UX3 Restoration Radio is proud to have on Dave Asprey. I got a great guest today. He’s a good friend of mine but more than being a friend he’s an expert that I follow. I love what he does. I love what he creates.Listen in…
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John Rowley: Hi this is John Rowley and welcome to Restoration Radio. I got a great guest today. He’s a good friend of mine but more than being a friend he’s an expert that I follow. I love what he does. I love what he creates but more than anything I love his back story because he’s actually gone on his journey and gone on his path for himself. His name is Dave Asprey. Dave thanks for being with us today.
Dave Asprey: My pleasure John. Thanks for having me on.
John Rowley: I appreciate. Dave is the creator of BulletProof coffee, BulletProof executive, BulletProof protein, BulletProof everything. He’s got the BulletProof coffee shop in Santa Monica which I’m a frequent visitor of. In fact, they’ve got incredible food at the coffee shop as well. Dave, thank you for being with us. Right now you’re working on a bunch of projects and we’ll get into your back story. What’s your biggest passion project right now? What’s driving you at the moment?
Dave Asprey: I’ve been working for a long time on learning how to say coffee as cool as you do. You say coffee. I can’t replicate it man. I love how you say it. It’s not in my genome and I don’t know what to do with it.
John Rowley: The next time we’re face to face I’ll sit down and I’ll give you a 15 minute lesson on that.
Dave Asprey: You’ll pound it right into me. I’m just kidding.
John Rowley: When my mother moved to Florida, I moved to North Carolina and she called me up. She goes, “John.” She goes, “Down in Florida everybody wants me to say coffee. Why do they do that?” “I don’t know mom.”
Dave Asprey: That’s not actually my passion project. I’m working on … what I’m doing up here on Vancouver Island where I live I have an organic farm. I’m looking at the food production thing. Where does food come from and how does it affect us? I’m also building this human hacking laboratory here where I’m doing things with strange levels of oxygen, strange levels of atmospheric pressure and all these different technologies that push the human body in ways that Mother Nature never intended.
My thesis is that the environment sends a signal to the body and the body will respond whether you want it to or not. The signal that comes into your body is relatively weak from Mother Nature and I can give it a stronger signal. It’s like when you lift something heavy like that’s a signal but what if you use the electricity and lift something heavy and there was a stronger signal so you grew more muscle or you adapted more rapidly. I want all the levers and knobs that lets you do things to your body you’re not supposed to do. I want to label all these so I can play with them.
John Rowley: You electrocuted me one time on my bicep.
Dave Asprey: You howled pretty well. It was fun.
John Rowley: You were telling me I was at level 3 and I was like at level 30.
Dave Asprey: My 5 year old did that level and [ 00:02:46]. It was good.
John Rowley: One of the things I find very interesting you do is your path to where you are today. Would you mind explaining to everybody where you came from and how you got to where you are today?
Dave Asprey: I’m a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Way back in the day believe or not I was the first person to sell anything over the internet. Before Amazon, before Yahoo, before there was a web browser, I sold T-shirts. In fact I didn’t plan this but this T-shirt I don’t know if you can see it on the video.
John Rowley: Yeah I can see it.
Dave Asprey: This caffeine this is like a 20th anniversary remake of the first T-shirt ever … it’s actually the first product that was sold on the internet said ‘Caffeine my drug of choice.’ It wasn’t quite as nice looking as a shirt. This is like a limited edition BulletProof shirt now. That was the first thing. I started there and the problem was I weighed 300 pounds when I sold this. I was in entrepreneur magazine in my early 20’s. They’re like, “Look this guy is selling things on this inter something like it’s so cool. I never heard of it.” The internet changed the world and I played that heavy role in the creation of the first cloud computing as we know it.
The company called Exodus Communications Google’s first servers, Hotmail server, Yahoo servers where all in our facilities it’s like we’re running infrastructure for the internet. After a long time in Silicon Valley, I’m like, “I’m fat. I’m tired all the time.” It turns out in retrospect I’ve been exposed to toxic mold in the house where I lived in it. Messed up my hormones. I got fat and inflamed and brain fog and all this. I just realized in my mid 20’s I’m like, “You know what I’ve made a substantial amount of money here.” I made $6 million when I was 26 which his awesome. Everyone was saying things like, “You rich asshole.” I’m like “No, let me tell you.”
