The Diary of a CEOThe Top 7 Belly Fat Burning Hacks For 2024 That Are PROVEN To Work!
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
145 min read · 28,594 words- 0:00 – 1:08
Intro
- SBSteven Bartlett
Here's the most important question. People ask me this question all the time. They say, "Steve, what is your favorite ever episode on the Diary of a CEO podcast?" And I think the more important question is actually, what is your favorite episode on the Diary of a CEO podcast of all time? And so, I went out to try and answer that question. What is your favorite episode? What is your favorite moment on this podcast of all time? And using a data scientist and a big team of analysts, we've found the most replayed moments of all the hundreds of episodes we've produced this year to show to you today. These are the moments that you replayed and shared more than any other moment on this podcast. Theoretically, this should be the most valuable Diary of a CEO episode you ever listen to, because it's a compilation of the most valuable moments that we've ever had on this show in 2023. (instrumental music) The
- 1:08 – 7:22
Gaining more weight when we age & how to keep it off
- SBSteven Bartlett
seventh most replayed moment is my conversation with Giles Yeo, where he takes on some of the biggest myths about health, weight, obesity, and he answers the question, do we have to get fatter as we age? Is it genetic? What are the easy ways to manage our weight? After I read it in your book about us gaining more and more weight as we age, I Googled it, and the Healthcare Research and Quality Agency said that we naturally tend to gain weight as we age to the tune of one to two pounds per year, according to their review. And that's from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which I found quite startling.
- GYDr. Giles Yeo
Yeah, but, but completely accurate. So the numbers, so what, what the numbers that we have is... Yeah, I think that's right, actually. So between 20 and 50 years old, those 30 years intervening, the average person, average, will gain about 15 kilos in weight, which is 32 point... Yes, two pounds a year. One to two pounds a year. 15 kilos in weight is gained over 30 years on average. Some gain very little, others gain a hell of a lot more. We look at ourselves in the mirror. I look at myself in the mirror. Um, but it's true.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I don't want to be that guy.
- GYDr. Giles Yeo
(laughs) Mate, I don't know how much choice you have. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
What can I do to, to, to try and stay... 'cause for me, it- it's not really about the weight thing or how you look. It's more about, like, I, I, um... I don't know how to say this, but there was this big set of stairs the other day, a really, really long set of stairs leading down to this lake. I was in Indonesia a couple of months ago. Um, and I, I remember thinking about those stairs and thinking, "God, if I wasn't, you know, athletic and strong, and didn't have good knees and things like that, there's no way I'd be able to get down this long, winding, hand-carved set of Indonesian stairs so that I could go on this boat trip that I was gonna go on." And I just thought about how it was a weird thing. I know this is kind of a strange story to tell, but it crossed my mind. I got to the bottom of the stairs, and I turned to the person I was with and was literally like, "You know, that's why I've got to stay in shape as- for as long as I can, because I want to do these boat trips, and I want to go on this little rafting thing, but I won't even be able to access it unless I can go down, up and down those stairs, like 200 meters of stairs down this cliff." Um, so that's what I care about. I care about being active and strong and fit for as long as I possibly can. And I... From what you said about gravity and weight, um, being overweight is going to inhibit my chances of being able to do those stairs.
- GYDr. Giles Yeo
So, so there are, I think there are two elements there. First of all, there is doing the things that we want to do. Okay? Like that, because, y- y- y- you're exactly right. These are the things which I can still do that, I can still walk up a mountain or down a mountain because I'm still fit enough to do that, and I want to stay as fit as long as I can to do that. And weight will inhibit that, undoubtedly. But then there's a second element to actually consider. Now, that's healthy. Look, w- n- none of us are gonna live longer. We... Hopefully... And anyway, if we left, lived longer but was unhealthy, would you want to live longer? So you want to live longer, but healthier for longer. Okay? And undoubtedly, the thing that is closest related to health when you age is not your total weight. There's a role to play there. The amount of muscle you have. It is your muscle mass as you age, independent of how much fat you have, okay, that will determine how healthy you are as you age. So as... So now the moment... Now, I'm talking about going into the 60s, into the 70s, rather than when one is able to go down a 200-meter set of steps. Okay? So now, as you get older, the most crucial bit of information is to maintain resistance training. Not lifting, that's not what I'm talking about. Sitting on a wall, getting up and down a chair, 'cause that, the amount of muscle mass you have, w- really, really, really marks the level of health that, that you're gonna get. And then the, the science is startling. It is so, so, so related, um, independent of, independent of weight, you know, fr- from, fr- from, there. So muscle mass is the most important for healthy aging the moment you get 60, 70 plus.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Interesting. Okay. So I'll keep, I'll keep doing resistance training.
