Unknown: Hey, folks. This is Abel James, and thanks so much for joining us on the show. What if being overweight isn't the problem, but actually a symptom of deeper dysfunction?
Unknown: The body doesn't lose weight to get healthy, it gets healthy to lose weight, and focusing on your metabolic freedom
may just save your life. Our guest this week, Ben Azadi,
is a living testament to the power of focusing on lifestyle factors like real food and fitness to change your life. He's lived the transformation
going from eighty pounds overweight and struggling to becoming a rising leader in the health movement. If you're sick of feeling frustrated, fatigued, or stuck, this episode could change your trajectory.
Before we get to the interview, please take a quick moment to make sure you're subscribed to this show wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave a review for the Abel James Show on Apple or Spotify. To stay up to date and get behind the scenes goodies, make sure to sign up for my newsletter at AbelJames.com.
That's abelJames.com,
or my Substack at Abel James dot Substack dot com. See you there. Alright. On today's episode with Ben, you're about to discover how environmental toxins like glyphosate are sabotaging your metabolism,
why counting calories is a losing game, why strength training is your secret weapon for longevity,
and much, much more. Let's go hang out with Ben.
Welcome back, folks. A self described former obese man who transformed his body and life and never looked back. Our friend Ben Azadi shed 80 pounds by focusing on metabolic health. Ben is now a best selling author, podcast host, and keynote speaker on a mission to help a billion people live healthier lives. His podcast and new book are both called Metabolic Freedom. Ben, thanks so much for coming back on the pod. Abel, I love collaborating with you. Big fan of your work. It's an honor to be back here on the show to talk about the new book. We're gonna have some fun today. Thanks, man. Yeah. Let's rock. So in your book, you share a realization that in 02/2008,
at your heaviest, essentially, you didn't have a weight problem,
Unknown: but being overweight was your symptom. Can you start right there by explaining that? Because I think that's a huge mental shift for people. Yep. Same thing for you when you were overweight. You never had a weight problem. If you're watching this, listening to this right now and you have extra weight on your body,
you don't have a weight problem. There's no such thing as a weight symptom. And that's where,
just understanding that puts you ahead of a lot of other people. Because when you look at extra weight as the problem,
you're going to try approaches
that treat the symptom, which is the extra weight. I'll give you an example. Calories in versus calories out. Very popular method
for fat loss. And, you know, it's pretty deceptive because it does work for most people in the beginning.
You start to lose some weight when you go into a deficit.
Their premise is that we need to get you to lose weight in order for you to be healthy.
But the metabolism, the body works the complete opposite. We don't lose weight to get healthy. We get healthy to lose weight.
The extra weight is a a symptom, a sign of inflammation, hormonal imbalance. So the focus should be on what has caused that inflammation, what has caused the hormones to become,
out of, balance.
That is what gets you down the right path for sustainable fat loss, longevity, all the things we're seeking.
The body doesn't have any mechanisms in place to calculate calories, count calories.
I do believe calories matter and they play a role. They're just not the most important thing. They're more of a distraction.
So the weight will start to come off. The symptom starts to go away when you get healthy, when you lower inflammation. And I make the point that that's what I did when I lost my 80 pounds of fat. That's what you did, Abel, when you lost all that fat as well. And the amazing thing about doing it this way is that you're actually
gonna keep the weight off. You're not gonna rebound. You're not gonna yo yo diet and and and rely on willpower. It's a much more sustainable approach that a lot of people, I believe, need to adopt and detach away from the old calories in versus calories out dogma.
Unknown: Absolutely. Because if you look at the way that that ages or plays out in in people's lives, we all know someone who's kind of adopted that approach where they're essentially starving themselves
even in a mild way over time, and you can see them grow
more and more gaunt
as the years go by or even the months go by. And, I've seen this in a lot of people who did competitive bodybuilding too and were on stage getting to extreme low levels of body fat in both women and men. And, you kind of see that that youthful
glow. And, it's not like a puff ness, but it's like a youthful
oneness to the face, if that makes sense, where you don't see the creases and you don't see the lines and the indentations or whatever,
then, you know, once they're up on stage with that Skeletor look, they've lost all the little bits of fat underneath their eyes and the other little pockets
around their cheeks. And so, even if they gain back the weight, which they often do immediately after going on stage, then for the rest of their lives, essentially, you can't rebuild
that fat in your face and other parts of your body. So, you
essentially starve the body of something that it can never bring back, and so you kind of have that gaunt look. And for a lot of people, that was the focus of longevity. Right? They were trying to under eat calories by 20 or 30%
of their needs
on a chronic basis, and we're seeing that that actually can risk
Unknown: aging more quickly because you lose bone density, muscle mass. Those things also are very hard to bring back once you've lost them. Maybe you could just talk about that a little bit too. Yeah. Well said. And you're you're spot on because a lot of studies do show caloric restriction could extend your lifespan. Meanwhile, you feel miserable, so you might be extending your lifespan, but your health span is declining. There's a difference in the two. We wanna increase both health span and lifespan.
And caloric restriction can increase the lifespan part. We've seen studies that show that, but it's a huge failure, in the long term. There was the Biosphere
two study that controlled everybody's calories in this group, and they put them on caloric restriction.
And
they did see their sirtuins get activated, their longevity
genes get activated. So it showed signs of longevity. Meanwhile,
they felt miserable.
Their thyroid tanked. Their organs shrank. It's like it wasn't a sustainable approach. It was a complete
failure. And the muscle mass part is a big key here.