When I was 28 I lost $6 million. I’ve been working for a paycheck for the last 20 years like everyone else. I had this brief moment of like I’m set for life. What do I want to do? Then everything fell apart. By the way, it teaches you a lot about stress resilience. I’m sitting there and I’m like, “I’m fat. I’m tired all the time and I’m going to lose my job.” I bought disability insurance because my brain doesn’t work. I wouldn’t hire me half the time. I didn’t know what I’m doing.
I was struggling and barely staying above water. I decided the most important thing I could do was to solve that problem. I’m a hacker literally. My last job before I quit Silicon Valley I was a VP of cloud security for a big internet security company. Literally that’s computer security. I’m like, “I’m going to take hacking techniques from all this time in Silicon Valley and I’m going to point it at myself. I’m going to use the event correlation. I’m going to actually do what works instead of what’s supposed to work.”
Part of my past time I’m like, “I have will power. I’m going to work out 6 days a week, an hour and a half a day 45 cardio on a treadmill, on an incline, 45 lifting weights and I’m just going to eat less fat, eat less calories and I’m going to lose weight.” A year and a half later I’m still fat. I can max out all the machines at the [ 00:05:46]. I can bench press all my thin friends who eat twice what I eat and I’m still fat. It hit me one day. I’m sitting at Carl’s Jr. I’m eating like the [raunchy 00:05:56] chicken salad with no dressing and they’re eating burgers and fries and stuff. I’m like, “Wait a minute. Why do I look like this and they look like that?”
It just occurred to me that it wasn’t that I failed. It wasn’t that I didn’t try hard enough which is what we love to tell fat people. It was actually that this stuff doesn’t work. For some people it works for some amount of time and what happens when it you can make it work is really, really predictable. I lost 20 pounds, I gain 30 pounds. I lost 30 pounds, I gain 40 pounds. I did that all the time. It’s because we’re relying on will power to change what we eat it’s just a dumb idea. It doesn’t work because will power is finite and you should use your power to change the world, to have powerful relationships like to do something meaningful or you should use it to watch soap operas on TV. I don’t really care but you shouldn’t use it to tell yourself not to eat when you’re hungry. That’s not right.
John Rowley: Jack LaLanne always said “Eat the weight off, don’t starve it off.”
Dave Asprey: It’s exactly true. Starving is bad for you.
John Rowley: You went from 300 pounds to … you’re very fit now. You’ve been fit for a long time. How did you take the weight off?
Dave Asprey: First l tried every diet on the planet. I tried Atkins. I tried zone. I was a raw vegan and different diets do different things. I’ve read an anti-aging nonprofit research, an education group called the Silicon Valley Health Institute for more than a decade. I’ve interviewed dozens and dozens of researchers on all these different metabolic pathways and nutrition and functional medicine and orthomolecular medicine and built all this stuff in and tried it all. What I developed eventually became the BulletProof diet, The New York Times bestselling book probably because there are 200,000 copies sold now. It’s in 4 languages.
John Rowley: [ 00:07:47]
Dave Asprey: That was what ultimately worked but along the way I found that going on a high fat, low carb diet I can lose 50 of the 100 pounds but then I would get tired and inflamed and it wouldn’t work. You’d go to a high fat low carb conference and you see a bunch of 300 pound people who used to weigh 400 pounds and they got their energy back but they’re not …
John Rowley: Nobody is healthy.
Dave Asprey: They’re not healthy. There’s a bunch of things I learned from that path. Then swinging from that into being a raw vegan for quite a while and then realizing the weakness that that brought in and the hormonal problems and the vitamin deficiencies and the energy deficiency. Then swinging back over to where I am now which is different than anything else. That was where I finally said I’m putting this into a system that I can follow easily because I’ve helped hundreds and hundreds of people with blogging and then thousands and tens of thousands but I built into 1 page infographic that I didn’t even charge for. It’s like this print in put on your fridge. You don’t have to buy any of my stuff.
