[00:00:00] Luke: So Matt and Wade, you guys were on the show back in 2020 on Episode, I've got it here in front of me, 272, and we're up to 500 and something now. It's great to see you guys again. My first question is this, how long have you two been friends?

[00:00:19] Matt: Over 20 years.

[00:00:20] Wade: Yeah, I guess we met back in '97, and then our friendship really emerged in the end of 2000. And then, yeah, it's been a progression from--

[00:00:35] Luke: And how long have you been business partners?

[00:00:37] Matt: Since 2004. 2004.

[00:00:39] Luke: Wow. I asked that because I've observed, and it's also been my personal experience, that partnerships don't always work out.

[00:00:47] Matt: We definitely went to hell and back.

[00:00:49] Luke: Did you?

[00:00:50] Wade: Oh, yeah.

[00:00:51] Luke: You guys have been through some shit?

[00:00:52] Wade: Yeah.

[00:00:53] Luke: Because anytime I've been around you two at various events and our prior recording and whatnot, you seem to be copacetic and have a really good chemistry, and just can tell you have different personalities that are likely complimentary. How have you dealt with conflict and disagreements over the years as business partners?

[00:01:12] Wade: One of the reasons I got into business with Matt is we had a series of circumstances where I saw that Matt, no matter what was going on, would continue to take action regardless of if there was failure or mistakes or things didn't work out. And I realized he had the resilience that it would take to be successful at pretty much anything that he was willing to do.

[00:01:41] And I resonated with that, and I thought, I have the same attitude. So okay, that's the guy that's not going to quit. He's not going to give up. And anybody that gets into business understands that you're going to go through a lot of difficulties. And I think in a partnership, the advantage that a partnership provides are wonderful, but innately, there are going to be significant differences in maybe the direction, or how you want to do things, or who takes responsibility for one thing, and it's back and forth.

[00:02:18] I don't think we would have made it without-- we talked about Dr. David Hawkins and The Map of Consciousness, and our commitment to spiritual evolution, and also our commitment to the people that we're trying to assist in the journey. So I think those two elements are enough to overcome one's own egoic tendencies.

[00:02:40] And I have a strong ego, and is a personality, and it's an interface device, and you start to understand that. You put it in the proper context, I think, with The Map of Consciousness with David Hawkins, and we're both big advocates and followers of that philosophy. Matt, maybe you want to add to that?

[00:03:00] Matt: Yeah. I didn't know you knew Clayton. Clayton's been a huge influence in both Wade and I's life. And when we were in absolute war, Clayton actually mediated us out of it, so we hired him, and he really helped us, which was great. But I think the thing that's helped the most has been just doing a lot of emotional processing.

[00:03:23] Wade's done, I think, five or six brain trainings. I've done nine. So I've done five or 600 rounds of forgiveness or resets. I use EFT, and I think it has been a lot of things I've had to clear, whether it's directly related to Wade or not. And I don't react anymore. It's been a long time since things hit me that cause reactions. If you think about a fight, it's typically someone reacts and the other person reacts to the reaction, just this spiraling dissent into implosion. Both of us have done enough work that it's not happening anymore.

[00:04:06] Luke: That's amazing. It's been cool to see your success with BiOptimizers. I don't know if I met you guys right when you started, but I don't think you had many products, and you didn't have the nootopia arm of it. Mark, I'm sure you guys know, was on the show. Really great guy, by the way. I love that dude.

[00:04:22] Wade: He's awesome.

[00:04:22] Luke: He was really fun. I was thinking of texting him yesterday because he's like, if you ever need help with business, I've been CEO of 100 companies or whatever the hell. And I logged that in my memory, and I had a question that I needed answered yesterday. I might hit him up.

[00:04:36] But yeah, just watching you guys steadily grow and seem to do it in a way that's sustainable and smart. And I work with so many different brands, and I think sometimes can see, ah, you guys are diversifying too much or putting out too many different products. You're going in different directions.

[00:04:55] And a couple of them that I've had that feeling about have folded because they just get distracted or maybe the founders don't have the spiritual foundation of shared values. So the personalities come in and get in the way. And if someone wants to be right and someone wants their way, I think it's easy to forget, in some cases, that if you're both going in the same direction and you're committed to that, you don't necessarily have to be on the exact same road.

[00:05:21] It's like parallel roads. And this is how I look at my marriage, parallel roads that are very different in the general way that they look and feel, but they're going in the same direction. So even if there's a divergence, you know that you're coming back together because you're both going to the same place.

[00:05:40] Matt: Yeah. I think Wade and I have both have gone through that with nutrition. The thing we share is a passion for helping people get healthier. We were both trainers. That's where we met, built a friendship, and that's what's guided us with all the product development. I think we're both obsessed with creating best-in-class products or best-in-class customer experience, best-in-class customer support, and those foundational things that have allowed us to thrive.

[00:06:09] Luke: I think I heard one of you guys, I forget which one it was, on one of the David Hawkins talks. Are you aware that one of you are on one of the recordings?

[00:06:19] Matt: Yeah, we've been on both.

[00:06:21] Luke: You've both been on there?

[00:06:22] Wade: Yeah, I've done the video series. I think I'm on three or four times where you get the question and answer.

[00:06:28] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I've listened to, I don't know, thousands of hours of those things. And then after meeting you guys, I recognized your voice. And every once in a while, I'll go back, and I'll be like, oh, that was those guys. It's just funny. The couple of times I went to see him speak, I was too lazy and shy to wait in line and go up on stage and ask him questions. And then I saw his last talk before he died. I don't have many regrets in life, but I do regret not just making my way to the stage and just looking in his eyes and just being in the presence of someone at that level.

[00:07:00] Wade: It's a powerful experience, life-changing.

[00:07:02] Luke: Yeah.

[00:07:03] Matt: Really felt like you were just looking at consciousness.

[00:07:08] Luke: Yeah. I get that sense because a lot of the times, I'm sure you guys have observed, maybe you had this experience, someone would have this really impactful, complex intellectual question, and they would come up and start to ask the question, and then they would just start laughing, and the question just totally lost its relevance because of the energy field. And they're just like, oh, actually, I'm just supposed to be sitting here experiencing the field. The question becomes insignificant in the presence.

[00:07:37] Matt: I would even feel that while you're in line, getting to the stage. I was trying to just think of questions, and all of them just felt irrelevant. And I ended up asking a really stupid marketing question.

[00:07:52] Luke: Yeah.

[00:07:52] Wade: And when I was in the process of asking questions, there was a surface communication that's happening in front of the audience, but it felt like thousands of questions and their derivatives are coming out of your field, and thousands of answers are coming back, and your brain simply can't process the sheer magnitude of the information, and it starts to unpack over time. So there was a surface communication, but there's this other knowingness experience that happens.

[00:08:26] And sometimes it's so overwhelming. People would just go silent, or ask about their cat, or would seem almost humorous, or bizarre, or unusual than you-- as I went so many different times, I would see that happening over and over and having those experiences. It's like, oh, okay, I get what's happening. I could see what was happening with the person a little bit more empathetically. Like, oh, yeah, they're in the field, and they're getting obliterated right now, so he's fumbling with whatever.

[00:08:55] Luke: Totally. I remember the question I wanted to ask because he would calibrate the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and groups, as you guys know, and would explain why they were effective. But at the time, I was really into studying all of that literature, and I was really deeply into the book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, known as the Twelve and Twelve. And he never talked about that book. So that was going to be my question, is like, have you calibrated that particular book or calibrated each of the steps?

[00:09:24] Because that book was so helpful to me in going deeper in the application of those principles beyond just, oh, I don't drink anymore. That really explained things, but it's like a hidden gem in those circles. And that was going to be my question. But in hindsight, now, it's like, what does it matter? It wouldn't have really changed anything in my life because I was still applying the same teachings regardless of what they are calibration wise.

[00:09:50] I definitely wanted to ask you guys about the Hawkins thing. That was on my list. Let's start out. Tell us about this book, you guys, and we're going to talk about a lot of things, but I know you guys want to talk about your book. And for people watching on video, I got this box when I came back in town yesterday, and I was like, what? The end of the diet war starts now.

[00:10:10] And I recognize the BiOptimizer's little emblem on there, and I open it up, and I'm like, this has got to be the most clever book marketing packaging. For those, again, on the video, you can see the book comes in this box. You open it up, and it's got utensils indicative of a book on diets.

[00:10:32] Matt: It's engraved. You can actually see the engraving on the utensils, #endthedietwar.

[00:10:37] Luke: Oh, really? Oh my God. I didn't even know this is what we're going to be talking about until a couple of days ago. I just could always find things to talk to you guys about, but that idea of diet wars, I was like, oh, I'm all in. We got to talk about this because-- and the book, by the way, is called The Ultimate Nutrition Bible for those that want to know the real title.

[00:10:59] But I've often said on the show, in the beginning, I'd have, I don't know, Dave Asprey or Steven Gundry, and different people that had different perspectives on diets. And I'd interview people that were plant-based, Rich Roll, and then Paul Saladino, carnivore. After so many years in the wellness space, I just have arrived at a place where I'm so over diets.

[00:11:26] There is no right diet, is where I've arrived. And people ask me, what diet do you follow? I'm like, I hate diets. I don't do diets. I just eat the things that I tend to feel good on, and I try to avoid the things that I don't feel good on. So that was an immediate hook for me. But to be honest, I haven't had a chance to dive into this massive Bible that's 18 inches tall, so I'm coming at this a bit green.

[00:11:52] So maybe we could start with what the motivation was to write yet another diet book that is not a diet book. And I asked that on the heels of doing a little research. According to the Nielsen BookScan, about 5 million diet books are sold each year. And I thought, that's interesting. And I don't know how long that's been going on, but I see them come and go.

[00:12:14] Yet our mortality is getting worse, and people are sicker and sicker. So I'm like, okay, we have such an abundance of diet books out there and different approaches to eating, yet we're getting sicker as a civilization. So maybe it's not all about diet. So what motivated you guys to enter a paradigm breaking way of writing a book that is anti-diet yet gives you some tips on how to eat?

[00:12:43] Matt: We both survived our diet war. We're both recovered dietary dogmatic zealots. Wade was a plant-based zealot. I was a ketogenic zealot. I've been doing ketogenic diet for 30 years with over 20 years on the plant-based side, vegetarian side. And we literally argued, I don't know for how many years, how many hours, and at some point, we realized we were both successful with our clients.

[00:13:11] We were both trainers, and then there was clients we were both failing with. I remember my first ketogenic client that I failed with, his skin turned gray. He looked horrible, felt horrible, and I didn't understand. I thought everybody should be on a ketogenic diet. So slowly, we started realizing that there's universal nutritional optimizers, things like gut biome, nutrigenomics, eliminating food allergy, sensitivity.

[00:13:38] We can get into the nuances, but there's certain things everybody can do that will improve their performance on their diet. But the three core questions that we want to ask everyone is, is this the right diet for you? Is this the right diet for you right now? Because our goals change. And are you doing it the best way possible? So what we've done is we've created, really, a unifying nutritional philosophy that transcends the dietary tribal dynamics. And maybe Wade, you can talk about just the dietary tribes we've seen out there.

