in the news. This came out, and then it's all of a sudden a riot or a person that is jump is base jumping off a building or, you know, for people that are scrolling, looking at bodies or something like that, live bodies, hopefully people aren't looking at dead bodies. But look, if something's very tragic, then that has this gravitational pull, and then what happens is you start getting the system working for that next dopamine hit that you don't know when it's going to come. It's just like gambling. So I look at social media as initially being very dopaminergic, driving reward, surprise and excitement, but very quickly transitioning to something more like OCD and the kinds of behaviors where it looks. If you. If we were to look at ourselves through the lens of an experiment, like we would an animal experiment, we think that animal is sick. If you saw an animal digging in the corner, looking, looking, looking, looking, looking for a bone, the dog is looking, looking, looking, looking, looking, looking, looking, looking, you think that's really sad.

That's us, right? That's us. I'm pointing at myself intentionally. That's us. So we have to learn to self regulate the amount of time. But that doesn't have to be a process of, you know, scruffing ourselves and saying, don't do it, don't do it. Think about it in terms of the positive. The more time away from something, the more positively reinforced it will be when you return. And that just to sort of superimpose this onto the relationship conversation, you know, many of us are fortunate to have partners that we love spending a lot of time with. It's also good to miss that person every once in a while. Now, that might be an hour for some people, apart of no communication, it might be a week. Everyone varies on this, on the spectrum, but the idea of missing someone is that positive anticipation that kind of pain, right. It's a motivational state, and I. And when you see them, it's all the richer. So dopamine detox, I would have thought, was not something real. It seemed kind of silly to me, actually. And I'll tell you why it seems silly and why it still seems silly, but why it may have some utility. But then Ana, Doctor Anna Lemke told me that it actually can be quite useful to take some time and space away from social media, certainly from any addictive of drugs. That's the treatment for addiction. And restore those dopamine levels to baseline.

Now, the way that dopamine detoxing was initially described in the Bay area, where seemed a lot of tech types were talking about it was in terms of, I heard something like, oh, people aren't even looking at other people's faces. You know, they're really kind of living this, like, monkish lifestyle, like no food that they really enjoy, no anything. That, to me, seems kind of crazy and kind of extreme. I mean, I can understand not ingesting a lot of highly palatable foods, you know, eating some blander foods. I can understand not, certainly not doing any prescription drugs or taking some time off from caffeine. Caffeine increases dopamine receptors, which makes the dopamine that's available more powerful at evoking the dopamine response. I can understand avoiding certain substances and behaviors, but the idea that you weren't going to look people in the eye because it's gonna be too much dopamine, I mean, I guess it depends on who you're looking in the eye and how much their look positively arouses you.

But the fact of the matter is that that's not a very rational way to think about dopamine detox. But staying out of, you know, high intensity, highly rewarding activities, I think could be useful in terms of reestablishing that dopamine balance. And everything we know from Ana's work is that dopamine, you know, if you drive those dopaminergic states too long, addictive drugs, etcetera, people can do this with sex, food, drugs, gambling, social media, all sorts of things. Pornography. What ends up happening is the amount of dopamine that's released over time goes down and down and down and down, and pretty much is traversing into the territory of pain. And then people, again, are back to this thing where they're scrolling Internet porn eight, nine times or hours a day, and then they're wondering why this isn't effective for them anymore. Whereas it was before. And there's additional issue with pornography, which is not often discussed, which is that, remember, guys in particular, the brain is a learning prediction machine.

And if, I'm not trying to say that all pornography is bad, but there are good data to support the idea that if your brain learns to be aroused by watching other people have sex, it is not necessarily going to carry over to the ability to get aroused when you're one on one with somebody else. Right. Especially young kids who are consuming a lot of pornography. The brain is learning sexual arousal to other people having sex. So you're going to program yourself into being a voyeur. Yeah. Or just create challenges in sexual interactions with, you know, with peers, with a, with a real partner. Mary Harrington has the three laws of porno dynamics, and the second law of porno dynamics is the law of FAP entropy. And it says that whatever you start out wanking to will get progressively more intense over time. And I think that this is sort of speaking to that ever, ever sort of escalating amount of the wildness that you need to watch in order to get an ever decreasing stimulus that comes back. Yeah. And, you know, here I'm, I'm approaching this only through the lens of biology. Right.

I'm not a, you know, I'm not a psychologist and I'm certainly not political in it in any way. At least I have ideas about politics, but I just don't discuss them publicly. But the, but the idea here is that, you know, I'm not saying pornography as a stimulus is bad or good. What I'm saying is it in its availability and its extreme forms, it's a very potent stimulus. Stimulus, and very potent stimuli of any kind, extremely palatable food, extreme pornography, extreme experiences like bungee cord jumping, those set a threshold for dopamine release. And Anna will tell you that, and I'm sure she did, that. The higher the dopamine peak, the bigger the drop afterwards. And it's not that you drop to baseline, you drop below baseline. So again, it's not, these things aren't good or bad. They just have to be controlled in a way, because when people are pursuing dopamine peaks over and over and over and they aren't getting them typically, it's because they've been pursuing that activity far too often.