It tells you these food probably are going to work. These foods they might work for you John but they might not work for me because they’re suspect. They have big problems for huge numbers of people. Other people are okay. Until you’ve eliminated a suspect, you can feel crap or you’re fat. There’s probably one of these things as a culprit. Maybe 10 of them are culprit. Then there’s these kryptonite foods like seriously why would anyone eat margarine ever again.
John Rowley: Oh yeah it makes no sense.
Dave Asprey: It’s not food. I don’t eat lumps of crap. I don’t eat rocks and I don’t eat margarine. My body doesn’t identify it as consumable.
John Rowley: I agree. A lot of people have food intolerances so I know…
Dave Asprey: [ 00:09:31].
John Rowley: We all do and our food supply is suspect as well. You do need to be careful but you did a diet but you also produced an incredible coffee. I’m one of your raving fan clients. I’ve been using it for years. How did you get into the coffee business?
Dave Asprey: It wasn’t by design. I’ve always loved coffee. The only time I ever got an A in calculus … I study computer science and engineering and all that but I was never an A student you could say except in 1 semester where I discovered espresso. They made me take an 8 am class. I’m not a morning person. Never have been and I made myself into a 5 am riser for 2 years to prove l could do it. It’s just not fun. Screw that! I got it for 8 am class and I would have a triple espresso on the way to class and I got an A in calculus because my brain worked. I’m like “Yes caffeine!” Of course there are limitations and I would crash right after that. Then we got on the coffee every 2 hours sort of thing.
It’s always been something I enjoyed but I gave it up for about 5 years because I was getting increasingly [ 00:10:42] drink it and then I’d just get a headache and feel jittery and cranky. Sometimes my joint would hurt and sometimes I’d get acid reflux from it. I ended up going to Tibet. I just said, “I’m going to learn meditation from the masters. I want to hack my entire body. I want to control what happens in my head. I want the voice in my head to do what I say. I want my body to look the way I wanted to look and to feel the amount of energy that I’m capable of having.” It’s a holistic approach.
I want to learn from the best because like it saves a lot of time if you learn from people who have already studied this for 10,000 years and written it down in little scrolls so that would be Tibet. I’m there and I’m at about 18,000 feet elevation on Mt. Kailash. It was 5 day drive on dirt roads to get to this mountain the head water for the Ganges River. You should feel like crap at elevation like that. Like you’re basically starting to die. This little Tibetan lady in a mud hut like gives me a yak butter tea which is yak butter tea and salt and I drink it. I’m like my brain just turned on. I feel amazing. I felt better than I had in a long time even though I was at high altitude.
It was 10 degrees below zero. I was cold and tired. It didn’t matter. I was like you know I’m good. It was so strong though I came back to the states after 3 month out there I’m like “I want to try this.” I bought some butter. I bought some tea and it was horrible. I’m like I can’t order yak butter. I tried. I experimented with every butter from the gourmet store and found there were a couple of them that worked. It was the grass-fed butter. It was the closest to yak butter I could get. It was full of its natural nutrients the right fat instead of this corn and soy fed butter which is omnipresent.
Then I started to experiment with teas and found they all worked kind of but teas are … I’m absolutely certain that if there was coffee in Tibet that’s what they’d be drinking. Tea is tea that’s good but tea does not carry the same powerful kick for like muscle development that coffee does. The mTOR pathways and things like that. Tea is good for you but it’s not the same as coffee. It’s a weaker choice. I go and put butter in my tea. It’s good if you don’t enough coffee but what I did then is I swapped out coffee because I came back and said, “I’m going to try coffee again.” I had 1 cup of amazing coffee and I felt like a great golden God. The next day I had another cup of coffee and I felt like crap. I’m like “Ah!” Wait it’s not me, it’s the coffee.