I hear so many people say
they use this excuse. Oh, there's nothing I can do. I'm 40. I'm 50. I'm 60. That's why I'm gaining weight. It's just part of getting older. And when I started writing the book and getting into the science and the research studies on metabolism,
I found one key study, which I think is the greatest study ever done that I have found on the metabolism
that really takes that excuse that you're gaining weight because you're older,
and it just throws it away. So this study, Abel, was from Duke University twenty twenty one, and it was a worldwide study. So it wasn't just The United States involved. It was multiple countries.
There were 6,600
people in the study.
And get this, the age ranges in the participants in the study was from age one
all the way to age 95
and everybody in between. And they were using the gold standard for, metabolism measurement which was this urine test they they used. And here's what the study said essentially. At the conclusion of the study, it said, between the ages of 20 years old
and 60 years old, there are no significant changes in the metabolism,
which just that excuse that you're getting older, that's why you're gaining weight, the studies don't show that. The study went on to show as well that
once the person reaches age 60 and beyond,
there's a 0.7%
decline in the metabolism every year after age 60.
That might sound like a bad thing if you're watching and listening and if you're 60, but the study said the reason why that happens is loss of muscle mass.
So if you build lean muscle mass in your thirties, forties, fifties and preserve it, or if you're over 60 and you start building lean muscle mass, this is super cool. You could be 75 years old with the same metabolism as when you were 25 years old. And just one more point here on the metabolism,
we see so many people say or seek out, how do I boost my metabolism? I want a fast metabolism.
Well, here's the thing. The metabolism is not necessarily even running by speed. It's either efficient or it's inefficient.
And the animals in the wildlife
that have the fastest metabolism have the shortest lifespan.
So it's not necessarily about having the fastest metabolism. It's about having a metabolically
flexible metabolism.
Unknown: Yeah. And and riding that balance as well, which maybe we can shift into because differentiating between the chronic undereating
approach
and intermittent fasting can be a little bit confusing or could seem like splitting hairs. But there's a fundamental difference
between the cycles of essentially overeating and undereating that you see in nature and the chronic undereating that has been the approach for this. So let's talk about the intermittent fasting approach where where it's more of a cyclical
strategy.
Unknown: Yeah. There's a big difference between caloric restriction and grazing and eating every two or three hours throughout the day. And even if you calorically restricted and and did intermittent fasting, big difference because during intermittent fasting, you lower insulin, you heal the digestive system, you go through this autophagy cellular cleaner process. You're not getting all those benefits
by grazing throughout the day. And the goal is not necessarily to eat less, it is to eat less often and that's where intermittent fasting comes into play. And it's all about these these feast famine cycles. And you talk about this in the wild diet. You talk about it all the time. My mentor, doctor Daniel Pompa, also talks about it where
the goal like, animals when they had a a kill or ancestors when they had a kill, they would feast. They would enjoy it. They would eat as much as possible and and enjoy themselves. And then there were periods of time where there was no food and that was the famine. And they went through this feast famine cycle. They didn't have all this food and to say, well, Grey's on this throughout the day for the next few days. No. They would just feast it up. That would be their feast part, and then they would not have food and they would go through a famine. So the goal is to have days where maybe you're doing fasting and you're calorically restricted. That's fine. And then have days where you're intentionally not fasting and you're feasting and the balance is in the both because when you fast, you activate autophagy,
which is cellular cleanup, cellular repair. It's catabolic, but in a good repairing
way unless you do way too much of it. And then when you're eating, you're in the fed state and you're activating mTOR, which is a mechanistic target of rapamycin. It's growth. It's that's also good in spurts, but too much mTOR, not good. Bodybuilders are in constant mTOR, that's why they age faster than the average person. So the balance is in getting some mTOR, which is the feasting, and then getting the autophagy, which is the fasting, and that's the feast famine cycling.
Unknown: And the magic happens when you start to combine that with how you're moving and how you're exercising.
So let's talk about a lot of people skip the whole lifting weights or strength training part because they think it's for those muscle bound mTOR,
you know, juiced up bodybuilders. But in fact, this is something especially if we're looking at antiaging and longevity practices, this is something that is pretty much a nonnegotiable.
Now it might not look like hitting the iron and carrying around barbells, especially as people enter the the latter stages of life, but it certainly does mean lifting heavy things and carrying things around, pushing, pulling,
lifting, that whole experience. So maybe you could talk to the importance of strength training first, and we could talk about other types of of exercises
Unknown: after that. Yeah. Absolutely. And I already made the case that muscle mass is the key here for a healthy metabolism. So by lifting heavy things, you build more lean muscle mass. We're not saying to become a crossfitter or a bodybuilder. We're saying to put on healthy lean muscle mass. So it'll prevent things like osteoporosis,
osteopenia,
hip fractures, bone fractures, and it also preserves that metabolism.
The more muscle mass you have,
the more insulin sensitive you're going to be. And that's important for longevity. It's important for fat loss.
Those muscle stores
act like a sponge to absorb glucose when you eat food. So it gives you more flexibility to have more carbs and enjoy it and not use those carbs for fat storage. Instead, you're replenishing
your muscle stores. So the more muscle mass you have, then when you eat a high carbohydrate meal, for example, instead of producing a whole bunch of insulin to clear that glucose,
your body activates the GLUT four transporters where it shuttles the excess glucose
into muscle cells. And the more muscle cells you have, the more of that is shuttled. So it's important
to find your groove. That could mean getting a gym membership and go lifting weights. That could mean just lifting heavy things around the house, finding ways to create this this resistance where you're increasing your muscle mass and eating high quality
protein, ideally animal protein,
to get those essential amino acids to build that lean muscle mass. And then you could throw in different things, these little we'll call them biohacks, like essential amino acid supplementation,
creatine supplementation.