- GYDr. Giles Yeo
Correct. Always keep resistance training.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And lifting weights as long as I can.
- GYDr. Giles Yeo
Lifting weights as long as you can. At some point, you won't be able to lift weights, just because... (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Well, I don't know. Don't w- don't write me off. Don't write me off, Giles.
- GYDr. Giles Yeo
(laughs) The hubris of youth.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- GYDr. Giles Yeo
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
That's the naivety of youth, yeah. You just assume you'll always be able to do what you can do now. I, I... Yeah, it's something that I think a lot about, and I think a lot of people will watch this podcast because probably, especially this time of year, we're in January, they'll probably be trying to find ways that they can cut fat. They want to be a bit skinnier. You said y- I think you said half a stone you want to lose. I'm in the same place. W- I probably think most people want to lose a- a half a stone or something. What is the way that you would suggest to do that? The simple way, you know? Not the like, fucking complicated, go buy this guy's course and do three million sit-ups, whatever. The simple advice you would give someone that's e- home- hoping to create sort of sustainable but-
- GYDr. Giles Yeo
... weight loss. So the first is the amount of protein you eat, and you need to try and focus on trying to keep to about 16% of the energy in your day, okay, from protein, 16%. And there's a sweet spot, so if you eat too much and you're not lifting, you're stressing your kidneys because your kidneys have to get rid of the nitrogen from the protein, okay? So 16% is a sweet spot, and it doesn't mean steaks only. It can mean beans, tofu, any kind of protein from, from anywhere, 16%. Second is fiber. We need to eat as much fiber as physically possible, okay? 30 grams we want to aim for, although we're looking at the moment on average in this country, we're probably only eating 15 grams. We need to double the amount of fiber we actually eat. Third, we need to limit the amount of added sugars into our diet. Added sugars, m- meaning sugars not tied up in fiber, powdered stuff, uh, uh, um, uh, maple syrup, agave nectar, all those are added sugars you put in. Keep it to 5% or less of the, of the energy content in your day, and those are the three numbers that, that, that I want you to think about. So 16% of protein, 30 grams of fiber, 5% or less of added sugars. Apply that to whatever you want, what, keto, um, whatever you want to do, u- u- uh, apply that, and I think that will be a sustainable, healthy way to
- 7:22 – 19:08
The best weight loss diets
- GYDr. Giles Yeo
eat.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The sixth most replayed moment is a conversation I had with Dr. Mindy Pelz who talks about the belly fat burning diet. Nutrition is a huge thing at this time of year, and so she lays out exactly how to eat and behave in order to reduce belly fat and to improve your overall health. You told me about the first two styles of fasting. The first one was intermittent fasting, which is 12 to 16 hours, which is good for weight loss, brain fog, that kind of thing. The second is autography.
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
Autophagy.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What did I say? (laughs)
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
A- a- autography, but I like it. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
No, I didn't. I said autophagy. I said autophagy.
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
Works for me.
- SBSteven Bartlett
We can play that back. I definitely said autophagy.
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
(laughs) .
- SBSteven Bartlett
And if I didn't, we'll fix it with AI. Um, autophagy fasting, which is 17 to 72 hours, good for balancing sex hormones and preventing illness-
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... probably.
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Number three, we haven't spoken about gut reset fast.
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's that?
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah, so that's based off, uh, a study that came out of MIT that showed 24 hours without food and your intestinal stem cells inside your gut actually start to reboot themselves. Now, a stem cell is a cell that can go to anywhere in the body and repair itself. But at 24 hours, you get a plethora of them in your gut, and in the gut, we've got a damaged microbiome from everything that we've just been talking about. So what I discovered in this 24-hour fast is I could take women that have been on birth control pill for years, um, w- people that have been on multiple rounds of antibiotics, people who had been eating horrible food, and I could actually put them through a 24-hour fast once a week, once every couple of weeks. And these stem cells would come in there, and they would start to repair. And so now if I teach, uh, that person how to eat right, their food is actually starting to build a better microbiome in the gut. So that 24-hour fast became this go-to in my clinic where I could take all these gut challenges, and I could start to unwind them just because I knew the body had this capability of making these intestinal stem cells. And it was crazy. Like, we got people off supplements. We got people that were, didn't, weren't making serotonin, which affects moods, comes from the gut, all of a sudden started to become happier. People who hadn't had bowel movements in, like, three days, all of a sudden we started to put in these, this gut reset, and it was like a miracle. It was incredible.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Number four, fat burner fast.