This is the thing about biohacking like just being observational about what’s around you. Normally we would have been trained to say “This is my fault. I didn’t try hard enough or it’s me.” In this case I’m like wait. I didn’t actually test coffee versus coffee. I tested this coffee versus this coffee and it turns out there’s stuff in coffee that affects how you feel. In my case I figured out that this mold that’s legally allowed to be in the coffee in the US even though its illegal in most other developed nations that I’m extra sensitive to it. I looked at the biochemistry of this I’m like, “This stuff is metabolically a train wreck for everyone. It causes food cravings. It comments in your brain and it inhibits energy production in your cells.”
I’m going to make a coffee that doesn’t have this simply because I want to drink coffee that makes me feel good all the time. I don’t know if 100 people want this at least they’ll help me pay for the lab testing I’m doing. That was the whole goal. It’s kept growing because people like “I don’t get jittery. I don’t get cranky. I love this brain octane you put in the coffee.” It snowballed. It wasn’t by design. I already had a job. I had stock options. I was a VP at a big company. It was incredibly risky to quit that career and become biohacker, professional coffee supplement brain guy but I’m having a blast. That’s what happened. it was just born out of … I just want to drink coffee and feel amazing. That was it.
John Rowley: I think that’s one of the thing that attracts me to you is your passion about all this and you believe it. You put your money where your mouth is. You actually go and you experiment with it. Even the 40 days of Zen that you did which …
Dave Asprey: Forty years of Zen.
John Rowley: Forty years of Zen which I didn’t make it to this year which I will do next year.
Dave Asprey: You got to go man.
John Rowley: If I’m invited, I’ll be there. I promise.
Dave Asprey: You’re invited.
John Rowley: Okay I’ll be there this year. What you do is you take what you believe in and you bring it to the mass market but then you also bring it to your friends which I love.
Dave Asprey: The 40 years of Zen thing is an example there. This is an advanced neuro feedback that I mentioned going to Tibet. You can spend between 20 and 40 years doing an hour of daily Zen practice and eventually you get to the advanced Zen state and it’s actually a Japanese form of Zen not Tibetan Zen. It takes an hour a day for 20 years. That’s like a massive commitment and hats off to people who decide to actually do that. There’s great knowledge and wisdom that comes that way.
Now I’m a biohacker. I have 2 little kids. I have a company. I have bills to pay and like I would love to do that but it’s not in the cards for me right now. However, I work with neuroscientists and I put together a program that I bring CEO clients to that puts your brain in the same state as someone who has done a daily Zen practice for 40 years but it takes 7 days. Everyone who does it either throws up or cries. It’s very intense personal development work but it’s a lie detector on your head. Every time you deceive yourself about anything, basically your score goes down. You sit in there going, “I’m not mad at mommy and daddy.” It’s like, “Liar.” You’re like, “Ah!”
You play this game with yourself and you come to some really radical realizations about how things are in the world the way you told yourself there were and the way they actually are. You can be honest about your environment, honest about yourself. You become more perceptive. I’ve done this 10 times with increasing levels of difficulty. The amplitude of my brain waves is about 4 times higher than it used to be before. Think of tidal waves. Normal wave is 10 foot. If I started this my normal wave was a 10 foot wave. Now it’s a 40 foot wave. There’s actually a study that shows correlation with a 12 point IQ increase from 7 days of this work.
I did it over and over. You don’t get 12 points each time unfortunately but it actually does this. Everyone says that’s impossible. I’m like, “Great! Then don’t do it.” I don’t know how to tell you. This has transformed my life and I’ve brought a lot of people that I know and trust. You actually have to apply and then be accepted. You’re on the list but JJ Virgin just went … she’s a mutual friend and talked about it. It’s one of those things. Why do I do it? It’s not how I make money.
I don’t make money from that program at all. I put it together because when someone can do that and get that level of self-awareness, they’re going to do good things. That’s what it did for me. That’s part of the reason I’m doing BulletProof right now is I’m like I get to help a lot more people than I do by making your laptop more secure. Oh my God so boring.