And when you combine all of that with quality sleep where you repair and build up, that's when you start to get stronger and build out lean muscle mass and get all those benefits.
Unknown: And these changes cascade too. Right? Like, it it might sound at first like you've got this laundry list of things that you have to do and you must do and it all takes a sacrifice of time or energy or something.
But, in fact, when when people really do this right and put some of these small things into action, you find that
by the function of eating better, you want to move more. And because you're moving, you also kinda wanna eat better. And because you're probably not hitting the booze as hard or getting rid of,
you know, other bad habits at the same time, these things cascade and and add up over time in a good way such that you're in a totally different place in a few weeks or a few months later, and you actually
now
want to do the right thing. And you kind of have this habit that that becomes
entrenched. And and for me and for you as well, I assume it's one of those things where, like, once you experience the benefits of eating better and having higher standards for your body, the way that you move, the way that you think, the way you show up in life, it's hard to go back. You don't want to at least intentionally
make the decision to go back. And of course, we all slip up or get injured and have things go sideways from time to time. But it's one of those things where, like, once you understand that you can turn the dials and that it's your responsibility,
Unknown: man, it's hard to let that go. It's it's it's something that is much easier for me to put into action knowing how much it means. I agree. Same thing. You know, once you start feeling better, you don't wanna go back. And sometimes when we're not doing all those things and we're just we're kinda numb to to the food we're eating, we're numb to all these symptoms that we're experiencing. But once you start cleaning up your diet and moving your body and doing all the things we're talking about here, you start to have more energy, less brain fog, less joint pain,
better sleep, more confidence. You don't wanna go back to the old way. So you notice when you slip up, you start to kinda slip back and you're thinking, woah. Usually, I you're thinking, I don't wanna go back there. So you make those necessary changes to keep moving forward. And you're spot on able with, those disciplines transfer.
You know, when you work out, you wanna tend to eat healthier or vice versa. They start it starts transferring to other areas of your life. You maybe pick up a book instead of, I don't know, going on social media. These are things that start to transfer. It's one of the benefits to cold plunging that I love. Meaning, it takes a discipline
and negotiation with yourself to get into a cold plunge every time, at least for me. It's it's like, the more I think about it, the harder it becomes to get into that cold body of water. Right? But once I get in there and I do my, whatever, thirty seconds, two minutes, how however long you wanna do it, It's a discipline that I'm proud of that then transfers to other areas of my life and my activity. So this is the same thing with exercise and nutrition and supplementation and biohacking. You start to stack these disciplines to different areas of your life.
Unknown: Yeah. And when your body starts to notice the
instead of dreading the beginning part, it starts to notice the after reward part. Like, for example, you you mentioned cold plunging.
That's certainly one. But,
for me, weight training, you know, which I tend to do just like heavy lifts once a week is kind of my minimum and a lot of times my maximum too.
And I've never taken exogenous testosterone or hormone replacement or anything like that,
but I feel the flood of testosterone
after every time I'm doing those deadlifts and those those heavy lifts. Your body starts to recognize that. And as much as I dread doing the hard thing,
like sprinting
and burst training, that sort of thing, or heavy lifts,
over time, your body does tend to recognize that, like, oh, yeah. There is
there is a carrot that you can get on the other end. You're not just gonna be chasing the whole time. It's not a constant struggle. There is a reward to this. And I like that feeling of
endogenously
supporting
your own body instead of relying on external things to get a hit of whatever or to try to feel normal. Of course, some people are in different circumstances, and there is a time and place for a lot of these interventions, but if you can avoid it and and do the the more natural approach, obviously, that's going to be the thing to start with. But you also talk a lot about addiction in your work and mention how you can use it as a superpower if it's redirected.
Let's talk about that because there are so many different ways that addiction manifests in today's world with and without substances,
but often with devices too.
So how do you
redirect that sort of energy and struggle into something that's positive?
Unknown: I love this question. It's a big big area that I love to teach on because I've experienced it myself.
Before I get into that, I just wanna add to what you just said about the, exogenous
hormone
conversation. I I see a lot of people,
men, yes, but also women who just don't wanna do the lifestyle changes. So they'll just, you know, get on hormone replacement therapy, and there's a time and place for that. But it's in combination with the lifestyle changes, and I would recommend first doing the lifestyle changes and seeing if you actually need that.
Men, you know, in our our space, this, alternative holistic health space,
they're so willy nilly about just taking testosterone and prescribing testosterone, like men in their upper thirties and and forties. And,
that's not normal. Like, we should be able to do the things we need to do to get produce that testosterone ourselves. So like you, I don't take any hormones. I don't see myself taking it. That might change when I'm 55 or 60. I don't know. But right now, I'm 40, and I don't plan on taking any exogenous hormones including
testosterone.
Now with the addiction part,
for my entire life, I I was told,
I have an addictive personality, and it's true. I do. Some signs of an addictive personality.
You become fixated with something, obsessed with an idea. For me, like, music, if I find a song and I know you're a musician.
If I find a song
that I love,
I will listen to that song over and over and over and over, like, multiple times a day until I just play it out. Signs of, like, addictive personality. My it drives my fiance crazy. She's like, again, you're listening to this song? Usually, it's The Killers, which is my favorite rock band. The Killers are great. They're the best. You can't fly you to that. But here's the thing. If you have an addiction or the ability to be addicted,
I I would say congratulations. That has the potential to be something really magnificent in your life. So when I was not clear on my goals, my addictions were really destructive.