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
So the fat burner fast is probably my favorite for those people who want to lose weight. The research was done that 36 hours without food followed by 12 hours of eating and then another 30... They actually did it over a 30-day period, but we've been using it in our community, just dosing it in, that at 36 hours, what happens is that's enough time where the blood sugars come, come down, where all of a sudden the body, it's so smart, it goes, "Okay, blood sugar's not common. We've been in this fasted state. We've triggered autophagy. We've brought inflammation down. We've made you ketones. We're trying to go find food, but this extra weight, it's not serving you. You, 'cause remember, you got to go find food." So it drops weight, and it's the most beautiful way to get s- a person to unstick any kind of weight loss resistance. But most importantly, you know where it, it dropped the most amount of weight from? Where does everybody want to lose weight?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Belly.
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
Yep. So it is the b- I should probably should have called it the fat burning, belly fat burning.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, the belly fat.
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah, that would have banged. Yeah. (laughs)
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
But yeah, and so that's what they showed, is that actually a 36-hour fast started to unstick weight loss, and it was started with weight around the belly.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Compelling.
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Number five, the dopamine reset fast.
- MPDr. Mindy Pelz
Yeah. So number five, um, I found some research showing that when people go without food for 48 hours, the whole dopamine system will be rebooted. So what's important to know about the dopamine system is it is our molecule of happiness. It is the thing that... It's actually a motivation molecule, and it's a neurotransmitter that, uh, allows thoughts, happy thoughts to go across from neuron to neuron. And so what happens, and I'm sure you've talked about this on your podcast, that we're so dopamine saturated right now.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- 19:08 – 31:24
The relationship between sleep & weight gain
- SBSteven Bartlett
most replayed moment is a moment from my conversation with Matthew Walker, who is the world's number one expert on the subject of sleep. He explains the importance of sleep on our overall health, on our weight, and everything in between. But most importantly of all, he gives us a roadmap for how to sleep better. And I know so many of you are struggling, so I'm not surprised that this is one of the most replayed moments of the Diary of a CEO of 2023. Had a lot of health experts on this podcast recently, but none of them have really talked to me about the role that sleep or sleep deprivation plays in weight. Is there a relationship?
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
It's probably one of the most well-defined relationships that we know in all of sleep science, and it is at least a three-part story. So the first emerging evidence came in terms of, um, hormones. So there are what we call appetite regulating hormones, and the two principle ones of concern here are something called leptin and ghrelin. Now, leptin, when it's released, will signal to your brain that you're satisfied with your food, you are satiated, and you are no longer hungry. Ghrelin does the opposite. When ghrelin is released, it says, "No, you're not satisfied with your food. You are not full. You still want to eat more. You are still hungry." And some of the first studies, they started to, uh, just limit people, restrict people's sleep to six hours or five hours or four hours, and what they found was that, um, there was... Firstly, that signal leptin, that says, "No, you're s- satisfied with your food, you don't want to eat any more, you're full," that signal of fullness, satiation, was decreased by 18%. If that wasn't bad enough, ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, that leapt up by 28%. Overall hunger levels rose by about, uh, 26%. So firstly, you are... It's almost like double jeopardy, that you are getting punished twice for the same crime of not sleeping enough. Once by losing the signal of, "I'm full, I- I don't want to eat any more," and once again for the, "No, I'm much more hungry, and I'm just going to overeat," which is ghrelin. So what that produces is a profile of increased eating. So on average, under-slept individuals started to eat, in those studies, about 300 to 400 extra calories at each si- at each sitting, by way of insufficient sleep. Then what they discovered is that it's not just w- that you want to eat more, it's what it is that you have a craving for when you are under-slept. And this is the problem. What they found is that when you are under-slept, you eat more of everything, but you especially eat more of these heavy hitting, stodgy carbohydrates, bread, pasta, pizza. The- the next thing that you started to eat, have a preference for, was simple sugary foods, sweets and chocolate. And then finally, you started to crave very salty food. And high sodium food intake will increase your blood pressure. So that was the first of the- the three mechanisms. Then we did a study where we said, "Perhaps it's not just the circulating hormones in the body. The brain is the ultimate arbiter of your food decisions. So what's going on in the brain?" So we took a group of perfectly healthy individuals, and we put them through the experiment twice, once when they'd had a full eight hours of sleep, and once when we deprived them of sleep. And then the next day, we placed them inside an MRI scanner, and we showed them images of lots of different foods that ranged from being sort of, you know, very healthy to being very unhealthy in sort of ice cream and, you know, uh, chocolate and pizza and