[00:14:10] Wade: Yeah. First, the data. 97% of people who engage in a diet will eventually gain all the weight back. At certain weight losses, only one avenue that you can address. There's muscle gain, there's cognitive health, there's longevity, endurance. There's a variety of parameters. So first and foremost, you have to understand what's my goal, and your diet needs to reflect your goal.

[00:14:36] Two, what is my genetics, and am I genetically predisposed to being successful on a plant-based diet, or am I like Jordan Peterson who can only eat meat because he has an unusual genetic condition that his daughter has as well? It excludes a lot of potential foods.

[00:14:58] So there's no sense of condemning that. And then of course, what lifestyle fits within our nutritional pyramid of decisions? And we'll get into that in a minute, but what happens and what we've observed, because we've been around this for a long time, we both got into this in our teenage years. So collectively, we have over 60 years of dietary experience, and you see what I call the rise and fall of dietary dogmatic.

[00:15:23] And what happens is, for whatever reason, the dietary philosophy catches hold. A charismatic leader steps into the position, creates the do's and don'ts, and starts the book, and the seminars, and the products, and the supporting cast of the usual things. And there's an amygdala center in our brain that is always looking at, where do I fit within the tribe?

[00:15:53] So part of being a human is belonging to something. And being part of a dietary tribe, especially in those early stages, when most diets will work for a while-- we talk about that. But the change and some of the optimization and maybe a new level of discipline and awareness that you put into a dietary strategy will produce results.

[00:16:12] But if you're going against some of the key elements in the pyramid of nutritional decisions, eventually you revert back. We haven't seen anybody address that. And then what happens? You have a bell curve of distribution. In other words, the top two percenters, they're the advocates.

[00:16:30] They cured some disease. They lost 50 pounds. They made 500 million on a new thing. It's everything that you would want. And that's all the people that are advocating, and testimonials, and all that stuff. Then there's the 2% typing in on whatever social media with the haterade parade. I gained 40 pounds. My lipids went through the roof. I got some bizarre disease. And then comes the part, "but then I found this."

[00:17:03] And it's another cult-like religion that evolves about some other charismatic leader who solved the same problems that they had, and now they become the top two percentile. And then you see the battles going back and forth. And so Matt and I were a mini version of that.

[00:17:23] We both shared the same passions, and we want to connect with people to recognize-- we want people to be successful. We want people to be healthy. We've never lost sight of the individual and how much joy we get when someone solves that problem forever. And so we decided we'd put together a choose-your-own-adventure, identifying where people go wrong, how to avoid being limited by a cult-like mentality so that you're armed with the defense mechanisms that you're not stuck in some paradigm that doesn't suit you over the long term.

[00:18:00] And I think we've done a great job on this book. And I think it's going to be able to create a talking point for opposing dietary philosophies to come together where people can share the insights to be successful, not just for today or just for 12 weeks, but lock it in for life and enjoy the process.

[00:18:22] Luke: There's so many good points in there, you guys. I think one of the things that turns me off about the diet trends, and like you guys see, these things get rebranded and come in and out of vogue over and over again for a couple of decades now, but I think the tribal identification and how people-- and I'm not saying I'm observing this from, above and I've never been prone to it.

[00:18:49] I've been through all kinds of misidentifications in my life before I knew who I was as my own weird, unique self. Let's say someone is a proponent of the carnivore diet or a vegan diet. If you ask questions or push back on some of their philosophy or beliefs around that, it's as if that person themself is being attacked rather than an objective idea.

[00:19:16] It's just part of that human nature that we become so identified with something that isn't actually us that the ego co-ops it and it becomes us. Like when someone says, I'm carnivore, or I'm a vegan. No, you're a human being that has a meat suit that prefers a certain type of fuel.

[00:19:36] It's like if I went to the gas station and got unleaded gas, I wouldn't say, I'm an unleaded. I'd say, I prefer to put this kind of fuel in the car. It's wherever. There's fuel that agrees with my body. There's fuel that agrees with my body less. And I just try to stay on the side of agreement, but it's such a trap, I think, the personality attachment to it.

[00:19:57] Matt: I agree 100%. I think there's things that are much more profound to seek as a tribe, things like spiritual connection. A dietary philosophy shouldn't be the driver of your tribal dynamics. Again, finding people that have similar core values beyond the type of food you eat makes a lot more sense.

[00:20:20] Luke: Yeah, totally. And you're not going to fight about that. I could give two shits about what my friends eat or don't eat. I don't know how you guys go out to dinner. That might've been difficult before you figured it out, right? Because you want to go to the barbeque spot, and you want to go to the--

[00:20:33] Wade: We trade off. Some days I have a more successful meal than maybe Matt does, and sometimes he has a more successful meal or a more enjoyable environment. But even in those environments, I like the experience. We were in a place the other night that's suboptimal for my dietary component, but I had an amazing conversation with one of the guests, and I wasn't distracted by eating.

[00:21:02] I was completely focused on the conversation and was enriched by that experience far more than any food could provide for me. And so I think the more that you can get out of, those are the vegetarians, or those are the carnivals or whatever, that if you can get away from that biblical tribal battle, then you can start to see people as people.

[00:21:29] And there's often elements that you can learn. And Matt, with his ketogenic tendencies early on brought to light some key elements that I was simply not aware of in my life is beneficial. I benefited from those integrations on my plant-based diet. And so I think you can always extract some gold from someone of a different camp, and a different philosophy, and a different way of doing things because you don't know everything, and science is always changing and evolving, and that's part of the human experience.

[00:22:09] Luke: Do you guys think that one of the reasons people sometimes see such dramatic healing results at the beginning of a very restrictive diet, like a vegan diet or carnivore diet, is just based on the fact that they're essentially on an elimination diet?

[00:22:26] Matt: That's a big part of it, and/or they're patching deficiencies. So if a vegan, let's say they have certain deficiencies, goes on a ketogenic or carnivore diet, they're getting more amino acids, they're getting a whole new set of nutrients that they were probably missing, and then they feel amazing. And then after a few months, sometimes they develop new deficiencies. So a lot of people bounce from diet to diet because, at some point, it just stops working. That's why it was a hot chapter that every diet works for a while.

[00:23:00] Luke: Yeah, exactly. That's been my experience.

[00:23:02] Wade: Yeah. So there's suboptimal parts of every diet, and there's optimal parts of every diet. No diet is singularly perfect on its own, especially within the exclusive box that's propagated on most media, because the depth and breadth of a conversation for an hour isn't going to identify the individual components.

[00:23:23] And I think maybe we can walk them through the nutritional pyramid of decisions, and how that framework helps guide the individual. It's okay to be a paleo person, or a vegan, or a carnivore, but what are the things that are going to allow you to sustain that? How do you optimize based on your goals and your genetics.

[00:23:49] For example, I'm predisposed for poor cardiovascular genes, suboptimal on lipase pathway, so I don't metabolize fats well. I have suboptimal genetics on blood sugar, and I don't get satiated very quickly, so I have a slow delay. So that means I have a tendency to overeat, and that overeating is going to lead to probably cardiovascular problems if I was 70 or 80. So I've crafted a diet that offsets those tendencies, understanding that within a plant-based diet that I've chosen, and Matt's done similar things in his life.

[00:24:28] Luke: What did you guys do in terms of the genetic testing? I'm curious about that. I recently did the latest version of the Viome test, and it sent me back all these data points, and it was pretty freaking accurate. And I remember just one takeaway was like, your gut is your weak spot, which has always been true, which is probably why I really gravitated towards you guys, because so much of the shit you make has changed my digestion so dramatically. And we'll get into that.

[00:24:58] So thank you for making products that fixed me. But I'm unclear. When people talk about the genetic component of finding a unique biocompatible way of eating for a person, how do they arrive at those genetics, and how do we know that they're trustworthy other than just like what I did? It was like, yeah, actually, that's pretty aligned with my subjective experience.

[00:25:20] Matt: Yeah, we're actually working with some of the top genetic experts to launch our own tests, so it's coming soon. But we're not stopping there. We've actually created an app. You can download it now. It's called The Ultimate Nutrition app available on Google Play Store and Apple. And what we're going to do is integrate people's genetic nutrigenomic data along with the app, and then do some customizations. So that's coming soon.

[00:25:49] So the app is out now. The nutrigenomic integration, it's going to take a few more months, but that's our goal. But yeah, back to the pyramid of nutritional decisions, what we wanted to do was give people a framework that helped them design the perfect diet for them-- the me diet, the you diet, whatever you want to call it.

[00:26:12] So the base layer is spiritual and cultural considerations. And we have friends that are Muslims. They go through Ramadan. I have friends that are Orthodox Jews. They have a lot of rules. There's a lot of people that choose to become vegan because of spiritual considerations.

[00:26:31] So for these people, what they might be doing is not perfect for their genetics, but who are we to judge them, or tell them they're wrong, or tell them they should be eating a different way if for them it's a spiritual path? We're not here to tell them they're wrong. We're here to help them because the other side of it is even though somebody might be doing a vegan diet and it's not optimal for their genetics, there's a lot of strategies and tactics that they can do to make it work. So we can get into that.

[00:27:07] So that's the first base layer. The second layer is psychology and emotions. So we have a whole chapter on psychology, a whole chapter on emotions. And just to touch on the emotional part, a lot of people use food as drugs. We're both in the program. I'm sure you've met a lot of people in the program that also food issues.

[00:27:28] Luke: I've eaten a lot of donuts in my day.

[00:27:30] Matt: Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:27:32] Luke: A lot of instant Folgers coffee made with tap water, chased with donuts, yes.

[00:27:39] Matt: Yeah, no, the serotonin, dopamine response from a fatty sugary treat is at the same level as heroin. If you scan a brain while they're-- you go to Sidecar in California.

[00:27:51] Wade: I had that experience. It took a couple of Sidecar doughnuts, and I thought I was stoned out of my mind. It was really intense.

[00:28:02] Matt: So again, there's that drug-like response to food. So a lot of people stress eat. They're emotional eaters, or they have food issues, and a lot of that, as you're well aware, is driven by trauma that's just unresolved. So we have a whole chapter devoted to at least guiding people or recommending certain tools, whether it's neurofeedback, EFT, and so on, that they can use to clear that. But on the psychological side, Wade and I are very different. And Wade, maybe talk about how you're a contrarian rebel and how you've crafted very challenging, unique goals to motivate yourself.

[00:28:42] Wade: I get excited about specific strategic constraints. So for example, I decided that I would become a bodybuilder without exogenous hormones and on a plant-based diet to see if it could be done. That was 20 years ago. Virtually, everybody told me it was not possible. And so what I realized is, maybe they're right. But I'm not going to know that if I just take on that assumption. So let's run an experiment. Turned out all right.

[00:29:18] Two years after I made that choice of standing on stage of the Mr. Universe contest, that's when I discovered the problem of restrictive dieting without reverse dieting. So that was another strategy. I went from Mr. Universe to Mr. Marshmallow and gained 42 pounds. And then from there, I learned about the gut biome and went through that journey.