John Rowley: The thing is with you and I know this because we’re friends is what drives you is actually what you’re doing. You’re not doing this to make money. You’re doing this to help people. You’re doing it because you’re passionate about bringing this to the world. For me, that’s important because I’m a self-help guru. I’ve been reading and listening to everybody my whole life. Then as I got into that world and got to know people, I saw maybe not so much consistency with some of these people. I have a hard time following people that I don’t believe in. I don’t want to just hear something or do as I say not as I do. I like doing as people do and that’s why I like being around you.
Dave Asprey: There’s a lot of people in every industry. You go to the self-help side of things. There’s some people who are just bad assed people are going to help you and that’s their mission. There’s someone who are like “I’m going to make money, money, money.” Someone who start out helping and switch the money and you got health and wellness. There’s a whole tribe of angry skeptic hater out there who are like “I’m going to make money and I’m going to take down everyone.” You’re like, “Good luck with that man. You’re going to carry the burden of your word with you for the rest of your life.” The more you hate, the more you feel hate and that cost you. I’m like “I’ve done all my forgiveness work. I’m not going to do that.” I will tell you flat out I think a low fat vegan diet will … Am I allowed to swear on your show?
John Rowley: Yeah sure.
Dave Asprey: It will fuck you up.
John Rowley: It will.
Dave Asprey: That said I know people who promote that who are doing it from a place of goodness. Like they fundamentally believe they’re helping people and we disagree and we’re friends.
John Rowley: I’m the same with those people. I would agree.
Dave Asprey: There are others who are super angry, people who promote whatever their diet or nutritional plan of the week is. You can usually tell by the attitude of the person who’s promoting it. Like “What’s driving this person?” I can tell you it was anger and personal attacks on other people because they have different ideas. You can just skip that post because it’s going to rub off on you. That’s something I don’t practice. When I’m writing content, it’s not even about me. Like I’ll tell you I did this but here’s why you should care because honestly there’s more content on the planet than anyone can ever absorb in 10 lifetimes or heck in a thousand lifetimes at this point.
You’re going to only pick the very best and if you’re going to take 5 minutes of your life to read something or listen to this show, you better get your money’s worth and if you didn’t spend any money you better get your minute’s worth. I realize the other day my show has almost 25 million downloads and they’re about an hour episodes a piece.
John Rowley: Unbelievable.
Dave Asprey: How many lifetimes does 25 million hours? It’s going to be like 50 lifetimes. If I’m making a bunch of dick jokes all the time and I’m not adding value in every show, then it’s like I’ve killed 50 people. Like 50 lifetimes disappeared. I just don’t want that on me. Every time this conversation too like, what’s in it for someone listening? How do we give them the most? They don’t get those minutes back.
John Rowley: I agree with you. When you were going to through your struggles you were 300 pounds. You have brain fog. You obviously concerned about your career because you don’t feel … you said earlier you wouldn’t even hire yourself. I can relate to that because I’m completely unemployable. The only one stupid enough to hire me is me. Was it more of getting your diet in order physical or was it more mental? Was is a combination of the 2 that got you out of a rut? What was the thing that catapulted you out of the rut?
Dave Asprey: Understanding root causes is really important for anything. For me I eventually figured out that the cause of my problem was that I’ve lived in a house that had water damage. Toxic mold grew there and it triggered some permanent inflammatory state that you actually can turn off but only if you understand it. It’s kind of a Rubik’s cube. I filled a documentary called Moldy. It’s moldymovie.com where I interviewed a dozen top medical experts and a dozen people who lived in water damage buildings. I believe at least half of people in the US are performing below their possible level because they’re exposed to these neurotoxins in our environment.
You just don’t know it. I’m okay. I’m not [quite as good. 00:21:58] There’s a little rash whatever. What I really discovered in this whole process for me that was a big thing and I see it all the time in people who don’t know it but when you’re fat you have an energy allocation problem in your problem. Energy comes in and instead of applying it to doing things like thinking, moving, breathing, staying warm, your body is applying it to getting fat. It’s not necessarily that there’s too much energy coming in although that can be a factor is that the energy is going to the wrong place.