The key thing here is that, and this is the beauty of the dopamine system. Just like the stress system is generic, the fear system is generic. It's designed for a bunch of different scenarios. The motivation system is also generic. It can be to achieve the next lamppost as a milestone, or it can be 5 miles as the next milestone, you get to control that. And it. So it's completely arbitrary, right? I mean, one of the most brilliant things that was ever said to me by an extremely skilled psychoanalyst is so simple, and yet I do think it's the most fundamental thing to understanding oneself is that it's all internal. Right? If you finish a marathon in first place, no one comes along and drips dopamine in your ear, you self generate that. It's all internal. It's all about your internal representation. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't good and bad events in life, but the fact of the matter is that if you set the next milestone as just outside the distance of what you're comfortable with and you make it there, if you allow yourself a moment to register that win, you get energy to do to then set the next milestone and achieve it. That energy is dopamine converted into epinephrine, into adrenaline.

I try and get to bed by about ten, maybe 11:00 p.m. i don't always succeed. I wake up around, you know, 06:00 a.m. or so. If I don't sleep enough or I don't feel rested, I'll do a ten to 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes. NSTR, yoga. Nidra. I get up. I like to hydrate. First thing I try and do is drink 16 to 32oz of water. I like, just hydrate in the morning, get outside, and get some sunlight. If I can't get the sunlight, I get in front of that 10,000 lux light. I prefer to work out early in the day, in which case, I I'll drink caffeine. If it's a resistance training workout, for me, that's yerba mate or coffee or both. Sometimes I'll just tell you my workout schedule is really easy to hit on. Same thing I've been doing roughly for 30 years, although sometimes I've been less, you know, less focused on it and let it lapse a bit here and there. So, first day of the week for me, it falls on a Monday, but it could be any day. I train my legs, calves, hamstrings, quads. I'm a big believer in glute. Ham raises, hack squats, leg curls, leg extensions, calf raises. Just keep the lower body strong, keep the posterior chain strong.

There are a bunch of different ways to do this. One could do it with kettlebell swings or deadlifts, but those are the things that work well for me, and that I can consistently add load or other ways of increasing intensity without getting hurt. Okay, knock on wood. The whole thing takes about an hour. Next day is arrested, typically after leg day, and I'll try and do. I don't always do, but some deliberate heat and deliberate cold exposure. In an ideal world, it's 20 minutes of sauna, three to five minutes of cold. 20 minutes of sauna, three, five minutes of cold. 20 minutes of sauna, three, five minutes of cold. And yes, I finish with a warm shower because I'm a human being and I like that. And I will listen to podcasts or books or something while I do it and helps my recovery. It's also just thermal training. It has all the benefits of sauna and cold, and I like to do it on that day. The next day I'll do typically a run, a 25 or 30 minutes run at a kind of faster pace.

So where I'm, you know, breathing hard for most of it, but it's not all out, maybe 85% of effort, and that's it. The next day I train my torso. I know a lot of people roll, their eyes will be like, what are you talking about? How do you. I do some overhead pressing, some dips, some pull ups or chin ups, and some rowing, and then I do some abdominal work. And I train my neck because it's an important part of the structure of the upper body to keep the head stable and not get text neck and things like that. I don't train it heavy, but I train my neck. And I do make sure I do things like rear delts. I really am trying to emphasize outward external rotation, rotation of the limbs who are not, you know, kind of like hunched over like this and heavy in the traps, you know, just upright posture, those kinds of things. And then the next day, the only workout is about ten minutes long. It's that ten second hard cycling on the assault bike. 22nd rest, 1020, 1020 for eight rounds.

That's it. Vo two max Saturdays, another short resistance training workout. So three total for the week. And then it's, you know, biceps, triceps, calves, a little neck work, abdominal work. It's kind of just small body part stuff. And then on Sunday, which for me falls on a Sunday, I try and do some long ruck or hike, often socially put on a backpack with some weight, or if I'm by myself, I'll do, you know, a 60 to 90 minutes jog or something of that sort, maybe hike part of it and listen to music or just let my thoughts go. So what it boils down to is six days of training per week, three resistance training sessions, one longer slow run, one moderate one, and one short one. The total amount of time is actually quite low when you think about it. And then there's that rest day where I may or may not do the heat and cold. This schedule I could micro dissect. But what ends up happening with this schedule is because, for instance, I'll train my legs on Monday directly, but I'm doing the assault bike for HiIt on Friday. So my legs sort of get targeted twice per week, once directly, once indirectly.