[00:29:35] And then all of a sudden, it was like, how do I compete at a world championship on a raw food, vegan diet? And I did that in 2007, four years after the integrations of that. And then from that point, I was like, man, this is really socially restrictive. So although I was able to master that and on a highly constrained-- so we went from bodybuilding. We went to vegetarianism, then raw food, and then we went to, let's compete in an environment where I'm already handcuffed because of some of those choices.

[00:30:08] After that, I was like, okay, that's enough restriction for me. And then later on, I reengage in that process again as a 50-year-old, try running a marathon and doing a bodybuilding opposite. So setting a different goal that's really restrictive, and then within those constraints, many of the beliefs that people project on it are true to a point.

[00:30:36] Is it harder to get amino acids on a vegetarian diet? Yes. Is it suboptimal for maybe blood sugar regulation? Yeah, probably. Do you have insufficient amount of essential fatty acids? Yes. Okay, so let's take those constraints and optimize my diet based on those parameters. And that's where discovery happens under controlled constraints.

[00:30:59] And so I get excited about that. I can stay on something for years and accept maybe some of the suboptimal pieces so that I can make that breakthrough discovery. And I get really excited about that. If I don't have that, a bag of chips looks a lot more motivating than that.

[00:31:18] So socialized wise, I get a lot of joy out of feasting. I love eating a whole array of foods that people would say that are evil. And then I also enjoy highly restrictive fasting, 10-day water fast, constrained diets. So I'm a little bit more on the extreme side, and that's my nature. And so I understand that about myself, and I apply myself within that framework. And then Matt, you're completely different.

[00:31:50] Matt: Yeah, first of all, I'm a questioner, so I need to understand all the scientific nuances, the mechanisms, how it works. Once I do, then I'm motivated to do it. If I don't, I'm like, maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong. So that's one example. Some other examples are, I love novelty. I love new things. So Wade's able to go into a hyper restrictive diet, and he's an abstainer, so he's able to just not eat any cheat meals or whatever. And that works well for him because if he goes off, then he can continue and overeat days or weeks. For me--

[00:32:31] Wade: Years.

[00:32:32] Matt: So for me, every week, I need some dietary freedom. So what I've done is I do a cyclical ketogenic diet. I've been doing that since 16, 17. Of course it's evolved and there's a lot of nuances, but I like one day a week where I can go eat a burger or go eat sushi, go to a new restaurant. I'm a foodie.

[00:32:53] I love new food experiences, and I've been able to make that work. So again, just understanding yourself is critical. And there's a lot of different nutritional, psychological elements that we have in the end of that chapter. Then we get to the third level. So that's just the foundational stuff, which almost no one talks about.

[00:33:11] Then we get to goals, and there's five epic goals. So there's weight loss, which is essentially an entire weight loss book within the book. There is muscle building, which both Wade and I have been extremely successful adding 30, 40 pounds of lean body mass in our frames. Then there's athletic performance, cognitive performance, and then there's health, which really is health span, lifespan.

[00:33:35] So we have entire chapters devoted to all of these goals. Everybody should always have a goal. Goals create a dopamine loop. As soon as you have a goal now, as you move towards it, as you take action or accomplish things that get you closer, you're getting that dopamine response. And I think it's critical to always have a goal because we've both been in times in our lives where we didn't have goals and defaulted or drifted back towards a suboptimal life.

[00:34:10] And I learned that as a trainer. I rarely lost a client. And I think the main reason was, as we would get closer to their goal, I would create another goal for them saying, okay, we've almost accomplished a weight loss goal. Let's build lean muscle mass after that. So being able to even shift from one goal to another keeps people driven and motivated. We all need dopamine, again, a healthy dopamine to propel us to action.

[00:34:37] Luke: I love that piece about the goal too, because if you're into entrepreneurship and personal development, it's all about writing down your goals. And I've been aware of that, but recently, someone recommended to me-- my office is right down there, and I'll walk in there, and I'm just like, I don't know what to do.

[00:34:57] I know I have a bunch of shit to do. I don't know what to do. Or I'll do the thing that is easy, low-hanging fruit, not the big scary thing. The eat the frog thing. And he said, here's what you do, man. Every morning you get up, get your post-it note, the big whiteboard ones. Write the three to five most critical things that day and put it right in front of your desk.

[00:35:16] And I started doing it, and I'll be damned. I sit at my desk, and I'm about to go on Twitter and waste my life and give myself dopamine hits of the negative nature of all the doom and gloom in the world, the doom scrolling addiction. And I'll look over at that thing. And because it's sitting there, I will actually do those three to five things that require a much higher cognitive commitment.

[00:35:38] Or maybe there's an opportunity where I might face rejection because I haven't asked for someone or something like that. Those emails where I'm like, ah, awkward. I don't want to send this email if that's what's on my list or working on my book. You guys know the challenges, I'm sure, now, writing a massive book like that, the resistance that one can meet when you have big goals. So that's something that's really, really important.

[00:36:00] I like how you apply that to the way that you eat because I know if I don't have any dietary goals, I'm just going to cheat what I eat to the limit of starting to feel shitty and then scale it back. What can I get away with? I start getting on an ice cream kick, and then I'm like, oh, cool. I look like I'm three months pregnant. Fuck, what happened? Oh, I had no goals and no parameters other than just try to eat food that's not toxic to me.

[00:36:26] Matt: There's a great tactic. Wade, maybe talk about alarms because that's part of our game plan.

[00:36:30] Wade: Yeah. So I'm right with you. Left to my own devices, I'd be 500 pounds.

[00:36:36] Luke: Really?

[00:36:37] Wade: Oh yeah, I love eating, and I love training, and I'm an excessive intense type of person. And so what I've discovered in my bodybuilding journey is set weight. So in bodybuilding, first and foremost, they're the original biohackers. They're manipulating over two genetic tendencies, the increase of storing fat and having a suboptimal amount of muscle, in other words, more muscle than you require.

[00:37:10] So those are very strong biases, and they've developed all these strategies to successfully navigate. And virtually, every bodybuilder or fitness competitor will enter on stage. The worst competitor is probably better than the average person would ever even consider getting to at any point. And they follow, mostly if it fits your macros. That's one of the dietary strategies.

[00:37:32] But when you're going into a bodybuilding contest, you're actually getting below an ideal, healthy weight. You're in a performance diet. So there's a difference between looking good and actually being healthy. And in the bodybuilding world, what looks good or successful in that endeavor is generally not healthy. It's performance from a cosmetic perspective, and that's it.

[00:37:57] So to come out of that, you want to-- let's say-- we'll use an arbitrary number. 185 pounds is maybe my optimal healthy weight. I'm going to compete at maybe 170, 172. And then I'm going to drift back up as high as 195. And when I hit the 195 zone, an alarm bell goes off that says, I'm now getting outside of my range of optimal health. And it's only a few weeks to pull back as opposed to left without that mental vigilance.

[00:38:31] Next thing you know, I'm 210, 215, and then I've developed a pattern of behavior which is suboptimal. So creating and crafting an environment of success so that you can be successful on your diet, fits your social and psychological goals, fits your emotional stuff, there's a goal there to go for it.

[00:38:49] These create directional points that allows mental vigilance to say, am I moving towards my goal or away from my goal? And that reference point is really great because otherwise, we're going to default to overeating because that's a survival mechanism that's built into the machine. We're going to reduce the amount of exercise we do because that's built into the machine of preserving energy because it was a problem.

[00:39:12] And those two defaults will take you out of dietary success regardless of who you are, where you are, how old you are genetically. Everybody has to understand that model. And if you don't, you're going to be in the 97% of people who start a diet and regress back. So if you're one of those people listening, this is the good news. We've decoded why that happened to you. It's natural. It's normal. It's an evolutionary bias, and we show you how to use the same evolution against itself to be successful.

[00:39:44] Luke: Wow. That's cool. You reminded me of my recent favorite show called Alone. It's one of these survivor shows. The main goal of each person is to make it the longest time. And so they're always fighting the calorie gain versus the calorie deficit. It made me think of that because it's like the body wants maximum calories, fats, sugar, etc., but it also doesn't want to expend calories.

[00:40:14] But that's a really great way you frame that because I don't like working out. I hate gyms. I can't stand working out. I do it because I don't want to fall apart, and it makes me feel good, but I really don't enjoy it. So I'm a great example of someone who likes to eat dopamine-inducing foods like pizza and ice cream. They make me feel like shit, and then I feel guilty, so I don't do it for a while. And then I relapse.

[00:40:39] To get myself to exercise is very difficult because I don't have a goal, and also, I have the inertia of the evolution, as you described. I've never heard it stated that way. My body's going, no, definitely just sit around all day on your ass. Don't waste any calories. Don't burn energy. Just keep adding energy. And then you have a recipe for ill health, and being overweight, and all the problems that come with that. That's a really interesting way to look at it. It's like we're evolutionarily designed to be less than optimal.

[00:41:10] Matt: Yeah, speaking of genetics, let's go to the fourth tier of the pyramid, which is nutrigenomics. Wade shared a couple of his examples, and this is where, no matter what diet you're on, you can take it to the next level. So again, been ketogenic for over 30 years now, and I just found out relatively recently that I have bad genetics for saturated fats, and I've been eating a lot of ribeyes, and a lot of fatty steaks, and my lipid profile isn't great.

[00:41:40] The one thing I've struggled to optimize, and now I know why. So what I've done, I'm reducing my saturated fat intake. I'm eating leaner cuts, eating more seafood, and I'm increasing my monosaturated fat. So more olive oil, more macadamia nuts. So that's an example of a nuance that you can, again, optimize.

[00:42:01] Another one is selenium. I've got a deficiency in selenium because-- and I've been eating a Brazil nut every day, sometimes two. It's not enough for me. Why? Because again, I have a genetic variant that causes me to struggle with selenium. So now I have to up my selenium intake, which long-term, could have a massive impact on my health. So that's a critical part of the entire puzzle. And no matter what diet you're on, these nuances can definitely make a massive, massive impact.

[00:42:34] Luke:  We talked earlier about the emotional component, underlying issues and trauma that cause someone to overeat or crave foods that don't serve them. What about the stress and full-on orthorexia or borderline orthorexia that comes along with being so controlling about your diet?

[00:42:58] I think many of us go through these phases where we start to get educated and listen to people like you guys and other people on the show and think, oh man, lectins are bad for you, and gluten is bad for you, and the oxalates in the kale smoothie. Oops. No wonder I have kidney stones.

[00:43:13] And then all of a sudden, your road starts to grow narrow, and it becomes a stressor. That limbic system fight-or-flight thing is activated because you're threatened by everything around you. I think many of us have a difficult time finding the balance of being relaxed about the way we eat.

[00:43:28] Matt: I'm showing my sock, which is a Reese's sock, because one of the things we're talking about in the book is that there's no evil foods. If you spend a week on Instagram and you get sucked into a nutritional algorithm, you're going to be terrified of going to the grocery store and buying food.