things, to leafy salads and nuts and greens and vegetables, and we asked them to rate how much they wanted that food for each item. Now, we did something a bit dis- sort of dastardly. To make it more ecologically correct so that they weren't just saying, "Okay, they probably think I should probably say that's healthy," we said, "We're gonna randomly select one of these images, these food images that you see, and after you get out the brain scanner, we're gonna give you that food and we're going to politely ask you to eat it all." So it made it a bit more realistic so their choices were more, you know, as much as that we could. So what we found is that when they were sleep-deprived, the deep hedonic centers, uh, the emotional centers of the brain, w- these desire centers, these reward centers, um, they ramped up in their activity and response to these highly desirable, highly unhealthy foods. So these more basic sort of, you know, guttural parts of the brain, as it were, um, these reward centers, were lighting up much more strongly when you were sleep-deprived. Worse still, the impulse control regions in the front of the brain, what we call the prefrontal cortex, they were shut down. They were taken offline.So as a consequence, you lost your impulse control and that's why you start to then say, you know, when I'm sleep deprived at the food, sort of, buffet, "I'm not, I'm not gonna do salad. I'm just gonna... That pizza looks awful good, or that pasta with the cream. I'm just gonna go into that, all go." So, so you're... It's what we call a pattern in terms of brain activity, uh, in neuroscience, of hedonic eating, that your brain goes into this hedonic desire profile. So now we understood it's not just hormones in the body, it's also changes in the brain. Then came the finding that there's another chemical in the body that's responsible and this comes on to cannabis. (laughs) When people, um, uh, uh, when people... When people that you may know have smoked, uh, cannabis, they'll often say, "I get viciously hungry. I get the munchies, I get really hungry." That's no coincidence because cannabis will stimulate appetite. Now we all have naturally occurring cannabis compounds in our brain and our bodies. They are called endocannabinoids. Endo meaning comes from inside us. Um, whereas the cannabis that comes externally when you sort of smoke it or, um, take edibles. So, th- endocannabinoids do many things for the brain and the body, but one of the things that they do is control your appetite and your hunger. And what we found is that when you... Sleep-deprived individuals, these naturally occurring endocannabinoids rocketed up by over 20%, cranking up people's appetite.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
And so these three ways lead you to start packing on... You know, when insufficient sleep is occurring, when sleep gets short, your waistline typically starts to expand and we now understand the reasons. If that wasn't bad enough-
- SBSteven Bartlett
It is bad enough.
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
... the final... Yeah, no, yeah, can you just stop me-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
... because I honestly, I've really... Uh, the, the last thing that we discovered is that... Let's say that you're trying to be really careful and you're trying to diet and you're trying to lose weight. If you're not getting sufficient sleep, then 60% of all of the weight that you lose will come from lean muscle mass-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh God, no.
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
... and not fat.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Not the muscle.
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
I know, exactly. So in other words, when you are dieting, but you are under-slept, you lose what you want to keep, which is muscle, and you keep what you want to lose, which is fat. So again, it's-
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm sold.
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
... not an ideal situation.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sleep is important. I get it.
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm sold. How do I... My question is, what are the things that in the modern society are standing in the way of sleep? We've touched on some of them loosely, but some of the, like, big, obvious things. The things that you would suggest doing, very actionable things we could do straightaway to improve our chances of having that healthy, um, deep sleep that we need to be, um, optimal in every regard of our health and performance.
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
There's probably, I think, five standard tips, what we call sort of sleep hygiene that you can do, and then I'll come on to maybe s- just some unconventional tips, uh, that we've sort of touched on. And we've spoken about many of these. The first thing I would recommend people to do, and this is why when some people say, "Oh, what about this new sleep supplement?" Or, you know, it's, it's 40 quid for this bottle of the sleep, new sleep natural medication, so I'm gonna give it a try. I would say try these tried-and-true things first before you spend your money on supplements. The first thing is regularity. Go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time, no matter whether it's the weekday or the weekend. Your brain expects regularity. It thrives best under conditions of regularity. When you give it regularity, you can improve the quantity and the quality of your sleep. The second thing is get some darkness at night. As I said, we don't get enough darkness in the modern world. And so the trick I would offer, uh, and I don't use it, I don't like the word hack, but the sort of suggestion would be in the last hour before bed, try this experiment, for everyone listening, for the next week. Dim down half of the lights or switch off half of the lights or even a qu- uh, three quarters of the lights in your home in the last hour before bed.