Even though you’re fat, if you’re fat you’re more likely to have blood sugar swings all over the place. Your energy metabolism is broken. What this comes down to is inside each cell there’s a bunch of these power plants called mitochondria. If your mitochondria are not getting fuel or they’re given the wrong fuel or if they’re clogged up like an engine that hasn’t been degunked in a while then what happens is you don’t make enough energy. The brain is like, “I don’t have enough energy here. Oh my god it’s a famine. Store some fat.”
One of the ways you unclog that is like, “Do you want some energy?” Bam! BulletProof coffee. You got lots of calories. They’re highly available and it’s in 2 forms. One is long chains from butter. The other one is brain octane is one type of MCT. It’ not MCT oil which is a generic mix of oils that do different things in the body. Its roughly 5% or 6% of what’s in coconut oil you take that and it goes directly to ketones in the body without you having to go on a high fat, low carb diet to go into this Atkins ketone fat burning mode.
When that happens, it changes 2 hormones in the body John that are not talked about enough. [Ghrelin 00:23:39] in the hormone that makes you crave food and think about food all the time so you can’t think about your wife. You can’t think about your business because you’re too busy thinking about bagels and jellybeans.
John Rowley: Exactly right.
Dave Asprey: That’s screwed up in every way but that’s how I live. I didn’t know the difference between hungry and having a craving because I was only having cravings all the time. When I discovered this stuff with BulletProof coffee, it modulates that starvation like I’m so hungry hormone and the other thing that makes you feel full and satisfied is called CCK. That stuff makes you feel full. When you drink your BulletProof coffee with enough brain octane to raise your ketones to 0.5 magically you’re like someone set some bagel or a pizza or a jellybeans whatever that trigger food is that most people like “Oh!”
Then you sit there like there’s a cookie. “I’m not going to eat the cookie.” The cookie calls to you and you say no 20 times and then you would eat half the cookie and then you’re a bad person that whole thing. That happens largely because of these hormones. If you take control of them by getting enough energy into the body, you’re like, “Ah!” Now the voice in your head that said eat the cookie is gone and someone sets the cookie down. You’re like, “I don’t care about the cookie. It’s there but no hungry. No thanks.” The power to say no thanks without wanting and saying no thanks that frees up a ton of energy. When you free up that energy then you’re a nicer person.
When you’re a nicer person you have excess energy beyond survival then you can start your personal growth [work 00:25:04]. If you think you’re going to meditate your way out of being obese, you think you’re going to become the fully enlightened person you’re capable of being while you’re excessively obese and you can’t get enough energy into your brain, the part of the brain with the most energy consumptions is the prefrontal cortex. It’s responsible for rationally regulating your emotions. You will not have emotional regularity if you have energy problems in the brain. Eating a low fat or a low calorie diet is going to lower the amount of energy in the brain and everywhere in your body. You’re going to be hungry and you’re going to be hyperglybitchy. It’s what happens.
John Rowley: Without a doubt.
Dave Asprey: Hangry right?
John Rowley: Yeah hangry. I got 4 kids. My oldest daughter when her blood … you can tell just in her face when her blood sugar drops. Feed her quick.
Dave Asprey: Imagine this though John. Blood sugars doing this. What if you had these ketones present from the brain octane oil at the same time as the blood sugar swings. You have fat energy here and you have sugar energy here. If sugar dips, you still have fat so emotional regularity comes. That’s what I found in my life. I use brain octane in every meal. I just had some soup with tons of vegetables in it and I put brain octane in it. Funny, I’m not hungry right now. I’m not going to be hungry until dinner. I don’t need to snack anymore.
John Rowley: I use it as well but correct me if I’m wrong you know more about this than me. Early on I was involved with body building to a degree. MCT oil was huge for bodybuilders back then because they said it was one of the few fats that actually helped your body burn fat. Does it help your body burn fat or does it pulls you to go into ketosis easier?
Speaker 2; It can be both. If you’re close to nutritional ketosis it can give you a lift over. It completely banishes hunger but keep in mind MCT oil is 4 kinds of oil. Back in the day the bodybuilders use it you also use to fill your pants all the time when you use it.
John Rowley: Without a doubt. We didn’t like it because it got you [sick 00:26:58].