[00:43:46] Wade: Yeah.

[00:43:46] Matt: We talked about that.

[00:43:47] Wade: Years ago, when I was a member of the raw food community, I remember going to an event, and this person came up to me with-- and at that time, I was considered a rockstar because I was a raw food bodybuilder. And so they were wheeling me out as the adversary to everybody that was attacking them, and this, frankly, a very unhealthy waif-like character came my way.

[00:44:14] And it was pretty obvious that this person was not well on any level, and they look at me with this glazed look in their eye, and they're like, what percentage of raw are you? And I knew at that moment, if I didn't say 100 percent raw, that a lightning bolt was probably going to strike me, or some group of people were going to come out and throw walnuts at me or something.

[00:44:41] And I became aware of the cult dynamics. And then I thought through the bodybuilding world, which is its own cult. And then I thought about the dietary stuff and the cult dynamics where people, even though they had dramatic evidence that what they were doing wasn't working, they would continue on that route because the controlled mechanisms, there was so much psychological, emotional juice, I'm controlling everything, that they were unwilling to actually look at objective information.

[00:45:16] Now, of course, back then, we didn't have the same amount of data. I'm more of an intuitive side, and Matt's always a data guy, and so we would battle on my observational stuff with myself, and he'd say, the data says this, or the data says that. And we started to realize that both things can be valid, depending on how you're able to leverage that. And also, you've got to expose your biases. We all have biases. I have biases. He has biases. You have biases.

[00:45:47] But we don't know what our bias is, even though maybe all our friends do. So trying to address that, and having these structures that Matt's referring to allows you to run that filter test. Am I just getting off on the restriction and hurting myself? Or am I actually following something that has a data point or an intuitive awareness?

[00:46:13] Matt: Just to go a little deeper, there is a nutritional dichotomy, which, on one side, there are no evil foods. The dose creates the effect. If I have a chocolate bar once a week, it's going to have zero impact on my long-term health. Or if I have a Coke Zero, if you have a pizza once in a while. It's just irrelevant. And there's a lot of strategies you can do to mitigate essentially all the negative effects, whether it's enzymes, for example, and we proved it in the lab that if you use kApex, you can break down seed oil.

[00:46:49] Luke: Really?

[00:46:50] Matt: So you can break down malondialdehyde into fatty acids. Now, if the seed oils have become part of your cells, that's a whole different story, but when you're eating them, you can break them down.

[00:47:01] Luke: That one of the enzyme blends that you guys make?

[00:47:05] Matt: It's a very rich lipase blend. It's designed to break down fats. So there's solutions for everything, but on the other side, we have a whole chapter, and it's actually one of the layers of the pyramid for food sensitivities and allergies. Obviously, people allergic to food avoid those completely because they can be very dangerous or deadly.

[00:47:25] And yes, there are some food sensitivities like nightshades, like lectins, like oxalates. But the thing that bothers us is it's way overblown. People use that to create fear because fear is a powerful marketing tool. Gets attention. They write books about it as if everybody should be worried about eating almonds. All you got to do is soak them, dehydrate them.

[00:47:52] If you eat a kale salad once in a while, the oxalates are not going to kill you because again, the dose creates the effect. Okay, you're eating three pounds of kale a day, every day, then yeah, maybe over time you'll have some problems. Same thing with lectins. Just soak the beans. These things are just overblown, and we're here to, again, invite the zealots and the fear mongers to drop that and adopt a more unified approach because that's really what we're all about.

[00:48:21] Wade: There's also another part of where you are in your journey. So oftentimes a person will be attracted to a diet because the restrictive nature of that philosophy addresses some of their physiological conditions. Once they overcome those physiological conditions, and gut biome is a great case right now, 12% of the emergency hospital visits are gastrointestinal-related problems.

[00:48:48] Luke: Really?

[00:48:48] Wade: Yeah, it's crazy. So there's a lot of people with digestive issues because they've been eating a vast array of foods that have been developed in the last 100 years that their body has no capability of managing, and they've accumulated over time and created an array of conditions that they now self-identify and get an identity around and have some medication to mitigate because there's a disease condition, etc.

[00:49:14] Well, of course, going on a restrictive diet of some sort that eliminate the agents that are causing the problem is a great case. And then maybe they start adding some other elements like enzymes or probiotics to start shifting their biome, or they go to a hormone optimization program, or they start looking at a hair analysis, or maybe they have suboptimal detoxification, so they get into a detoxification routine because that's what's right for them.

[00:49:41] Now their body, after maybe six months, a year, two years, they're dealing with a completely different capability. And now maybe they can start introducing foods that were previously causing problems. And so what we found is, if you apply the strategies in this book over time, you expand your options.

[00:50:01] You're not limited by a dietary paradigm. You can have socially-fun foods or culturally-integrated foods, not have the fear, not feel like you're the weirdo at the social occasion or the family occasion, and the freedom that a person experiences in that component.

[00:50:23] And Matt and I have gone through that entire journey of the restriction, the zealotry, the my way or the highway, the you're bad, you're evil, that sort of stuff, and we've come out of that, and we've laid down the tracks for people to identify where they are in that journey, what they can implement in that journey so that they have the ultimate level of freedom within any diet or within any conversation with someone of a different "dietary tribe."

[00:50:52] And that's exciting. And that's what we want everyone to experience. We shouldn't be arguing about diet. We should be sharing information with the same goal in mind, and that is that people can live a healthy-- they can be strong, and they can live long. And if we together on those values, then the rest of the things are just details.

[00:51:13] Luke: I like that, the moderate approach. I think that a lot of the time people are probably reacting to different foods, going to the lectins, and oxalates, and seed oils, and all the things. I think that people are probably reacting to the food because they have such a strong belief that they're going to react to it.

[00:51:32] You guys make that Gluten Guardian. By the way, highly, highly recommend. And I forgot to say the show notes. It's lukestorey.com/dietwars. So anything we talk about will be in the show description there, including links to the book and all those things. But your Gluten Guardian product from BiOptimizers, that's like my secret weapon when I'm going off the rails and I have to have pizza.

[00:51:55] Wade: Absolutely.

[00:51:56] Luke: I'll take six of them before, a few afterward, and I'm much better. For real, it works. I don't know what you did there, but it's very helpful. But then there are times where I don't have my Gluten Guardian, and my wife loves pizza, and so if she has it, I don't have the discipline to not eat it some of the time. Sometimes I'm strong. Sometimes I'm not. It's so weird. Sometimes I eat it, and I'm totally fine. And I'm just like, was it because I believed I was going to be totally fine, and I just let myself have that freedom and relaxed about it and wasn't as orthorexic.

[00:52:30] Matt: For a while, I thought A1 protein was evil. So again, there's two primary dairy proteins, A1, A2, because I would have A1 dairy and have an inflammatory response, so I thought it was evil. What I had was a leaky gut. And again, the A1 protein would go through my intestinal tract, go into my bloodstream, cause an inflammatory response. We created a product which, as far as sealing the gut, is incredible called Microbiome Breakthrough. I don't know if you've tried it.

[00:53:03] Luke: No. What's up? What's it about, man?

[00:53:04] Matt: It's a biofilm builder.

[00:53:05] Luke: Really?

[00:53:05] Matt: Yeah, yeah. So it's a powder. You can drink it. We have a vegetarian version, and a carnivore version, or a chocolate version. But when I started using that, I was able to eat dairy A1 protein and have no issues. So a lot of times, there's a lot of inflammatory responses that are created due to leaky gut So that might be the situation when you eat pizza, which is--

[00:53:29] Luke: It's like, to your point, as you start to heal and you become more resilient, you do have a little more leeway aside from just letting down your mental stress of the control freak energy. But also, I think you just do become more resilient. I've definitely noticed that over time, there would have been foods I was much more reactive to, and they don't seem to bother me anymore.

[00:53:49] I think it has a lot to do with just focusing a lot on gut healing, and you guys have been a huge help in that process. I have a massive one of those airtight jars of the MassZymes, these guys right here. I literally don't ever eat without a handful of these. I probably take more than you need, but--

[00:54:09] Matt: By the way, we've just released the 5.0.

[00:54:12] Luke: Oh, really?

[00:54:12] Matt: It's 30% stronger than that one you've got right there. And we just did a bunch of experiments. It turns protein to a pool of amino masses and peptides in 30 minutes. We tested other enzymes. There's nothing like it.

[00:54:25] Luke: That's funny because sometimes I'll put the MassZymes. I'll just empty the capsules in my smoothie, and then if I let it sit there too long and I come back, it's crazy acidic because it melted it all into pure amino acids or something. So I have a sweet spot of the timing because it starts to predigest the proteins and fats so fast that it doesn't taste as pleasant.

[00:54:49] Wade: And that's another discovery out of the bodybuilding world. So almost all of the top bodybuilders run into the same problem because protein consumption is an essential component in order for them to build sufficient amount of super physiological levels of amino acids. And they also have to be in a strategic calorie surplus for years and years, and this puts an extreme level of digestive distress.

[00:55:14] And what a lot of people don't know is many of the top professionals in the bodybuilding world end their careers because of dietary distress. The eating is so intense. Especially you get these guys, 250, 260, 300 pounds, and the amount of food they need to consume to sustain that level of muscle and recover from their workouts, it's a secret that that is now emerging amongst the top athletes in the bodybuilding world, is to use our MassZymes, P3-OM, and hydrochloric acid.

[00:55:48] That combo is the ultimate digestive stack so that they convert the protein. Because undigested proteins circling the blood is what causes a lot of the conditions or dis ease or discomfort that people experience because the body sees these undigested proteins as some invasion, and they start attacking it.

[00:56:10] And so the top athletes in that world are now leveraging our products, and I got into that from a similar perspective, only I was trying to optimize for not enough amino acids. In a plant-based diet, it's harder to get enough protein, especially 20 years ago, and there's no protein powders for plant-based people. And so I had to optimize only eating 85 grams of protein, where my competitors are eating 250, 300 grams. So I was able to get more amino acids with less protein, and then that's now caught fire in that industry, which is--

[00:56:41] Luke: So the trifecta is the MassZymes, HCl--

[00:56:45] Wade: Hydrochloric acid, and P3-OM. And so a couple of quick tests that people can test if you feel bloated and digestive discomfort, you can take a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice after a meal. And if you feel some of that bloating go away, you're probably deficient in enzymes.

[00:57:02] Or for hydrochloric acid, and pretty much everybody after 35 is low on hydrochloric acid. So what you can do on that is you take a four-ounce glass of water with a quarter teaspoon to a half teaspoon of baking soda, stir it all up, and then drink it down on an empty stomach. If you burp within five minutes, you have sufficient hydrochloric acid levels. If you don't, you probably don't.

[00:57:25] And then choosing the right probiotics. So P3-OM, there was what? Six different tests that they do at the microbiology lab, and it outperforms virtually everything on those key aspects of a protein-digesting bacteria, which is very unusual in the bacteria strains.

[00:57:43] Luke: I have a story for you guys about the P3-OM, this stuff right here for those watching. I remember one of you, when we did our last interview, said that in your research of developing that, that it had shown to very quickly eliminate food poisoning. Was that you that said that?