So I don't have to worry about too little frequency of stimulation for things like strength and hypertrophy, although I'm not trying to grow anymore for maintaining muscle. Similarly, I'll train my torso on that one day during the middle of the week, but you're using your arms for that. And then you train your arms directly another day. And on the arm day, you know, I'm doing some dip like things. And so you're also hitting your torso muscles. So I never worry that it's not frequented enough. I find that getting into the gym more than three days per week or doing resistance training more than three days per week, I start to lose my motivation for it. But I like to be really focused and targeted when I'm there. And I love long runs, I love moderate runs, and I love the hiIt workout. So I get to do a little bit of everything. And I really want to emphasize that because I'm not a professional athlete or even an amateur athlete. The whole basis of this thing is to be able to do anything. Meaning I can go for a long hike or backpack during the summer with a heavy pack, no problem. I can sprint for the airplane, no problem. I can lift things without hurting myself, no problem, provided I'm smart about it. I'm not trying to be the strongest, the biggest, or the fastest, or the one with the most endurance, just kind of all around life.

And none of these workouts is longer than an hour. And in many cases they're twelve minutes or 30 minutes. The daily routine is pretty much consistent. And I should say that schedule, if I travel, things might slide a bit. I might move day one next to day two. I move things around, but I'm careful to never weight train more than two days in a row. I personally don't recover. I don't like doing that. Okay. Nutrition. I just try and emphasize non processed or minimally processed foods. I'm not really hungry until about 11:00 a.m. and then I like some meat, some berries, some rice or oatmeal sometimes, and some vegetable. I'm not low carb. In the afternoon, I'll generally have a snack, maybe a pro, drink some nuts. You know, I do eat, you know, those maui nui jerky sticks or a thing of bone broth or something. It's not promotion, it's just a fact. And then for dinner, I like. I tend to emphasize less protein. For me, that works. This runs counter to what everyone says, but I like more vegetables, pasta, rice, risottos.

Occasionally I'll go out for a big steak or something like that. But generally the heavier on the starch is not heavy, but heavier on. On the starches, relatively. And vegetables. And then a couple hours before sleep, ideally. But sometimes I'll finish dinner and collapse. You know, it's just life. I do find I sleep better if I allow a few hours before sleep. In terms of stress modulation and things like that. I do deploy the physiological sigh, which sounds very technical, but two inhales through the nose, followed by a long exhale to lower lungs empty. I try and do that anytime I feel that my stress is too high. My lab published a clinical trial and cell reports medicine, in collaboration with David Spiegel's laboratory at Stanford, showing that five minutes a day of breath work of cyclic sighing. So inhale, inhale, exhale. Both through the. Both inhales through the nose. Inhale, inhale, exhale. Done as a dedicated practice for five minutes a day, led to some interesting changes. Positive changes in reductions in. In resting heart rate, reductions in blood pressure, improvements in sleep mood, et cetera. Not all significant, but several which work statistically significant. But I don't tend to do breath work. I tend to just use that physiological sigh whenever I'm feeling kind of overly ramped up.

So what I found for me is that the core set of supplements, plus training, right, plus life lived in the way I described, hydration, etcetera, that seems to work best. And what's my measure of that is feelings of vigor, whether or not I can recover from my workouts. Meaning, am I getting any progress in terms of loads or other intensity variables or distance or speed over time with the cardiovascular stuff? And the answer is yes. Small improvements over time are really what I'm after or maintaining what I've got. Because at 48, just interested in staying healthy and I'm sure would love to be even healthier. But I'm also paying attention to how much cognitive vigor I have. You know, if I'm training so much or paying so much attention to nutrition that I can't, like, engage in work and function, that's not good. If I can't sit for 3 hours and have a conversation because I'm in pain, that's not good. And fortunately, you know, I've got things in a place where I feel generally good, sometimes great, but good most of the time. I still get bad nights, sleep every once in a while. I still stress, you know, I don't tend to do cheat days or things like that. I love the occasional piece of pizza or croissant or something like that. But I've also learned that most of the things about taking great care from nutrition, lifestyle, mindset, and the rest creates a kind of a heightened sensory experience of life. This is what I think people miss.

They think of it as deprivation. But when you're doing these things and you do theme consistently, I find at least that, first of all, I love the foods I eat. I love meat, fish, chicken, eggs, vegetables, certain starches, you know, fruit, etcetera, that I enjoy all those things. And I also enjoy all of life so much more. Whereas I find that things, for me anyway, alcohol, highly processed foods, they create a kind of cloak over my senses. I don't, I don't enjoy life as much, but of course, a really good cookie, like a really good cookie or. Sure, you know, that that makes sense. And I enjoy those. So I look at things, all of it. Exercise, nutrition, supplementation, you know, any kind of NSDR, things like that, as, do they allow me to lean into life with more vigor, with more curiosity, with more texture? Or do they kind of consume a lot of time and don't allow me to do that? And in my, my experience, the things that I described, and there are a few others, I do allow me to live life better, right? It's not like I'm sleeping all the time, or I'm neurotically saying, okay, everybody, it's 830, I gotta go to sleep.

You know, and look, I respect people's individual choices. I actually, the other day, saw for the first time in a long time, Brian Johnson, who's, you know, he's whole, like wholeheartedly and whole everything. Devoting his entire energy to being the most measured human and, and longevity stuff. And that's what floats his boat. Me, I like to have some flexibility on my schedule in life. And if it costs me a few years of life, I'm willing to make that trade.

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