- SBSteven Bartlett
All of the lights in every room?
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
In all of the rooms. You know, switch off almost all of the light. Now, y- I'm not suggesting be unsafe and walk around in the darkness in the last hour (laughs) . That's not what I'm saying. Just dim down, you know, switch off half of the lights. You will be surprised at how sleepy that darkness will make you feel, and it's also an incredible behavioral trigger to signal to your brain that it is time for sleep, that darkness is around me. That's the second tip is darkness. The third ti- tip is temperature. Most people sleep in an ambient bedroom temperature that is too high, and you need to aim for a bedroom temperature of about 18, 18 and a half degrees Celsius, around about 65 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. If I'm, uh, probably butchering the, the mathematics there on that, but, um, you need to get cool. Now you can wear thick socks, you can have a hot water bottle. That's fine, but the ambient needs to be cold because you need to drop your core body temperature and your brain temperature by about one degree Celsius to fall asleep and stay asleep, and it's the reason that you will always find it easier to fall asleep in a room that's too cold than too hot. So make your bedroom cold, make it dark, like a cave. The, the fourth question would be s- what we've... Or fourth suggestion would be walk it out, and we've spoken about this. The 30-minute rule, you know, get up, do something different or meditate. You know, don't lie in bed awake for too long. Then the final two things we've spoken about... Well, we've spoken about caffeine.We haven't spoken about alcohol, but let me just say as the k- kinda headline of it, alcohol is not a sleep aid. Many people use it as a sleep aid. It is not your friend. Alcohol, again, is a sedative, so it knocks you out. The second is that it fragments your sleep. So you wake up, your sleep is littered with all of these small awakenings, and most of them you don't remember, 'cause they're too brief, but it makes for miserable, lousy quality sleep. And the final thing is that it, alcohol is very good at blocking your REM sleep, or your dream sleep, which we know is critical for many other functions as well. So alcohol's not your friend. That's the sort of, the final tip. Again, you know, just e- every, if you're with friends, have a glass of red wine. Just know, okay, my sleep's not going to be great that night, and-
- SBSteven Bartlett
No, thank you, Matt. Nice try. (laughs)
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
Yeah. Okay. That's right. And exactly-
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm joking.
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
You know, I'm not... Yeah, I'm, uh-
- SBSteven Bartlett
I'm joking. Of course.
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
I, uh, whatever you... It's just, you know, l- live life too.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Of course, yeah.
- MWDr. Matthew Walker
So don't disagree about saying that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
The fourth most
- 31:24 – 37:32
How to have & maintain a healthy brain
- SBSteven Bartlett
replayed moment is a moment from my conversation with the world-leading neuroscientist, the man who has scanned more brains than anybody else, Dr. Daniel Amen, who is a favorite on The Diary of a CEO, and he tells us very, very clearly how to grow a healthier brain. I can change my brain.
- DADr. Daniel Amen
It's the most exciting lesson that I've learned. You're not stuck. I'm not stuck with the brain I had. You're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I can prove it. In fact, every day, what I've come to believe, you're making your brain better, or you're making it worse-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Let's start there.
- DADr. Daniel Amen
... by what you're doing.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What things make the brain worse? What are the common things that most of us do without thinking that make the brain worse?
- DADr. Daniel Amen
When my daughter Chloe was in second grade, I went to her classroom and I wrote 20 things on the board, and I went, "Separate them for me, good for your brain, bad for your brain." Seven-year-olds. They got 19 out of 20 right. So most people know. (laughs) The only thing they got wrong was orange juice. They put it in the healthy category-
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- DADr. Daniel Amen
... when, in fact, when is it rational to unwrap fruit sugar from its fiber source? Because it turns toxic in your body. So I'm not a fan of fruit juice. I'm a fan of fruit, not fruit juice.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What's bad about sugar for the brain?
- DADr. Daniel Amen
It's pro-inflammatory.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Which, w- what does that mean?
- DADr. Daniel Amen
It makes you diabetic.
- SBSteven Bartlett
But I mean it, as it relates to the brain, why is, like, orange juice or the ice cream bad for my brain?