[00:58:03] Matt: Yeah, yeah. Kills E. coli.

[00:58:05] Luke: That's a pretty bold claim. So I always take it with me when I travel, and I give it to my wife anytime she's like, oh, my stomach's gurgling. I'm like, take a few of those. I just got back from Indiana. She's still there. And I went to the health food store. I was eating what I eat here. I don't know if I ate something or what happened, but I had this really weird experience.

[00:58:27] Also, I might've been shedded upon. That's another possibility, but some people understand that and some won't. Anyway, we get back to the hotel. It's 11:00 at night, and I start getting all these pains in my joint. My knuckles started hurting, and my knees, and then I got all feverish where I was like hot to the touch, but I was freezing, and it was like I had the flu, and it came on within 20 minutes.

[00:58:58] And I couldn't sleep. And it was like, holy shit, I just got an insta flu. And I remembered that I had the P3-OM. I thought, maybe if it was food poisoning or something-- so I took a handful of those, and fell asleep and woke up a couple of hours later in the middle of the night, and it was totally gone. So I don't know if it was that, but I have had many experiences where I've ate something off because I don't really look at dates on stuff.

[00:59:25] I don't know if it's a guy thing. My wife, every she eats, she looks at the dates. I'm like, who cares? It's close enough. She's like, no, it expired. But sometimes I'll get what I think is food poisoning, and this shit gets rid of it. It's crazy. I will not travel without it, especially to different countries that have different levels of sanitation and whatnot, eating street food and God knows what.

[00:59:47] Matt: Yeah, just to wrap up on the gut biome, which we've been talking about, which is one of the layers of the pyramid, your gut biome is extremely dynamic. It's literally morphing with every meal. Probiotics have about a 48-hour lifespan. So let's say you fast for three days. A lot of your colonies have died, or they've dried up.

[01:00:08] They can reanimate once they get refed. They go into a dormant state a lot of times, but a lot of them die. So even leaky gut is a very dynamic thing, meaning that right now your gut might be sealed, but maybe you eat the wrong foods or you fast for a while and now you've got leaky gut.

[01:00:29] And we've done well over a 1,000experiments in our lab. We have 20 full-time scientists, and our head of our lab, Monia, she has a PhD in bacteria and probiotics. We've done extensive testing, not just with our products, but we tested virtually every probiotic. And almost none of them create biofilm. So biofilm is what you want to seal your gut, a healthy biofilm.

[01:00:58] So that's what seals. So there's very few probiotics that colonize and, again, create that healthy biofilm, and Microbiome Breakthrough is phenomenal for that. And I've been doing a lot of fasting this year, a lot of five-day fast. And before I would start eating, and I would do all the classic recommendations, eat fruit, etc., and have some turbulence in the bathroom to adhere to.

[01:01:21] With Microbiome Breakthrough, zero, every single time, every single time. And the other day, was it a fasting thing? For whatever reason, I had a little bit of a diarrhea. And again, just drank one drink, and it was done. So now I feel like we've got the solution for diarrhea as well, which is a new thing. Yeah. So again, we've tested both of them, and P3-OM is phenomenal for killing gram negative bacteria. And then the Microbiome Breakthrough is phenomenal for killing what's called gram positive bacteria, which are harder to kill.

[01:02:06] Luke: Awesome.

[01:02:06] Matt: So they kill different sets.

[01:02:08] Luke: And you were saying that you just take these with food as part of a digestion protocol.

[01:02:14] Matt: Yes, we're just a [Inaudible], but it's one of only two probiotics we've tested that are proteolytic. So they actually act like MassZymes.

[01:02:22] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:02:22] Wade: And undigested proteins are the primary cause of dietary inflammation. Rancid fats would probably be the next one on the list. And getting your gut optimized is probably the biggest factor in opening up your dietary options. Now, of course, there are genetic components that you must be mindful of in the ultimate expression of that, but considering how many people have digestive problems is, what? One in three Americans on any given day is having a digestive distress.

[01:02:56] 25% of those are on permanent prescription medications. How many people are taking over the counters? So we feel that when we started to learn, we were classic nutritionists that just assumed-- we started out in our university training, was, hey, put food in, and it's automatically magically converted into energy units or building blocks, and the rest is eliminated.

[01:03:19] And there was no application, even at a lot of the university levels and high levels, to understand that the state of your digestive system is going to determine how much energy you get from your food or how much building blocks you have. And that tends to degradate over time in this world.

[01:03:39] We are in a highly technologically advanced world. We have a vast array of foods that are great for us, foods that aren't so great for us, and foods that are probably in take-with-caution zone. And so your digestive capacity is going to determine how much damage those Inflammatory foods or how robust your dietary choice can be.

[01:04:04] And like I said, we're two guys with what most people would consider complete dietary philosophies on the surface, but because we understand the nuances, there's actually no issues between our dietary strategies at all. And nobody's talking about this stuff. And so we decided let's put it all in a book. Let people pick what they want to do, but so they understand where to go, what to do, what questions to ask, how they leverage the right professionals or tests. It's all in there. You don't have to read the whole book. You can just read what's right for you right now.

[01:04:38] Luke: I noticed that, in cruising through it, it's not like a book you have to read start to finish. Thankfully, because it's massive. It really is a Bible.

[01:04:45] Matt: It's as if you choose your own adventure. Build your own adventure.

[01:04:47] Luke: Yeah. I just started thumbing through it. I was like, oh yeah, I read this paragraph and skip around. And it's, I think, designed in a way that makes that easy to do. I got a question for you guys. So for a long, long time, probably because I had a gluten sensitivity and ignored it or was unaware of it, I had heartburn for years. Part of the reasons why my old teeth rotted out was because I was always burping up acid and breathing up acidic exhaust.

[01:05:16] So a long time ago, I think before I met you guys, someone recommended I get on HCl. And I was like, but I'm burping up acid. Why would I take more acid? It's because you don't have enough acid. So I got on HCl. And then when I met you guys, got on your HCl. And I didn't really do anything different except start to take hydrochloric acid with my meals, and my heartburn went away and really never came back.

[01:05:41] And so then I just was like, I guess I don't need to take HCl anymore, so I stopped. I have some of your guys in my cabinet, and I see it, and I'm like, wow, I don't think I need it. So is my experience unique or universal with the heartburn issue, with indigestion?

[01:05:54] Matt: No, I've had some good friends go through that as well, where they were having some extreme heartburn situations and took HCl and didn't need it afterwards. Now, we still recommend usually taking one capsule with MassZymes with P3-OM because we find it just synergizes. We're all about synergy and maximum effectiveness. But Wade, talk about, why is it that not enough acid actually creates that acid reflux?

[01:06:24] Wade: Yeah, and we break this down to five stages of digestion. Basically, you release hydrochloric acid about 30 to 60 minutes after you consume food, and that has two functions. One, it disinfects the food for many bugs, parasites, bacteria, viruses, whatever. It's supposed to kill whatever could be with the food. And the other thing is, it starts to change the pH, which activates some enzymes and deactivates other enzymes during that process.

[01:06:55] We're the only species that eats food in a cooked state, and that destroys the enzyme. So often we have suboptimal enzymes at the food that we're consuming, and therefore can't break it down very well. The second thing is if we have insufficient levels of hydrochloric acid, then the food starts to ferment, creates a gas, pops the esophageal sphincter up, and whatever acid food mixture comes up, it starts to splash into the esophagus.

[01:07:22] People get heartburn or acid reflux, and the doctor or the television commercial with the pink liquid, oh, we're just going to coat that acid. Now you're going to create a bigger problem down the road because now you're creating a suboptimal place for the killing of these inflammatory agents like bacteria.

[01:07:43] So H. pylori can proliferate, and that is going to also contribute to hydrochloric acid problems. And so when people take HCl for an extended period of time, oftentimes it's sufficient enough to starve out and kill off the H. pylori. And then once that's regulated, their body now has sufficient hydrochloric acid levels.

[01:08:06] So some people will find they'll take it for a couple of months, or three months, or six months. And of course, there's the genetic component again. So some people are going to be able to resolve that issue in a very short period of time. Some people may be predisposed. There's other physiological conditions that can happen with a high amount of weight.

[01:08:25] You can be pushing up the stomach. That can pop that up as well. So there's a variety of physiological conditions that can contribute, but if they're applying the principles in this over time, you're going to eliminate probably a large portion of those and can get yourself back. And these just become tools that you use.

[01:08:43] Like you said, I'm in a digestive stress situation. I've eaten the wrong foods. I'm in the wrong environment. I'm in a suboptimal place. How do I mitigate myself and use intelligence and technology to bring myself into homeostasis and move on with my day? And again, it's going back to, we're here to expand your options as opposed to restrict them.

[01:09:03] Matt: That's a great segue into-- let's wrap up the pyramid. We've got two more levels. Supplements. And supplements should always be contextualized, personalized, based on your goals, your genetics, and really your blood work, your biomarkers. A lot of people take supplements that they might not need. For example, my vitamin D levels. I hyper optimized the absorption so much, that my vitamin D levels were off the charts. So like right now, I'm not taking any vitamin D. I'm trying to get them below 100. I was up to 150, which is high. 50 to 100 is the range. You take it with a lot of good fats.

[01:09:43] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:09:44] Matt: Yeah. And we're working on some powerful blends and products.

[01:09:48] Luke: Cool.

[01:09:49] Matt: Yeah.

[01:09:51] Luke: Hold that thought. Interesting thing I learned about vitamin D recently is that based on genetics that our absorption can be so dramatically different. I think that at some point I had tested and my vitamin D came back low, and I'm like, what? I live in Texas. I'm out in the sun naked multiple times a day. I don't know people that get any more sun than I do unless they live in Brazil or something. And I'm like, how is that possible? And I must have a snip or something that I don't absorb the vitamin D that's being produced.

[01:10:23] Wade: Well, Take the whole aspect of melanin production, which determines our skin tone. It blows me away that people are arguing about the amount of melanin in this whole race thing. It's crazy. But someone with northern genetics, like I have, a fair skin, very, very thin hair, I don't have that same components if I was born in, the West Indies or something.

[01:10:44] I can manufacture enough vitamin D in 15 minutes that my girlfriend who's Brazilian, she would need six to eight hours in the sun to get the same amount of vitamin D production that I have. So if you have darker skin and you're in a Northern climate, you need to be much more mindful. And the evidence suggests that bone density and vitamin D-related issues and deficiencies because the body has been adapted to a high sun environment.

[01:11:11] Similarly, if I'm fair skin and I like to be in sunny climates, I need to be mindful watching out for skin melanoma. So I don't have the best skin genetics, and I need to be conscientious of how I take care of my skin or hydrate or protect my skin in those environments. So I love being in the sun.

[01:11:29] It's not my genetic place that I'm supposed to be, but I enjoy it. And so I just take those lessons with a grain of salt. And I think that's what everybody needs to do. And humans have been successful more than any other species as far as where they can live, because we use intelligence in order to optimize for suboptimal environments. And that is the whole evolution of technology comes from that aspect.