Video game addiction, drug addiction,
There wasn't too much social media back in 02/2007,
so I didn't have that. That could be a thing at this day and age, social media addiction.
And
there's a quote that I put in Metabolic Freedom from Robert Heinlein
who wrote a book, I think, from, like, the seventies called,
Strangers in a Strange Land. It's actually a fiction book. But in that book, you said,
in the absence
of clearly defined goals,
we become strangely loyal
to performing daily trivia until, ultimately,
we become enslaved by it.
So daily trivia are those addictions. And when you're not clear on your goals,
you are
enslaved by those addictions. But when you become clear
on those goals and you find something that lights you up, that is unique to you, a purpose, the Greeks call it your telos, the end in mind, the chief aim, your teleology,
then all of the energy we put into our addictions, and it's a lot of energy we put into our addictive behaviors,
you transfer that into something that's positive
and then it's a superpower.
What I did was that. I became really clear on my goals, which was health and wellness and fitness and educating the masses. So all of the addictions that I had, all the energy I was putting into the bad stuff, I transferred into the good stuff. And now it's it's a game changer for me. It actually separates me from other people who don't have this, what I call, superpower.
So it could be something really positive. It could be really destructive. It's really a double edged sword, but it starts with finding out what's important to you and then living on purpose
with that purpose. In chapter 10 of the book and by the way, Abel, chapter 10 in the book is my favorite chapter in the book. It's all about how your thoughts
influence metabolism,
the nocebo effect, the placebo effect, and then I also talk about the longevity
of purpose.
And there's a study in the book
in chapter 10 from,
a Harvard psychiatrist,
Ellen Langer.
And in the nineteen seventies, she did a study
where she simply
gave, these nursing home residents to two different groups different activities and it showed you by how having purpose extend their lifespan. So one group were given a houseplant
and full autonomy over their schedule.
So the houseplant, they had that responsibility,
a goal to take care of the houseplant
and they also had autonomy over their schedule. They could do whatever they wanted to do. The other group
gay were given the house plant, but were told that the staff would take care of it so that they didn't have any goals, and their schedule was controlled by the staff. They didn't have any autonomy.
After eighteen months, the group that was given the responsibility for the house plant, which had a goal, and the autonomy over their schedule,
half of that group were alive versus more than half of that group were alive versus the group that didn't. Simple little example to show you. When you have something you're working towards, it increases vitality, it increases energy, it increases lifespan, and I think that's a real missing piece for a lot of people trying to get healthy.
Unknown: Yeah. And it applies across the board too. There are so many different ways that this hits, but the things that you stop doing or you don't think that you need to do anymore
atrophy. Your skills
perish,
and sometimes they're hard to get back. That's why I'm hesitant to accept that
over specialization
is the way of the future, you know, outsourcing everything so that it's easier for us. Right? Because the the easier that things are for us and the more comfortable we become,
the less we have to adapt against. And it's actually in that adaptation
against
the challenge
that we grow and get better or even just stay at baseline.
So where do you think things are going in that regard? Because it does seem that through gadgetry,
AI, and other means, like, for a lot of people, they're still
searching even harder for that
silver bullet, miracle gadget, potion, whatever it is. And I know we've both been fighting the good fight for a while on the other side of it. So what's your approach in the face of all this new tech and and that sort of thing? Yeah. You know, it's also a double edged sword. Right, Abel? It's, there's some great things you could do with AI. I I use AI within my business. It's been super helpful, but I think a lot of people are seeking
Unknown: comfort
and distraction, and that's the opposite
of what we want. Comfort and distraction will lead to
a shortened lifespan. I believe that. And with just full
using, things to outsource your,
ability and skills, it gives you some comfort where you don't have to do it yourself, but less enjoyment because you're not doing the things you love. You're outsourcing it with AI or whatever it is. And then the distraction piece is just social media, doom scrolling, TV,
sports games, and and just being distracted from life and not having something you're working towards. So it's a slippery slope. I think it's a great way, the future, to use these tools and build your business and reach more people, but you don't want it to take over everything.
You wanna still do the things you love to do and never outsource that. If it's something that's important to you and you really love doing it, I would not outsource that. I would I would do that for the rest of your life.
Unknown: Yeah. And for you being a content creator, podcaster,
writer online for many years now, how do you stay sane in the face of the endless
creation consumption cycle of content and throughout launches and that sort of thing. What sort of guardrails
Unknown: do you put in your own life so that you're not constantly distracted by all these things? Yeah. I'm curious to hear what you do too because I'm always looking for to get better at this as well. My calendar. I live by my calendar. I'm a calendar guy. And, whatever's on my calendar, I do. So I make sure I'm really intentional with aligning my calendar with what's important to me, and I just follow it. Even though I was a little bit late for this interview, I do follow my calendar,
which is my bad. I thought it said 12PM instead of 11:45.
As long as I do that and I align my calendar with, what's important to me, I'm I'm good. There's an old saying that white space on the calendar is the devil's playground.
For me, that is the case. I know some people don't like using their calendar. They like being free. I get it. But for me, I need to use my calendar. That's one thing. Second thing is I control my environment.
I'm really diligent with conversations that I have. If I see it going in a direction that's not aligned with me, I'll either change the conversation or or exit the conversation.
Late dinners are the worst for me. We were talking about doing dinner in Austin. That's why I recommended an early dinner. If I do a late dinner,
anything past 8PM,
the next day I'm off. I'm just off and I I refuse to do it. Now there are some exceptions, but I I eat early dinners when I go out because I just feel better. So I control that.