Dave Asprey: We call that disaster pants. It was because they were using the wrong kind of MCT oil and because the processing wasn’t done right. What brain octane is I throw away 3 of the 4 MCT oils so it’s only 1 of them. Then we use a triple distillation and a non-oxygen atmosphere in the United States not in China. The other little bits of fat that are really irritating aren’t there. I banished my own disaster pants. When I started experimenting with this stuff 10 years ago like literally we have an infographic like how to avoid disaster pants which is funny.
I haven’t had a problem even though I probably do 5 or 6 tablespoons of brain octane on days when I travel. It never affects my gut because this oil is different than MCT oil. It’s an evolution. It’s like the small details matter. Like 2 pieces of meat. This one is grass fed and grass finished and this one is grain fed and grain finished. You’re like “oh they’re both meat.” They’re actually not the same. They’re fundamentally different products. It’s that kind of an idea.
John Rowley: Once you did that, how long did it take you to lose the weight?
Dave Asprey: Just going on a high fat low carb diet even if you’re not following all the BulletProof principles, I lost 50 pounds in 3 months when I first tried this. I was like, “Wow!” The other 50 pounds stuck with me for 5 years. I find that when I’m working with someone because I’m an unusual case that I’ve tried all these things. I’m lean and muscular now. When I look at what and say an average with substantial weight to loss can do, it is very reasonable to go to half a pound to a pound a day. I actually put on the BulletProof diet cover lose up to a pound a day because there are guidelines from the government that say any diet that says that you lose more than a pound a day is obviously a scam be because it’s not possible.
Now I have a client lose 75 pounds in 75 days on this diet. There are lots of ways you can lose more than a pound a day. Some of them are really unhealthy but here’s the thing. For me, if I need to lose weight like that I could do it but it will stop at a healthy weight which means if I want to get down to 4% body fat I’m going to have to do unnatural things. it’s not a state that makes you live a long time. It’s not one that feels good and you know because you’re a bodybuilder. You feel like crap when you’re that low.
You can look good on the cover of a magazine but you’re not going to live to 180 the way I’m working on doing it. if you want to do that ultra [ 00:29:26] thing like that there’s tons of professional bodybuilders who use BulletProof but they’re doing exceptionally low carbs. What I recommend for mere mortals who want look to be on the covers of magazines is that you actually include more carbohydrates but the right ones and you do it in cyclically. You go into ketosis, out of ketosis. Into ketosis, out of ketosis. That tends to give you the most cognitive and mental and emotional resilience versus just always being in ketosis or always being out of ketosis.
John Rowley: That’s what the older bodybuilders used to do. Whatever Jack LaLanne or Arnold you know 30 years between the 2 of those they call it carb cycling. They also use caffeine. Back in the 70’s you can eat with these guys or even early 80’s and no problem eating a big fatty steak. Then things changed over the years. Correct me if I’m wrong but the fitness industry is a $20 billion a year business. I think it just pays to confuse people.
Dave Asprey: I hate to say it. For the most part I don’t think that but there’s unethical people. I know some guys who you put stuff in their supplements that they shouldn’t and really have this manipulative mindset. They are out there but for the most part people really want to do well but complex systems … My degree is actually studying complex systems. It’s called decision support systems. It’s part of artificial intelligence.
You look at what happens when you have hundreds of millions or in this case trillions of little decision point that are made with an assumption or a goal in mind the system self optimizes without an evil manipulative puppet master. I’m not saying some conspiracies aren’t true, I’m just saying that you don’t have to have a conspiracy in order for bad stuff to happen. Like in big pharma or say healthcare. There are probably are a few people who are like, “Yeah we know we’re killing people let’s just shred this study and we’ll make an extra $50 billion and it’s all good to go.” That happens.
For every one of those there’s so many more situations where there’s a belief system or an end goal and if the optimum end goal of healthcare is making money, then we will optimize the system that makes money by making these [false decisions 00:31:43]. The system that makes money doesn’t optimize people’s health. It doesn’t make you well. It doesn’t make you kick ass. It makes you sick but not too sick because if you die you stop paying and if you’re well you stop paying. Did we evolve not design but evolve a system like that? We did. Did it happen in the bodybuilding, in the nutritional fitness in some point industry? You bet your ass it did and it’s not because anyone is evil. Maybe not [ 00:32:05] people.