[01:11:53] Luke: Awesome. All right. Back to your point--

[01:11:55] Matt: Yeah, go ahead.

[01:11:56] Luke: Level 2 of the pyramid, I think you were on.

[01:11:58] Matt: We're on level 8, actually.

[01:11:59] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:12:00] Matt: We're at the top of the curve.

[01:12:02] Luke: From the foundation to the pinnacle.

[01:12:04] Wade: Yes.

[01:12:04] Matt: And again, if your goal is muscle building, taking anabolic activators makes a lot of sense. If you're in a weight loss journey and you're in a calorie deprivation cycle, then you might have certain nutrient deficiencies. So you need to be mindful of, again, what your goals are, and then ideally get blood work. Look at your biomarkers, see where you're off, see where you're deficient.

[01:12:28] I just had a hair analysis, and I need more selenium. I need more potassium. So I'm adjusting my supplement cycle based on the data. And again, we have a whole chapter devoted to that, which we go through all the tasks people should do, how frequently they should do them.

[01:12:44] Luke: Oh, that's high value because that's really difficult to figure out. There's so many--

[01:12:48] Wade: it can be expensive. So you want the right test at the right time. So everybody or most people have some limited budget that they're applying to their health program. And so what we want to give you is the tools to strategically deploy your valuable dollars to the right test, to the right expert relative to your diet so that you're making the right decisions.

[01:13:11] And then, oh, based on this information, I'm going to benefit from this particular supplement. That doesn't mean that that supplement is good for everybody. And we're so committed to that philosophy that all of our products have a 365-day money back guarantee because maybe they didn't have the book beforehand, bought our supplement. It wasn't right for their diet. They bought a VegZymes when they should have been having kApex.

[01:13:37] Luke: I was wondering about that return policy because people that listen to the show, I'm always plugging the Magnesium Breakthrough. You guys are one of the loyal sponsors that's been with us for a long time. And sometimes in the copy that I'm reading, it'll say, money back guarantee 365 days a year. And I'm like, how do they stay in business? That's a long time. Someone could just have that shit sitting in their pantry and then be like, oh, I want my 30 bucks back or whatever.

[01:14:00] Wade: People are really generally appreciative when you solve their problem. And so there's four promises that come with every product that we serve. The product does what it says it does, that they know how to take it, and use it for its maximum benefit, that the product arrives in a reasonable amount of time.

[01:14:19] And if any of those things didn't occur in that process, then there's a promise that we're going to resolve that. So we have live agents to handle your questions, those questions. If they haven't answered, they get filtered directly to myself or to Matt. And we've built up massive databases to solve pretty much every situation that can come in.

[01:14:38] If there's something that happened in delivery or something they didn't understand, we have ways we've addressed that with the supplemental guide and how to take things. If you're a scientific side, we got the research journal. If you're in a dietary philosophy, we got the cookbooks that come with this.

[01:14:52] So this has been an internal policy for literally years and years. But now we've been able to take that and condense it into actionable strategic tactics that people can deploy. And if something they took from us didn't work, of course I want to give their money back. I don't deserve that.

[01:15:13] I want them to redeploy that to maybe someone else in the industry that can solve their problem. And we have, I think, the lowest refund rate of any nutritional supplement company I have ever seen. We've got Six Sigma customer service. You talk to real people, not machines, not robots, not AI. And we love those questions because sometimes your customers can tell you the thing that you never thought of.

[01:15:40] And many of the unique products that we've developed is because we found from our customers that there was something that wasn't being solved by the marketplace. And our team said, hey, let's deploy the resources to solve that problem. And we've been doing that for a long time. And that's why we have labs, and testing facilities, and PhDs, and all kinds of-- Matt's a mad scientist experimenter, and he has a whole team of people who just run experiments all the time based on what the market is telling us and what they need solved.

[01:16:13] Luke: Yeah. Now that I think about it, thinking about that return policy, because I work with, I don't know, 130 brands or something, just anything that I take that I think is useful for me, I share it with people on the show, and on social media, and stuff. And every once in a while, it doesn't happen often, thankfully, but every once in a while, someone will email me because they went through a link on my website and they're like, what the hell is going on with this company?

[01:16:38] They won't get back to me, and I want my thing. There's a problem with customer service, or fulfillment, or something. And I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry that's happening. And then I try to send it to someone higher up in the company. Rare, but it does happen, especially with newer companies that are scrappy and just startups and stuff like that in the supplement space.

[01:16:57] But as you were describing your process and the system you guys have, I can't remember ever one time anyone bitching about by BiOptimizers, so congratulations. Thank you for having integrity and taking care of your customers because as a consumer, I can't stand that shit.

[01:17:14] When you'd try to email and they never get back to you or you're on some bot chat, it is excruciating. I'm like, give me a human being that can help me. I gave you my money. We're in a contract now. The contract doesn't end when you send me my shit and you have my money because I still have your product, and I'm having a problem with it.

[01:17:33] Therefore, there's a breach in integrity every once in a while. Thankfully not often, but when it is, it personally pisses me off big time, especially if it's a brand I'm telling people about, then it's like my reputation is on the line because Luke is who I found out about this from, and now I can't get my refund, or the shipping got screwed up, or whatever it is. So I appreciate that. You were talking about targeted supplementation, Matt.

[01:17:56] Matt: Yeah.

[01:17:58] Luke: And the critical role that lab work can play in that. So we might spend a little money on lab work, but then we're going to get rid of the 25 supplements we're spending money on every month that we don't actually need. They might be great for other people and their unique circumstances, but we don't need that vitamin D because guess what? We just tested, and our levels are good. So maybe wrap that particular layer of the pyramid up.

[01:18:20] Matt: No, I think that's the main point. There's a few supplements you can take all the time. I think MassZymes is one of them.

[01:18:29] Luke: Every day, baby.

[01:18:30] Matt: Every day, every meal.

[01:18:31] Luke: Unless you want to fart a lot. At least for me, I need the enzymes.

[01:18:37] Matt: But even popular supplements like vitamins and certain minerals, you need to be mindful of your blood levels. So I think most people, especially, are deficient in minerals, magnesium, potassium. Most people are over consuming calcium because there's so many foods that are fortified with calcium. So there's definitely a lot of unoptimized mineral profiles out there. And the blood work reveals it or the hair analysis.

[01:19:06] Luke: Yeah. Minerals, man, can get really wacky. For a while, I discovered copper as this really widespread deficiency, and many people are unaware of it. And there's a lot of misinformation about copper toxicity that got into the thought sphere of wellness. So everyone got scared of copper, but I started taking it and then learned, yeah, if you take a shit load of copper, it'll dysregulate your zinc. Minerals, especially, are really tricky without testing.

[01:19:32] Matt: They need a 10 to 1, 15 to 1 ratio. We have a whole chapter devoted to micronutrients.

[01:19:37] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:19:38] Matt: Because, again, calories matter, macronutrients matter, and micronutrients matter. And I think a lot of people in the nutrition world get hyper focused or myopic with one of those levels. So we're trying to present the whole picture.

[01:19:53] Luke: Awesome. Hey, before I forget you talked about your uptake of selenium, so you're eating more Brazil nuts. I interviewed a guy named Mark Squibb from LiveO2. They make this contrast oxygen hypoxic training machine. Great technology, really interesting guy. And I don't think they sold it at the time, but someone in his team was like, oh, we make this just for our VIP friends, this selenium that is an oil extract from Brazil nuts.

[01:20:24] And it's two drops or however many micrograms. Super, super high dose with a very tiny amount. And that shit, I have some, and I think they sell it now on the LiveO2 site, and it's by far the best selenium that I've ever found because it's just literally a concentrate of the oil.

[01:20:41] Matt: I'll check that out afterwards, but yeah, let's wrap up the pyramid.

[01:20:44] Luke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:20:45] Matt: The last layer, which I think when we talk about something that's sustainable for life, is lifestyle. Now, here's the process we're recommending. One is you can create your goal. Reach what we call final form. Final form means you've got the level of lean muscle mass that you want and need.

[01:21:05] Again, you don't need to look like a bodybuilder, but most people, from a health perspective, would benefit greatly from adding an extra 10 or 20 pounds of lean body mass. We know it absorbs glucose. We know as we get older, it has a massive influence on our longevity. So again, people need a certain amount of lean muscle mass to be optimized.

[01:21:28] Then here's your body fat. Again, we're not advocating everybody gets ripped and shredded, and puts on a bikini or spandex, and goes on stage. Get to a low, healthy, reasonable body fat level. And you just want to maintain that. So the goal is again, build your lean body mass, lower your body fat, and then from there, that's what we call final form.

[01:21:52] The great news is, it's mentally about 80% easier to maintain something than it is to achieve it. And even physiologically, it only takes about a third-- here's some encouraging news for you, somebody who doesn't like to work out-- of the weight resistance volume to maintain lean body mass than it takes to build it. So once you've built it with three, 20, 30-minute full body weight lifting workouts, you can maintain your lean body mass. But we talk about the lifestyle piece of the pyramid.

[01:22:28] Wade: Yeah, lifestyle is deciding where you want to go at a given period of your life. And your lifestyle is going to vary through the different stages of life. So we have aesthetics, performance, and health as the three attractor fields into the industry. You want to look better for aesthetics, and then you got a family or a career, and you're trying to just optimize for performance because you got kids or a busy schedule.

[01:22:54] So maybe your dietary and exercise strategy is going to change, but ultimately, people end up in the bottom half of the pyramid of the foundational aspect, which is health. How do I maintain my health over the duration of my life? Because that's going to determine your bio span. In other words, your healthy aging profile. So can we extend your lifespan? I believe that we can, but we certainly know that we can optimize the life that you have if you practice these principles.

[01:23:25] So when you look at the stages of your life is, can I sustain this in this phase of my life? And making those decisions because we're not just our diet. We're a dynamic person with a dynamic amount of responsibilities in our lives to our family, to the people we're cohabitating with or in relationship with, to the performance of our duties in life, or maybe as a senior who wants to be vibrant and attentive to grandchildren.

[01:23:59] Peter Attia does a great job in his recent book talking about that last 10 to 15 years. And he draws the charts between your kids and then your grandkids. And that five to 10 years, being in a great space as you age, the impact that can happen on that second generation, or maybe even your great grandkids could be significant.

[01:24:24] And so there's 10,000 generations before us that successfully navigated all of the wars, and famine, and bugs, and infections-- every situation you can imagine. Every single person is the product of 10,000 generations of success. So the decisions that you make today in the lifestyle that you choose can have implications for 10,000 generations to come.

[01:24:55] And that's a motivating reason for me to continue to dive into putting my whole life into this so that we can share the nuances for people that only have a little bit of time and a little bit of effort or a little bit of resources because they've got all these other commitments. So that's what the book's about, finding the right lifestyle for you right now, finding the right diet for you right now, and then optimizing wherever you are on that scale. So whether you're an elite athlete, a super centurion. One of my friends, she's 105 years old, lives in our neighborhood.

[01:25:28] Luke: Really?