Sometimes, like, when I go to my fiance's parents' house,
they're really different than me. They could be really negative and gossip, talk about all the crazy things happening in the world, and that's not my style.
So I am getting really good with navigating the conversation towards something we could kind of mutually agree to where I don't have to sit there and hear about the crazy stuff. I don't care about that stuff. If I can't control it, like, I don't wanna put my energy into it. So those are a few things I do. My my environment, my calendar, and early dinners is how I'm able to control that. But I wanna hear your tips. What are you doing?
Unknown: Yeah.
Very similar, actually.
For me, it is a balance of having some free time in my calendar, but that's more like opportunity time that I fill with something
creative, like writing a book, writing song, practicing my craft of music,
writing usually, or podcasting. You know, it's like I'm very strict with my calendar about podcasting
and that sort of thing. And so, like,
once it's in there, it's a non negotiable.
And,
so I do like to ride that balance of having some level of free slots in the calendar
that as long as I choose what I'm doing there,
then it feels good to deliver on that promise to myself. Even if I am working hard, it doesn't feel like work in that sense. And that's the secret for me for getting a lot done is choosing those products,
projects, or whatever you're working on there and making it your priority such that you're psyched to get it done. And it doesn't feel like you're pushing. You're more getting pulled
towards something.
But also to your point about avoiding
the gossip and the news and that sort of thing, you know, I do hop onto to Twitter and some social media
sometimes
just to, you know, catch up on messaging and that sort of thing. And it's unavoidable that you see whatever pops up as you do. And so oftentimes, I'll be like, oh my god. This this thing is I gotta tell Allison about this. This is this is crazy. Like, I can't believe this happened. It's like elephant gets loose in India or something, and just like there's a scene. It's just some stupid video. Right? And then I'll just, like, walk up to Allison and be like, oh my god. You gotta this is so important. You guys it's like,
no. This is not important. What do you do like, don't bring this stuff up to me. Don't interrupt. And that happened enough times where I just stopped.
I still have that happen where I see that thing, and I'm just like, oh my god. This is life changing. I don't know what it is, but they got us. You know? It's like clickbait works and that sort of thing. So we have to no matter how well intentioned we are, we all just need to be careful with that. And, you know, not self censor or whatever, but just be like, is this really the most important thing in the world today, or is this just Internet hijinks again? And especially in the age of AI, we don't know if any of it is true anymore. So it's really important to,
double down, I think, on your own
projects, your own line of thinking,
processing
everything that you already have instead of trying to get more stimulation
and outside stuff. Like even for writing my next book, which I'm working on about longevity, it's like you don't even need that much external stuff anymore. Because if it's about foundational principles,
it's more just a matter about,
like, sitting down and doing the hard thing, sitting down in a chair and just writing it. And for everyone, it's like, that's that's what it is. It's all about taking the action and tricking yourself into doing that despite the challenges
of having a monkey mind and being a human.
Unknown: Yeah. Then that monkey mind is something else. That that's cool about the book. I can't wait to hear more about your, longevity book. I didn't know that. It's exciting. Yeah. Like I said, I gotta I gotta sit down. Well, the way I generally do it is I'm kind of amassing
Unknown: ideas over the course of time as I'm sure you do as well through interviews and just generally, I'll I'll walk around with my notebook all day every day and just be jotting down ideas. And so it's this massive task of organizing the mess of papers and notebooks and putting them into some sort of coherent,
you know, line of thought. But I really enjoy that process. So it'll take a minute. You know, I'm gonna
take a minute for this one. But, yeah, I like the process, and I'm inspired by other folks like you who just keep writing books because it is
a testament to your your own health and sanity when you get through those processes. And not to mention your book, I think, covers off on really important topics right now that a lot of people are missing out on. So let's talk about glyphosate next, because that's one that, you know, for people who have been in The States for a long time and haven't traveled much outside of it, we have a different idea of what wheat is and other products. And we've also been assaulted by glyphosate pretty much our entire lives, whereas in Europe or other parts of the world, they actually have standards which don't allow this sort of chemical and toxin into their food supply. And so the health outcomes,
the quality of food is a far cry from what we're used to here in The States. So why don't you talk about the problem of glyphosate and also what people can do to make sure they're not getting too much of it? Yeah. It's a big problem. Well said. You know, in Europe and Italy, for example, I talk about Italy in in the book, and I make the example that Italy has
Unknown: a fraction of the obesity
that we have in The US, a fraction of the diabetes
that we have. They also have a longer lifespan than us. Speaking of longevity, they live longer than us. They don't have more gyms than us. They have a fraction of the gym, so it's not that. Sure. They walk more. They have more community.
That is true. But one of the other things that is is at play here is that in 2016,
they had strict regulations for these chemicals like glyphosate and red dyes that we freely allow, at least right now, in our food supply.
And glyphosate
is a nasty
chemical. It's an antibiotic, essentially. It's anti life, and it's sprayed all over the place. They've done studies on,
urine, the urine of human beings, and they found that ninety five plus percent of human beings are urinating glyphosate
and it's so hard to escape it. I'll explain where it's found and the best ways to mitigate it, but first, I'll explain what it's doing to the body when it comes in the body. It's a poison. It's a mitochondrial
poison.
It chelates, meaning it removes
minerals from your body. Minerals, we are mineral deficient.
Minerals are very important
to fuel the mitochondria
which helps your mitochondria
produce energy,
burn fat, it extends your lifespan. There's a lot of disagreement in our health space about the best diet, fasting,
and different arguments out there, but we could all agree to to the mitochondria
being really important to support and glyphosate destroys it. And so what happens is,
well, first of all, doctor, Stephanie Seneth.