- DADr. Daniel Amen
Because it's ultimately gonna give you high blood sugar levels-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DADr. Daniel Amen
... which erode your blood vessels, and you're gonna have lower blood flow to your brain. That, that's a bad thing. I mean, there's so many things about it. So it's addictive, it's pro-inflammatory, it makes it more likely you're gonna have diabetes and obesity. So 72% of Americans are overweight, 42% are obese. I've published three studies on 35,000 people. As your weight goes up, the actual physical size and function of your brain goes down. That should scare the fat off anyone. I used to be chubby, but when I (laughs) figured out that connection, I'm like, "Oh, no. I am..." (laughs) It was that that gave me the motivation to drop about 25 pounds. And so sugar is the gateway drug to diabetes and obesity, and so not to mention inflammation, which is the cause of depression and dementia. So you wanna avoid things that cause low blood flow, caffeine, nicotine.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Caffeine?
- DADr. Daniel Amen
Caffeine constricts blood flow to the brain.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And what does that do to my brain?
- DADr. Daniel Amen
Constr- well, it constricts blood flow, so you're gonna get less blood flow. And remember, I showed you that progression with age. No, you don't want that. You wanna do things that increase blood flow to your brain, so exercise, ginkgo, s- it's one of the supplements I'm gonna give you. Eat foods like, um, beets, oregano, rosemary, cinnamon. They increase blood flow. While we're on blood flow, 40% of 40-year-olds have erectile dysfunction. 70% of 70-year-olds have erectile dysfunction. What that means, if you have blood flow problems anywhere, it means they're everywhere. And so, I'm like, "No." (laughs) And it means either you're too sedentary, you're overweight, you're smoking, or having too much caffeine, or using marijuana, 'cause marijuana lowers blood flow to the brain. And so just in that one of the 11, it's exercise, ginkgo, and for you, not for everybody, but for you, hyperbaric oxygen, those three things will make a big difference in blood flow.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Ginkgo?
- DADr. Daniel Amen
Ginkgo.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What is that?
- DADr. Daniel Amen
It's a supplement.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What does it do?
- DADr. Daniel Amen
Uh, increases blood flow.
- SBSteven Bartlett
To the brain?
- DADr. Daniel Amen
The prettiest brains I've ever seen take ginkgo. There's actually a spec study, uh, they gave, uh, people 120 milligrams of ginkgo twice a day, significant improvement in blood flow to the brain. And so in one of the supplements I'm gonna give you, we have ginkgo. I'd, I've taken it every day for the last 20 years at least. And then, this is where the US government got an F for the pandemic...... loneliness accelerates dementia and brain problems. And so, when they isolated us, a whole significant increase in brain problems. So get connected to other people. (clicks tongue) The I in BRIGHT MINDS is inflammation. So what increases inflammation? Low omega-3 fatty acid levels. And we are deficient, 93% of the population is deficient in omega-3 fatty acids, 93%. So, all of us should be either eating more fish or taking an omega-3 supplement like fish oil. Gum disease. Like, who knew? Like, I wasn't really that good at taking care of my gums until I started reading the studies. You have gum disease, you have inflammation, you're more likely to get depressed and have dementia.
- 37:32 – 47:04
Free tools to become "super human" & "strip fat off your body"
- DADr. Daniel Amen
- SBSteven Bartlett
The third most replayed moment is a moment from my conversation with Gary Brecka, where he lays out how you can become a superhuman, strip the fat off your body and get yourself healthy with free, easy, simple exercises that will cost you nothing at all. When I heard the story about Dana White, and I saw he'd gone from, respectfully, being a man that had a little bit of weight-
- DSDarshan Shah
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... to, to having this, these six-pack abs on Instagram. Of course, the six-pack isn't the, the outcome. It's, as you've said, it's the stuff going on inside him-
- DSDarshan Shah
Right.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... that's really the transformation. But what can someone who's just heard that at home, where do they start with getting, extending their life by triple and getting the...