[01:25:28] Wade: Yeah, it's amazing.

[01:25:30] Luke: Cool.

[01:25:30] Wade: And so when you're around someone like that, you also realize there's a huge social component to living your best life. And we don't want to forget that in a diet. We don't want to forget that as we enjoy the tribe that we fall under as a dietary person. And to really embrace the true value of mastering your diet is that your lifestyle expands with choices, reduces friction, reduces the anxiety, helps you live your best life with all the best benefits to keep you out of dire situations of medications, and surgeries, and early aging. It seems to me that's a win for everybody, and we put it all together in this book so people can enjoy it.

[01:26:14] Luke: You're speaking my language with the lifestyle. It's no accident that this podcast is called the Life Stylist. It's about meeting cats like you, getting bits of data, information, putting that together in a composite set of habits and choices that become your life. And I know, probably a certain number of people that listen to this show are like, oh my God, it sounds like so much work. Dude, to be happy and healthy, I'd say, spiritually, yeah, it's a lot of work to get your head together in that realm. There's a lot of sacrifice in the surrender, as you guys know, being spiritual aspirants.

[01:26:50] But in terms of building a healthy lifestyle, I feel like my lifestyle is totally normal and easy, and there's time for me to do-- I don't have kids yet, which is part of it. All my friends with kids are like, just wait. Probably true. But my meditation time, took a sauna this morning, jumped in the ice bath, made my smoothies, took some nootopia nootropics. Apex, by the way, is my favorite of that for general hanging out purposes.

[01:27:17] What's the ultimate focus, though? That shit is incredible for focus, just as a side note. But I have my routines. And it's like, if you were just an average person and you came in and followed me around all day with a video camera, you'd be like, this guy's insane. Who has time to do all this shit, but the time is created by the time I'm not spending doing other things that maybe I would have done years ago or that someone-- I'm not sitting around watching TV for four hours a night or whatever.

[01:27:47] Nothing wrong with watching TV. I watch my Alone show and some good binges, but it's never difficult to find time to take a shower, and brush your teeth, and use the bathroom in the morning. It's just like, that's your morning routine. I think with lifestyle, you can also just incrementally, over time, add things that assist you in your vitality and well-being, and then they just become integrated into your day-to-day life, and it's not like this extra thing you have to do. Even working out.

[01:28:19] I always joke that, oh, I hate working out. I still do it. It's part of my routine. It's just not something I'm like, yay, I'm going to go hit the X3 Bar, and then do a bunch of pull ups or whatever I'm doing. It's like, ugh, I got to really kick myself in the ass to do it, but it is still part of my, I don't know, three times a week routine. And if I don't do it, I feel like I'm not meeting that goal. My goal is just to maintain some level of fitness so I don't fall apart.

[01:28:45] Matt: Just to wrap up on the lifestyle, food is one of life's great joys, going to a new place. I went to Europe for three weeks with my parents, and my brothers, and my wife, baby girl, and it's not like restricting myself, but not eating, again, incredibly-- Italian food, and Spanish food, and French food was on the menu.

[01:29:05] However, I was still able to lose weight. So one of the things I'm most proud of in the last two years is, every trip I've taken to my parents place or on vacation, I've come back at the same body weight or less, and I've been eating whatever I wanted, not however much I wanted. That's a big, big distinction.

[01:29:28] And there's a whole chapter around all the tactics that you can do around the holidays. And one of the most powerful strategies is to look at your calories from a weekly perspective instead of a daily perspective. So if you look at calories as a budget, let's say your calorie allotment is 3,000 a day, you've got 21,000 calories a week that you can eat without gaining body fat. So if one day you're at 6,000 calories because, again, you ate a pizza, which a 12-inch pizza can be about 3,000 calories.

[01:30:00] Luke: Really? Oh my God.

[01:30:02] Matt: The easiest food to over consume calories is a pizza, I would say.

[01:30:06] Luke: So good.

[01:30:07] Matt: It's so good. Yeah. So the point is that you can either fast earlier in the day. You can fast tomorrow. You could increase exercise. You can try to build lean muscle mass. There's a lot of tactics you can do to mitigate the overconsumption of calories when doing it because one of Wade and I's favorite things is once in a while just go and feast, eat four or 5,000 calories in one meal. It just satisfies some psychological aspect.

[01:30:36] Wade: Our team dinners are outrageous, and we encourage outrageous, and a lot of people are shocked. I can't believe you guys are eating all this food, and this variety, and this mass, but what they don't realize, later in the week, I might've deployed a 48-hour fast. And that just becomes regimented inside of that structure. So often people will get a snapshot and don't get the whole picture, but when you're armed with these tactics, you can go into any situation and know, I have the capability to navigate it.

[01:31:07] I don't have to compromise my social, cultural commitments. I can serve my psychology and my emotions. I can have the ultimate lifestyle, feel great, feel confident, and blow my friends minds because I'm able to do things that seem counterintuitive. Matt and I, if we didn't do this, we'd probably be either dead or 300 pounds with a variety of conditions and on a bunch of medication.

[01:31:31] So we don't have the best genetics. We're not genetic freaks. We're not predisposed to being healthy, or being vital, or any of those issues. We got into this because our passion project was, we knew that we struggled with these things. This isn't easy stuff for us, and we've dedicated our lives to solving these riddles, and we want to share them in one concise book.

[01:31:56] Like I said, it was 20 years of arguments, 60 plus collective years of our own investigations and experimentations, and three years to compress all of that into actionable dynamics that we're going to just go in, see the issue that they're dealing with, dive right into it, list their tactics, figure out what they need to do, and then move on.

[01:32:20] And then of course, there's going to be some people that want to get into the 875 scientific journals, which comes with it. They want to get into the nutritional supplement guide, which we expand to all different kinds of companies, not just for us or anything like that. Or they want to dive into some new creations. They want to have raw food desserts as an experiment from their carnivore diet. Why not? Could happen.

[01:32:41] Matt: Yeah. So not only did we create the book. We created what's called The Ultimate Nutrition System.

[01:32:46] Luke: I was going to ask you about that.

[01:32:47] Matt: So that includes the book, and we spent a week in the Hollywood Hills. We filmed the entire book. So we spent an entire week with a professional film crew, spent a lot of money, filmed the entire thing. The editing is incredible. So it's visually interesting. And we guide you through the entire book. So if you don't like reading, you can watch that.

[01:33:07] You also get, as Wade mentioned, there's 875 references. We created a summary of every scientific reference that's in the book. We put that in a PDF. You get that. You get three different cookbooks, a paleo cookbook, a plant-based cookbook, and a carnivore cookbook. So again, we cover every diet style. You get From Sick to Superhuman, which is our other book.

[01:33:32] And the original draft of this book was about twice the size, which I know sounds crazy, but it was. And we took 215 pages out of it and created a supplement book. And it's not just our supplements. It's every category of supplement categorized by goals. You get that as well. So you get all of that in the ultimatenutritionsystem.com

[01:33:53] Luke: Dude, badass. All right, I'm glad you mentioned that because that was in my notes. The link for that, you guys, is ultimatenutritionsystem.com/luke. And if you use the code LUKE10, you save 10%. And then I talk about BiOptimizers all the time, but I'll throw that in there too. Go to BiOptimizers.com/luke. The code there is also LUKE10. And we'll put all those links in the main show notes at lukestorey.com/dietwars.

[01:34:18] I got to ask you guys. You have all these tactics and strategies in here. Have you guys come up with a silver bullet hack for nighttime sugar cravings? This is my nemesis. I can eat a massive dinner. I'm totally full. I ate a huge steak, a bunch of potatoes, whatever. Hour goes by, and I will kill someone to get some sugar.

[01:34:40] Matt: I'm wired. It's in a similar way.

[01:34:43] Luke: It's so annoying. And my wife, she has self-control around sugar, so she can have it in the house and not abuse it. But if it's here, literally, I'm like, don't do it. Don't eat the cookies. Don't eat the cookies, Luke. Don't do it. Don't do it. You're going to get fat. And there I am with my face and the cookie dough, is specifically my kryptonite.

[01:35:01] Matt: Here's what I do, and Wade and I learned this as trainers. Psychologically, it's extremely difficult to eliminate things out of your life. Once they're a habit, once you're used to, let's say eating cookies every night--

[01:35:16] Luke: And when they're 15feetaway.

[01:35:17] Matt: It's difficult psychology to just get rid of it completely, right?

[01:35:20] Luke: Yeah.

[01:35:21] Matt: We've both done that with alcohol.

[01:35:22] Luke: Yeah. And the difference is, if I had to drive down to Whole Foods to get some ice cream, I can resist, but if I just have to walk 15 feet to the freezer, no chance.

[01:35:32] Matt: One of the things we recommend, and again, we've been doing this for a long time with our clients and now in the book, is instead of eliminating, upgrade. Wade and I like chips, and one of our dietary tactics has been Quest chips. A bag of Quest chips, they're on 150, 160 calories, 19 grams of protein.

[01:35:55] You eat two of those. You're satiated. It tastes great. They've got a whole array of flavors, and they're awesome. On the sweet side, again, Quest has these -- it's almost like a candy bar type. It's not their original style. It's a newer one. They're phenomenal. So they give me that chocolate bar experience.

[01:36:16] Of course, on the ice cream side, you got Halo Top, which is a pretty good low-calorie option. So for me, I think it's better to, again, upgrade to lower calorie, higher protein, lower sugar options than trying to fight yourself and getting rid of cookies altogether. Wade.

[01:36:35] Wade: Yeah. And for me, I don't have that self-control if it's in the house. So environment is stronger than will, is something I learned from Yogananda a long time ago. And I believe that's true. You want to create a successful environment. And then I have my once a week. So usually it's UFC night, and I'll do a fasting either the day before or the day after.

[01:36:58] And I go out on the Saturday afternoon before the fight. I got some friends coming over because I like to eat socially as well. I go buy a ridiculous amount of snacks and all the things that you're not supposed to have. High quality. I go to Erewhon and spend just stupid amounts of money, gratefully.

[01:37:21] Luke: I remember that. Yeah.

[01:37:23] Wade: And I have this big spread. And we go hog wild, me and my friends. And when they walk out the door, whatever's left, we hand it to them. If there's anything left, oftentimes there's not, but if there is, it goes out the door with people because I know I'm not eating tomorrow.

[01:37:43] And psychologically, I'm not thinking of, I'm never going to eat this again. I'm just not going to eat this tomorrow. And then I know the next week or two weeks later, whenever the next event is, okay, that's going to be the next event, and so now I'm looking forward to those social experiences. And then to deal with yourself specifically, oftentimes there's something off, maybe digestively, psychologically, or emotionally, that will be triggering. And so by journaling when those things happen, you can oftentimes see elements.

[01:38:22] For example, for me, it could be an emotional aspect. Something triggered me emotionally. I want to go be by myself, turn on Game of Thrones, watch a couple of episodes, and go into the zombie eating. Stress on the screen, and next thing you know, I've destroyed a giant bag of popcorn, I had four kombuchas, and now I'm going for the SmartSweets, the little peach rings, and all that. And then after that point, I'm now-- and they're like, oh well, the heck with it. Let's go on an ice cream rage. Because there's also a point too, that you can start beating yourself up when you make those mistakes.