John Rowley: I agree with you.
Dave Asprey: It happens. Our job as individual as individual I call it a biohacking this idea of changing the environment obviously control yourself. It comes down to you got to do what works. If you try something and it doesn’t work, it’s okay to admit that it didn’t work. Accept failure not as failure but as information. Like if you walk into a wall like I’m the bad person. I walked in a wall. I’m like “I’m not going to do that again.” One of those voices in your head was right and the one says watch out for walls. Like that’s a good one and the same thing can happen nutritionally.
John Rowley: I agree. If anybody is listening I encourage you to follow Dave’s things. I promised Dave I would get him off at a reasonable time so we’re going to wrap it up. Anybody who’s listening to this if you want to get fit, you want to get muscular, lean in shape whatever you want to do find 1 or 2 people you’re follow. You can’t do everything everybody tells you to. Dave is actually one of my mentors. I follow him on a regular basis. I listen to his podcast. I picked his brain as often as I can and I like surrounding myself of very smart people. Dave is one of my buddies who is one of those mentors to me. I encourage you to follow his things. Now his main website is BulletProof executive.com. He’s got the BulletProof diet out. He’s got … you rattle it off.
Dave Asprey: BulletProof the cookbook just came out in December and is doing really well. 125 recipes that leave you like with a food high so you’re just never hungry again for hours and hours. BulletProof Radio is number 1 ranked in health and fitness in iTunes most of the time. You can check me out there BulletProof exec. If you want to try BulletProof coffee you need the right beans without mold toxins. You need brain octane oil and you need butter, I’ll give you the beans and oil on bulletproof.com monthly subscription and your entire day will change.
You can use John stuff his protein. You can pour the brain octane on every meal. It changes everything about the way your brain works you have enough energy. The important thing here is get the information. The knowledge is all free and do that and when you do that you’re going to make better decisions. When you make better decisions, you have more energy. You’re going to be a nicer person and then you’ll do something good and maybe you’ll lose weight too but that’s just a secondary effect.
John Rowley: Is BulletProof Executive best place for people to find you?
Dave Asprey: Yeah. bulletproofexec.com is going to give you sign up for the mailing list we’ll give you tons of free content and not like manipulative sales content. I’ll just tell you how stuff works. This is what I do and just share the knowledge because hundreds of experts told me … I’ve talked to another 200 experts on the radio show I just distill it down and figure out what works best and I give it to you hoping that it will make the world a better place. Maybe you’ll buy some coffee but if you don’t its good. I’m still happy.
John Rowley: Well I’ve been buying the coffee for years and I’m on the order renew subscription. I love it.
Dave Asprey: Thanks man.
John Rowley: Also the BulletProof coffee shop in Santa Monica I’m there a lot. I got to tell you something it’s my favorite place. I go there and I eat. I drink my coffee. It’s a nice environment. I love it there. It’s on … what is it Main Street?
Dave Asprey: it’s on main street [3101 00:35:07] Main Street right on the edge of Venice by a restaurant called Chaya. There’s a big BulletProof logo orange umbrellas. You go there, you can try the coffee and if you never try BulletProof coffee you think it sounds ridiculous because how could you not be hungry. The reason I open a coffee shop is not to make money. You lose money running a restaurant. This is well known. I opened it because I wanted people who never tried it to walk in and just experience the change in their day and then you might just change your diet.
You want to just eat more grass-fed meat and stop eating crap oils you’re going to be a better person. It’ll reflect itself in how you treat other people and how you treat the world around you. That’s my goal. You can use my stuff because it works or you can use something else. I don’t mind. I just want you to feel it once and that’s what it’s all about.
John Rowley: That’s really important and I love that. Dave, thank you so much for being on today. Really appreciate and I’m looking forward to seeing you soon brother.
Dave Asprey: John, looking forward to it. Have an awesome day.
John Rowley: Thank you. You too man.