- DSDarshan Shah
So, you know, he also started something called the SuperHuman Protocol. And SuperHuman Protocol is using magnetism, oxygen, and light, right? So, the only things that we really get from Mother Nature, the m- the, the big benefit we get from Mother Nature is we get magnetism from the earth, we get oxygen from the air, we get light from the sun. The truth is, most of us are not contacting the surface of the earth that much anymore. So he bought $150,000 worth of equipment, a PEMF mat, an oxygen, what's called a HyperMax oxygen to do exercise with oxygen therapy, and red light therapy bed. And I had him use that equipment every single day, seven days a week. But if your listeners wanna do it for free, you can take off your shoes and contact the surface of the earth, and I'm talking about bare feet on soil, dirt, grass, sand. Because earthing and grounding is a very real thing. We actually discharge into the earth. We actually, human beings build up a charge. Do you know that pH, the acid-alkaline scale, pH stands for potential hydrogen? It's a charge. It's a complete fallacy that you can get alkaline by drinking alkaline water. That's the biggest marketing myth ever sold (laughs) to the public. Um, but you can get alkaline by contacting the surface of the earth. So if you don't have $150 grand, which I don't expect anybody listening to this podcast has $150 grand, but he did. I said, "You need a mag- you need a PEMF mat so that you can be alkaline. You need to spend 10 minutes a day breathing, um, 95% O₂ under mild exercise, and you need to lay in a red light therapy bed." So, in the absence of the SuperHuman Protocol, you can become superhuman by contacting the earth and by learning to do breath work.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Let's talk about breath work.
- DSDarshan Shah
I spend eight minutes every day doing a very specific series of breath work. People do not realize the power of something that is so accessible, so free, and so easy to do. Right? They, they want things to be more complicated, but it's not. And when I said the presence of oxygen is the absence of disease, it's absolutely true. Remember that every elevated emotional state that a human being can experience actually has, in its molecular structure, oxygen is a component of that emotion. So if you look at the difference between passion, elation, joy, arousal, libido, and anger, for example, it's usually only one neurotransmitter and the presence of oxygen. The reason why no human being has ever woken up laughing is because you don't have the oxidative state to experience laughter right out of deep sleep. But can you wake up angry? Yes. Because anger doesn't require oxygen. So every morning, contact the surface of the earth and then spend eight minutes doing, I do a Wim Hof style of breath work. I give credit where credit's due. He's the father of breath work, as far as I'm concerned. So I do three rounds of 30 deep breaths. (inhales deeply) Like, obnoxiously deep breaths.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales deeply)
- DSDarshan Shah
And I start by trying to take my belly button and pull my belly button out towards the wall. Imagine there's a string pulling your belly button towards the wall. And then you, m- you fill from the lobes of the lung to the apex of the lung. And then you exhale and just relax. (exhales deeply)
- SBSteven Bartlett
(inhales and exhales deeply)
- DSDarshan Shah
God knows what they think we're doing out there. (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- DSDarshan Shah
Right outside this podcast, they're like, "Uh, a bunch of freako- ... I knew it was a cult."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- DSDarshan Shah
Um. (laughs) "I knew, I knew he was a cult leader."
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- DSDarshan Shah
But, um, so you do three rounds of 30 breaths. On the 30th breath, you exhale and you hold. Allow the carbohydrate rep- receptor to reset. When you don't feel you can hold anymore, you take a deep breath in. (inhales deeply) You hold again, and then you let it out slow. (exhales deeply) And you start again. I would suggest that you start with three rounds of five breaths, then work to 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30. If you get lightheaded, this is a good sign that the oxygen tension is changing in your brain. If your fingers and toes get tingly, this is a good sign that you're changing the oxygen tension. If you feel some kind of heat, uh, temperature change in your neck, these are all great signs. You will get to the point where you can actually hold your breath for two or three minutes, sometimes four minutes, between rounds of breath work. Um, and then the last thing is to expose yourself to natural sunlight. First thing in the morning, the first 45 minutes of the day, God gives us a very, very special type of light, it's called first light. There's no UVA, there's no UVB rays in this light. Um, so that it's not the damaging rays from the sun. It still generates vitamin D3, it has a positive effect on cortisol, on vitamin D3. First light is the best way to reset your circadian rhythm. So by contacting the surface of the earth, doing breath work, and getting first light, you can get to the same place that Dana White did with $150 grand in equipment.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about oxygen masks? 'Cause I, I'll be honest, when I read, when I read, um, about the Dana story, I went on Amazon soon after, and I was like, "I'm just gonna buy an oxygen canister."
- DSDarshan Shah
(laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
Good idea, bad idea?
- DSDarshan Shah
Um, so what you want to do is, um, you know, you get an oxygen concentrator, which takes 21% oxygen from... which is what-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- DSDarshan Shah
... the concentration at sea level, it turns it into 95% O2, and it fills this bag.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Right.