[01:39:04] And if you have a habit, maybe there's early trauma. This is where you can identify that through journaling and then use one of the psychological techniques like EFT to tap that craving out of the system, or a simple one for cravings is, sit down, lie on your back. Don't call it a craving. Just let the sensation, and stay with the sensation.

[01:39:26] It was something I learned from Dr. Hawkins. And it'll dissipate after about 15 minutes. You'll realize it's not a local response. So there's often these triggers, and then you do that two or three times, and all of a sudden those cravings don't come back anymore. So unlocking the nervous system trip wires that are causing you to overeat, or to indulge, or to be in a hyper restrictive lifestyle that's not good for your health, these things can be uncorked with the chapters on emotional and psychological techniques, because both of us have had to deal with them. And we've had hundreds and hundreds of clients that have been successful in overcoming serious, serious problems in those areas.

[01:40:11] Luke: Yeah.

[01:40:11] Matt: I will recommend a silver bullet for you, which is--

[01:40:15] Luke: Okay.

[01:40:15] Matt: Two or three capsules of Blood Sugar Breakthrough. I don't know if you've been experimenting with that.

[01:40:17] Luke: No, I don't have that one.

[01:40:19] Matt: Yeah, it's one of our products.

[01:40:19] Luke: You guys have a bunch of new shit I don't have. What's going on?

[01:40:22] Matt: There's a lot of new stuff. Yeah, there's a lot of new stuff. But yeah, that one's actually been out for a couple of years.

[01:40:26] Luke: What's in that one? They got bitter melon or something that?

[01:40:30] Matt: It's an entire stack. It's got bitter melons, got dihydroberberine. It's got a bunch of other incredible blood sugar optimizers. And the synergy is incredible. So my mother-in-law lost both feet due to diabetes. So we take care of her.

[01:40:47] Luke: Wow.

[01:40:48] Matt: So before Blood Sugar Breakthrough, even with insulin, we had to call the hospital and the ambulance because her blood sugar was around 600, which is insane. Yeah. Because the insulin wasn't working. She had lost essentially all insulin sensitivity. It just wasn't working, even at higher doses. Since she's been on Blood Sugar Breakthrough, we had to reduce her dose because her blood sugar was getting too low because she's resensitized. And it's incredible an product. You know Crosby?

[01:41:24] Luke: Yeah.

[01:41:24] Matt: He's a super fan of that product. He takes it before a pump. So try that. You can do--

[01:41:29] Luke: Cool.

[01:41:30] Matt: Two or three capsules

[01:41:30] Luke: That's what I was looking for. Not so much philosophy.

[01:41:33] Wade: Right.

[01:41:33] Matt: Yeah, yeah.

[01:41:34] Luke: Give me the pill.

[01:41:35] Wade: My dad, he's a doctor. He's 77. He had a major heart surgery a few years ago, and his doctor was concerned about his blood sugar was going up, and he never had blood sugar issues. And so I hung out with him for a few days and watched his diet, and I said, okay, sub out your cereal in the morning, and take bacon and eggs because he likes bacon and eggs. So I said, dad, eat bacon and eggs, drop the cereal, take two Blood Sugar Breakthroughs before each of your meals.

[01:42:06] And in a matter of a couple of months, he just called me the other day and said, hey, I got my blood sugar results back, and it's perfectly normal. They were going to put him on a medication and he said, let me talk to my son. He might have a strategy for me. I addressed the strategy, and Blood Sugar Breakthrough was the game changer with that one dietary technique, because sometimes when you have a craving, for example, if I drink a large amount of yerba mate, 12 hours later, I'll have a sugar craving.

[01:42:35] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[01:42:35] Wade: So that's unique to me. And I don't know why that is, but it's something that I've noticed. So if I have yerba mate in the morning, I make sure that eight, nine hours afterwards, I'm having a really high protein meal. And that mitigates that because for some reason, there's a drop. I don't know what the specifics are.

[01:42:56] I'm sure there's some physiologist that could figure that out. I like yerba mate. I want to drink yerba mate. I don't want to have the food craving at night, so I mitigate using that strategy. And I would only get that through journaling. And so journaling, which is a strategy that bodybuilders have used for years and a lot of people, by tracking how you feel, how do I feel after a meal-- how did I wake up in the morning, am I groggy, am I tired, am I energized, did I sleep well the night before, did I have any emotional triggers that-- and you'll start to see patterns over a two-week period.

[01:43:29] And you're like, oh, I do this, and I see this, and I get this, and all of a sudden, things that you never imagined are triggering were the inflammatory components, and you can address those on those levels. And so I think journaling is a really good strategy to pick off those things. Nobody knows your health better than you.

[01:43:49] Luke: Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. I have one last question for you guys. Now, one of the reasons I think over the years I've grown bored about talking about diets, which is why I was excited to talk to you guys about the anti-diet, the individual diet for you, where you are in your life right now-- but I think that I've interviewed so many brilliant people around issues like blue light exposure and EMF.

[01:44:16] I'm such an EMF safety advocate. I find it frustrating sometimes because I think that the levels of EMF that we experience in the world are probably causing people as much harm, in some cases, as eating a crappy diet. And it's this elephant in the room, and it keeps getting worse and more prevalent with all the 5Gs and all that stuff happening, especially in metropolitan areas where it's just insane.

[01:44:41] Downtown Austin's insane. They have those 5G towers all over the streets. It's just crazy. But it's one of those things that requires more discipline to fix, I think, in some ways than just like, oh, I'm going paleo, or vegan, or whatever it is. What are your perspectives on the junk light and blue light toxicity, throwing off circadian rhythm, neurotransmitters, hormones, etc., and the impact of the insane levels of EMF that we have? Is that something you guys pay attention to all personally or have done any research on?

[01:45:14] Matt: The light is a big one for me. And again, I think there's a lot of genetic variances. I'm one of these people. I think I'm sensitive to light. If the lights are on, I just don't get tired at night. I can stay up till 3:00, 4:00 in the morning. So I need to manage light. And I do think Huberman's suggestions of getting light in the eyes in the morning is a game changer. On the EMF side, and again, this is just me, I sleep in a Faraday cage.

[01:45:45] Luke: Yeah, me too. Our whole bedroom is a Faraday cage.

[01:45:47] Matt: But yeah, but you know what, it had zero impact on my sleep. And I am in a penthouse, and I would probably see 10 Wi-Fis. So I think some people are just more susceptible or sensitive to either light or EMF. So this, again, we try to understand.

[01:46:03] Luke: Yeah. That's interesting about the Faraday cage because we built this house and moved in here. I was so excited to finally own a house because I could do all my crazy EMF shit. So I had Brian Hoyer come over, and we shielded the bedrooms, and everything's like iron clad. You go in there with an EMF meter, it's just green lights. No beeps. But I've been tracking my sleep for years, and my sleep hasn't changed as a result of mitigating the EMF, which is really interesting.

[01:46:29] Matt: Proximity is a big deal. In Panama, everything's built out of cement. So even though I'm seeing the Wi-Fi signal, the strength of that signal is really, really weak. So if you're literally sleeping right next to the Wi-Fi, then that would probably impact you. I don't wear the Oura Ring anymore. It's because I track my sleep for 10 years, lost 40 pounds, and it dropped off, and I just didn't bother replacing it. But when that was on, which again, directly against my skin, and I would forget to turn on airplane mode, it seemed, definitely, to impact my sleep.

[01:47:03] Wade: I live in Venice Beach, and I definitely notice, on a nervous system level, the impact of EMFs because I'm really in a high EMF area as opposed to when I go to Sedona and I'm in a low EMF area, and sleep quality, energy, vitality, the desire for stimulants-- so I find that in a high EMF area, I tend to consume more stimulants. And when I'm in a low EMF area, I tend to consume less.

[01:47:36] And again, oftentimes the choices that we're making, whether we know it or not, are trying to optimize out of a suboptimal situation. So a person who's tired on the road because they got low blood sugar, taking a coffee and a quick sugary drink gives them a mitigation strategy.

[01:47:54] So you're already mitigating, whether you know it or not, a suboptimal situation. What we're suggesting is a set of strategies and tactics that you can deploy. So EMF, yeah. And there's a whole science around aquaporins and how the flow of electrical energy or nutrients goes through that.

[01:48:16] And you can use biohacking technology to offset that. You can have EMF reducers and all sorts of assortment devices. And at the end of the day, you got to see how you feel. Everybody should be waking up on most days feeling energized, feeling positive about the world, and at a level where they look in the mirror and they say, hey, I feel good about how I look. And if you've got those three things going for you, the rest of this stuff becomes easy.

[01:48:46] Luke: You guys didn't mention it, but I will because I don't sell magnesium. Taking a lot of magnesium is a great way to mitigate EMF too because of the--

[01:48:55] Matt: The EMF opens up calcium channels.

[01:48:56] Luke: Yeah. And also, chronic EMF exposure tanks your magnesium too. So magnesium, vitamin C, and hydrogen, those are the three supplements I take, especially when I'm flying and in really high EMF environments. And I will take one statement back. I said my sleep scores didn't improve from being in the Faraday cage. I was already in a pretty low EMF environment back in LA.

[01:49:21] I was in Laurel Canyon. But before that, people are probably sick of hearing this story, but I was radiation poisoned, legit, from living unknowingly under two cell towers for three years. I was a complete train wreck. And I had insomnia there like I've never had in my life, and chronic, migraines, was always getting flus and colds.

[01:49:41] My immune system was trashed. So I've been directly, 100%, injured by chronic cell tower exposure. And to your point of the inverse square law, I was really close to them. So my sleep was horrific then. And once I moved out of there, it slowly started to improve. So I think my baseline was already pretty decent before I went to these extreme measures.

[01:50:04] But I was hoping, after I did all this work, I was like, oh man, can't wait to see my sleep scores go up. And it's like, ah, not really. It didn't make a huge impact being in here versus in a hilly area in LA. So anyway, I wanted to make sure to mention the blue light and EMF thing because I see people get so twisted up about the food choices, and I'm like, hello, you're sleeping next to a Wi-Fi router.

[01:50:27] And it's one of those things where you can get orthorexic and paranoid about the EMF either, which I've done, and that's not healthy either. So it's just taking incremental steps to do what we can. I have FLFE on the house, and Quantum Upgrade, and all kinds of different energetic things to help balance it, and it all helps.

[01:50:46] Fellas, I want to thank you so much. I want to remind everyone to go to ultimatenutritionsystem.com/luke. Use your code LUKE10 there. Get 10% off the book, and get involved in all the stuff you guys are up to, that is a company in this book project, which sounds like an insane amount of work. So congratulations on the accomplishment of the book and everything you have to go with it. And thank you for bringing a fresh perspective to the world of diet wars. Much appreciated, man.

[01:51:16] Matt: Great to be here. Thank you.

[01:51:17] Wade: Thank you.

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