Actually, she's not a doctor. She's an MIT researcher. Stephanie Seneth from MIT,
senior scientist from MIT, and Nancy Swanson.
They have some really interesting studies that started mapping out, the application of glyphosate in the late nineteen eighties when it really started getting ramped up in The US,
and they tracked
it. Strong correlations,
and I know correlations are not causation, but strong correlations between the application of glyphosate
and diseases like diabetes,
Alzheimer's,
autism,
dementia in The US attracts
the more, application of glyphosate, the more of these diseases year after year.
Glyphosate is found in wine. It's found in coffee. It's found in a lot of food, especially to your point, wheat
loaded with glyphosate.
That's why we hear so many people say, I could go to Italy and eat gluten and eat wheat and I feel fine. But in The US, I feel inflamed
because number one, less glyphosate in The in Italy versus here. Number two, their wheat over there is different than the wheat we have here. We have this hybridized
dwarf wheat. It's very different. That creates more inflammation in the body.
So there are several things you can do. I would recommend taking
fulvic and humic acids. I talk about this in the book. When you take these minerals, fulvic and humic acids, it could help remove glyphosate from the body and give your my mitochondria
the missing minerals.
You could look up the clean 15 versus the dirty dozen. This is the environmental working group where the clean 15 are the the 15 foods that have the least amount of glyphosate and you wanna stick with those and the dirty dozen are the ones that are just loaded with glyphosate, usually with GMO. You wanna make sure those are organic as much as possible.
And wine, well, I don't drink alcohol, but California wine, doctor Zach Bush shared with me that the average California wine has about 64 different herbicides in it, which is creating inflammation in the gut, ripping open our tight junctions, leading to intestinal permeability, autoimmune disease, cancer, all these different diseases. So we wanna get our minerals up, we wanna eat organic non GMO as possible, and we wanna pray that The US will ban
glyphosate sometime soon because it's a big problem in our country.
Unknown: And so wine and beer are huge sources in a lot of people's
well, actually, other drinks too like coffee, if you're not going for the organic stuff, you can also get slammed by high amounts of this coming from well, the the typical offenders aside from those drinks also, you know, the the
wheat, soy, corn,
like, all these things are slathered with all sorts of chemicals. And
it's it's tough because you don't see a direct hit all the time. Like, sometimes you do. You feel like you ate a brick and you get the sweats and you can't digest and you're just feeling sluggish and inflamed for a while. But for the most part, this stuff creeps up on you, and sometimes it hits in the form of cancer or other really advanced and and problematic
health conditions. And so nipping this stuff in the bud and being as clean as you can once you get the memo, hopefully, while you're a little bit younger and earlier in life, that can be a
fantastic
difference
in your health outcomes over time. Because
if you just follow the course
and do the easy thing, you're going to get
slammed by all sorts of toxins, pollutants. And the truth is we need to have our shields up and also do what we can to actively
detox. So let's talk about that next. I know that we talked about cold plunging, but also saunas, sweating, and,
obviously, physical activity can really help with the detox pathways as well. So what what do you do, and and how do you help the folks that you work with engage those detox pathways on a regular basis?
Unknown: Yeah. And with the glyphosate piece, and you said you gotta take this serious.
I agree. If you treat your health casually, you're gonna end up a casualty. That that's a fact.
One of the other things with the glyphosate piece, we close that loop, and I'll move on to the detoxification because I thought about something when you were talking.
When I walk my dog in my neighborhood, I live in Miami,
my neighbors
proudly display that their lawn has been sprayed with
Roundup or glyphosate.
They have a little sign. I I'm actually thankful they put the sign because sometimes I have no idea. And when I see that sign, I make sure I stay far away. My dog does not walk on there. I don't want him to get infected. And not to mention, if you step on that grass and it has glyphosate and you walk back home, now you've tracked that back into your house and you're getting exposed in your house. And one of the questions I ask people when I started working with them one on one, although I don't do much one on one these days, but I used to always ask this question,
have you or do you currently live next to a golf course?
And they always wonder why would you even ask that question. Well, golf courses are loaded glyphosate. They're sprayed all over the place. And it's interesting because it's in the real estate space. Real estate goes up when you're living right next to a golf course. People actually want that. But to me, that's the worst thing. You never wanna live right by a golf course. They're spraying that thing every single day to make it look great, and you're getting that just coming right into your house. So I'm sorry if you live next to a golf course, that's a big problem.
I'm sorry to break the news to you, but that's something you wanna be aware of. Okay. Detoxification.
We have these downstream detox pathways that are incredible.
We have these systems in place, but the amount of toxins we're dealing with is just hard to keep up with it. But our downstream detox pathways would be the lymphatic system, which is this gutter drainage system. We have the liver, which is a major detoxification
organ and fat loss organ.
We have the kidneys.
We have our,
bowel movements or kid or or colon, excuse me. And there's different things we can do. So sauna is great. I I personally love sauna. I love sweating. I have an infrared sauna in my backyard, and I do that consistently.
You could find somebody who has a sauna, whether it's infrared,
dry,
steam, any of those are fine when you're activating,
these heat shock proteins and you're facilitating
brown fat, which is great for fat loss or supporting the mitochondria,
and you're sweating, you're opening up those detox pathways. Great for,
high blood pressure, great for cardiovascular
disease. Sauna's great. Movement in general, we were talking about moving the body earlier, but steps and movement, strength training, these are different ways to activate sweating, of course, but also your detox pathways.
Making sure you're pooping.
The amount of food that you eat is the total amount of times you should poop. I I believe meaning if you eat three meals a day, you should poop three times a day. So making sure you're not constipated. When you're constipated,
you're having a backup of these toxins that are just auto intoxicating yourself.
So making sure you're regular is important. You could do things like coffee enemas and castor oil packs to support the liver. I talk about bitter rich foods in the book to support the liver. These are gonna be apple cider vinegar, lemon water, lime water, milk thistle, ginger tea, artichokes, things that stimulate that liver to produce bile, great for detoxification
and great for keto because you're breaking down fat more efficiently now with the bile. So, yeah, those are a long list of different things you can do to keep those detox pathways open, but you wanna make sure you stop the flow of those toxins first because you could open up the pathways, but with the amount that we're having in these in this day and age, it's gonna be hard to get them out. So you have to remove the interference at the same time.
Unknown: It's it's, like I said, been a few years since we spoke, at least on this show, and I'm curious what you've learned along the line. Like, have there been some mind blowing
guess or little things that really
lit off something in your mind that's just like, oh, I'm gonna make this little tweak or this change, or has it really largely stayed around the fundamentals?
Unknown: It always revolves around the fundamentals. It's funny that you asked that question because,
yesterday, I just recorded episode a thousand of the podcast. Believe me or not, boss. Congrats, dude. That sounds amazing. Yeah. You're you're an OG in the game, so you know all about I know what it takes. Yeah. Yeah. You know how difficult that is. So I recorded
episode a thousand, which is coming out, next week, but I recorded it yesterday.
And
I went through, like, 10 lessons,
like, common themes and things for with the people I've interviewed. There's solo content. Maybe I've interviewed over 700 people, but the rest are solo content.
And one of the things is that, yeah, the fundamentals are always the fundamentals. Right? Stress, sleep, movement, mindset.
You can't skip that. You're only gonna go go so far if you skip that and add all these biohacks, these sexy things. You may make some progress, but it's only gonna get you so far. So, yeah, fundamentals have to be addressed. It builds that foundation
of health. And if you don't take care of that, it doesn't matter how much sauna you do, how much supplementation you do, red light therapy, it's it's gonna still fall apart over time.
Outside of that, Abel, you know, the the toxicity piece has been something that really has been,
like, really important to me,
over the the the years, and I've dealt with my own toxicity issues. I know you have as well with,
was it carbon monoxide poisoning? Yeah. Yeah. With your scary story. For me, it was mold and mercury, and you actually helped me out giving me a protocol for the molds and the stuff I was dealing with. So that's been a big part of not just my journey, but a lot of these conversations I'm having with top experts, the toxicity part. So much so that chapter five in in metabolic freedom is all about how these environmental toxins create metabolic diseases.
They're everywhere. So it's important to address that. It could be a mold issue. It could be,
a heavy metals issue. Like for me, it was having eight silver fillings in my mouth for twenty plus years leaching mercury into the brain and then, of course, discovering we were living in a moldy home.
And, you know, I was doing everything. Prior to that, I was doing everything. I was doing the keto,
cyclical keto, fasting,
CrossFit, where I owned my CrossFit gym a few years ago,
supplementation,
the different biohacks,
yet I still didn't feel like I wanted to feel. It wasn't until I addressed the toxicity part, the heavy metals and the molds,
then I started to actually feel incredible. And I'm 40 years old now, and I feel the best I've ever felt in my life. And a big part of that was addressing the toxicity component.
Unknown: Yeah. And that can be a tricky one. It's a homework project. Right? And it takes It is. It's a rabbit hole. Yeah. It is. There's a lot going on. We'll have to save some of that for the next time because I'm curious about
the people who you're working with. How has that changed over the years, especially with new technologies and that sort of thing? Especially now we're seeing a lot of AI agents, chatbots replacing already
trainers, coaches, and that sort of thing, at least at the lower level.
I'm curious about your thoughts about that and also where it might be going and and curious about if if you're changing the way that you're working with groups or or people individually.
Unknown: My focus these days have been more on, diabetes and prediabetes.
That's one of the things that I'm passionate about since my dad passed away through the complications of diabetes back in 2014.
And it's a big problem. You know, in The United States,
we spend 4,600,000,000,000
every year on health care, which would be the fourth largest GDP in the world if it was a GDP,
the amount we spend on health care. Yet, we ranked around 37
around amongst first world countries for health. 37? I mean, there are countries that are a lot worse than we are in terms of their economy, yet they're healthier than us. And what's interesting about the health care spend
is that one out of every $4 spent on health care spent on diabetes,
primarily type two, which is a metabolic disease, which is 100%
preventable
and 100%
reversible.
So a lot of the people I work with have insulin resistance, prediabetes,
PCOS, or full blown diabetes. I love working with them because it's really not that difficult
to reverse diabetes. It's not. You just have to apply a few things here and there and it could happen in a matter of weeks to months and then some cases years. So those are the majority of people I'm working with in group settings.
The book was written for the masses
to reach those people and just help them understand the body was built to heal itself, remove the interference,
and then if they wanna work with me, I do more group settings, courses,
that sort of thing. Now where has technology come into play here in different devices? CGMs have been a game changer. Continuous glucose monitors, awesome.
And also AI can be used for certain things like to find certain studies. I use AI. I'll either use ChatGPT or Gemini and I'll say find me like three of the best human studies on a certain topic and it just allows me to go a little bit deeper and find more studies. So, anybody can do that, by the way, not just us health practitioners. If you're listening, yeah, you could go on these, AI softwares and find these amazing studies to either use this for yourself to learn more or to even show them to your doctor
to educate your doctor. There's many ways to use these these technologies. So I like working with people. I love working with people with these metabolic
diseases because I know how to help them overcome them.
Unknown: Yeah. Absolutely. And using AI for that purpose is just a wonderful one. I mean, trying to find research has always been a task, and a lot of it was gated. And, hopefully, over time, those gates open up a little bit more so it's not just in the ivory towers because we all should have access to the best data possible, at least in the optimistic version of the future. So as long as we're heading toward that, I think that there's a lot to
look forward to, in terms of the promise of technology, especially for our advancement in
combining all of the knowledge that's out there. Because right right now, it's kind of out there, but there's a lot of misinformation, and it's
mismatched, and it's confusing, and it's chaotic. So, man, I appreciate what you do to stay true to the message and simplify
the complex
and give people actionable, practical advice
Unknown: for how this can actually work in their own lives. So, we just have a couple minutes left here. Do you have any parting words, anything else you'd like to cover off on from your new book or otherwise? Yeah. And I appreciate you. As you know, you're a great friend and also been a huge inspiration to me. I read your wild diet book back when was it? When did you release that? 2015? '10 years ago. Yeah. It's 2015. That's probably when I got it. I think I got it when it came out. I I think I'd mentioned to you before. Like, I even have it here, the original copy, and it's all highlights all over the place. Amazing. It's It's one of the standards, one of the great books out there. If you haven't gotten it, go get it. Still stands the test of time, the wild diet.
So in chapter 10, that favorite chapter of mine, I talk about a supplement that I recommend your audience take.
This supplement is anti inflammatory,
helps with high blood pressure, heart disease, helps with autoimmune conditions, helps with diabetes. Pretty much any condition you're dealing with, it will improve. And I know it sounds like a very
bold statement and claim, but allow me to share why I believe that. So the supplement is called vitamin g. And UC Davis I put some studies in the book from UC Davis showing that those who take vitamin g have healthier blood pressure levels, healthier blood sugar levels measured by the a one c.
Doctor Joe Dispenza has done,
workshops on individuals taking vitamin g. He's measured their cortisol levels. He's measured their IgA levels, which supports the immune system, and he saw huge improvements in their immune system and a down regulation in their stress levels.
The most comprehensive study ever done on vitamin g came out last year in JAMA
published from Harvard, and I put that in the book. Check this out. The study had 49,275
nurses,
And it showed that the nurses who took vitamin g every single day had a nine percent reduction in dying from all cause mortality
and a fifteen percent reduction in dying from cardiovascular
disease versus nurses who didn't take vitamin g. So your your audience actually, before I give away what vitamin g is and where to get it, one more study. This was done on,
caregivers. Now caregivers live
a really stressful life.
They measure their mitochondria
via this, MHI, mitochondrial
health index.
And it showed that the caregivers that took vitamin g at night had healthier mitochondria
in the morning, the following morning versus the caregivers that never took vitamin g.
So your audience is already in the show notes, Abel. Trying to find an affiliate link and a coupon code for vitamin g, but, I got news for you. The you can't find it because vitamin g is not something you buy. Vitamin g is gratitude.
It is the feeling of gratitude, not the practice of gratitude. It's not
an intellectual
exercise. It's an emotional
exercise. It's a feeling. And everything I just shared is on gratitude. When you're in a grateful state, what you appreciate
appreciates and what you think about, what you think about, you bring about in your life and the more things you're grateful for, the more things you see to have gratitude for. So I recommend getting your daily dose of vitamin g every morning, right before bed, throughout the day. There's no upper limit. Instead of choosing 10 things you're grateful for and writing it down like a checklist,
Unknown: choose one thing you're grateful for and spend a few minutes there and you actually get more benefits doing that. So that would be the thing I would add to the conversation here. I love it. And I've been a a proud taker of vitamin g for many moons now, and I can vouch. It works. It works. But only, as you said, it's not about going through
the the habit or the exercise of it. It's about truly
feeling it.
So however it shows up in your life, make sure that you drop down into your heart and and your body and actually
feel it. Don't just say it. The intellectual stuff doesn't work. Feel it like a kid, like a child. Right? Yeah. Amen, brother. You live that vitamin g life. I could see it. You do too, man. Well,
Ben, please, before you go, tell folks where they can find your new book and your work and what's coming next. Thank you, brother. The book is out on May 13,
Unknown: and it is called Metabolic Freedom. My friend, doctor Mindy Pals, wrote the foreword. It's being published with Hay House, and it's available on Audible. I narrated the Audible myself, which was a pain in the butt.
Yeah.
Kindle and hardcover. Actually, I I just got my author copies. Here is a Nice. The cover cut of it right there. Has a nice chili pepper popping.
Thank you, bro. And we actually have a special gift for your audience if they wanna get the gift. It's a free course on the metabolism, 12 lessons that I built out, just understanding how the metabolism works, along with exclusive interviews in this course with,
leaders in our space, doctor Jason Fung, Megan Ramos, Cynthia Thurlow, and doctor Daniel Pompa.
All that's free if you go to metabolicfreedombook.com.
You just simply buy the book Metabolic Freedom from any of the retail sites listed there. And then once you do that, whether it's a presale or after the fact, you put your name, email, and order number, and you're instantly emailed access to the course with the interview. So that's metabolicfreedombook.com.
Nice. Ben, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate your work. I appreciate your work, brother. You're a rock star. Can't wait to see you soon.
Unknown: Hey. Abel here one more time. And if you believe in our mission to create a world where health is the norm, not sickness, here are a few things you can do to help keep this show coming your way. Click like, subscribe, and and leave a quick review wherever you listen to or watch your podcasts.
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