- DSDarshan Shah
And it can refill this bag over and over and over again, okay? I use one called the HyperMax. You, you can see it on my Instagram. And, um, you turn... you plug it in, you turn it on, it fills this bag, and then you go in, you put an oxygen mask on, and you exercise for 10 minutes, only 10 minutes. Cycle for three minutes, s- uh, sprint for 30 seconds, cycle for three minutes, sprint for 30 seconds, cycle three minutes, sprint 30 seconds, and you're done. And what this does is it raises something called the partial pressure of the, the storage of oxygen in your blood. The only two time, two time Nobel Laureate prize winner in, in medicine, Dr. Otto Warburg, won both of his Nobel Prizes for his work in exercise with oxygen therapy. You want to be a superhuman, do mild exercise every day while breathing 95% O2. It's important that you're exercising. And then after that, you move into a red light therapy bed, photobiomodulation. Um, so, you know, if you don't have access to a HyperMax oxygen machine, just do the breath work, get the breath in, you know, exchange the oxygen tension in the tissues and expose yourself to first light.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What about cold, cold water plunging?
- DSDarshan Shah
So I'm a huge fan of cold water plunging, but probably not for the reasons why you think. You know, um, I also sit on the board of the NFL, um, uh, Alumni Association Athletica as a health services director. You know, there, there was a time when we used to think that putting athletes in cold water after exercise was good because of its anti-inflammatory effects. We know now that that's only about 15% of the benefit. The majority of the benefit comes from something called a cold shock protein. If you really want to be fascinated, google "cold shock proteins." These are reserve proteins that are in your liver. They're dumped into the bloodstream in an effort to save your life when you put yourself in cold water. They scour the body of free radical oxidation. They increase the rate of protein synthesis, muscle repair. They are free. You get them when you put yourself in cold water. Um, I don't know what the Celsius conversion is, but I use 50 degrees for three minutes minimum, six minutes maximum.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Cold?
- 47:04 – 56:53
The myths about exercise "exercise doesn't help weight loss"
- SBSteven Bartlett
The second most replayed moment is a moment from my conversation with Dr. Tim Spector, a favorite on The Diary of a CEO, and here he talks about health more holistically and some of the biggest myths that most of us believe that are currently standing in our way. We've got a fitness group amongst some of my friends. There's about 10 of us in it, and, um, we've been tracking how often we work out and how frequently we work out and the workouts that we do. And one of the things I have to say is pretty much no one in the group has lost any weight. We've been doing this for a year. And, uh, that kind of bucks what you would thi-... so the only time that I lost weight was actually when I went on the keto, keto diet. I went from 14 stone eight to 13 stone eight in roughly, in several weeks. But exercise and exercising for almost religiously for the last two and a half years doesn't really seem to impact my weight at all in a, you know, in the way that the fitness experts might tell me on Instagram. What's your stance on h- the role that exercise play- plays in weight loss?
- TSDr. Tim Spector
It has very little role in weight loss. All the studies, se- long term studies show, uh, it doesn't help, uh, weight loss, and it's been grossly exaggerated as an easy fix for our obesity problem.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Exercise doesn't help weight loss?
- TSDr. Tim Spector
No. All the studies show that. The only caveat to that is if you have changed your diet, improved your diet and you've lost some weight, a- maintaining some exercise does help prevent it going back up again. But as... on its own, if you don't change your diet, it's of no use. And that's well known now by all the obesity experts and all the studies.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Does sugar make us fat? Is that the culprit?
- TSDr. Tim Spector
Um...
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is that one of the main things that's contributing to...
- TSDr. Tim Spector
No, again, that's, that's reductionism, you know?
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- TSDr. Tim Spector
The...But the reason, uh, the reason exercise doesn't work is, it's important to realize this, is because we all know this. That, you know, you go for a walk, you build up hunger before a meal. That's what your parents told you, you know? And everything about exercise is, after it, your body slows down. Your me- your metabolism slows down, and it tries to regain the energy that you've lost. That's just w- our evo- evolution. And so, that's why it's a, you're not going to... It's great for your health. I'm, I, you know, I exercise. Fantastic for your mood. Um, it's great for your heart, anti-cancer, all kinds of things. We should all do it. But absolutely not if your goal is weight loss. You have to do something about changing your diet. And I think that's, that's the big, uh, a huge myth, particularly perpetuated by gyms and, uh, fitness apps and everything else. Uh, and it, it is complete nonsense.
- SBSteven Bartlett
I read that you, um, when you looked at studies over 30 years, and you looked at how many studies had been done on the relationship of exercise and weight versus things like sugar and weight, there was 12 more, 12 times more studies done on the relationship of exercise and weight versus sugar and weight. And why, why is that? Why is there less research done on the latter?
- TSDr. Tim Spector
Um, I think that's the influence of governments and the food companies and the drink companies. So, uh, a lot of the exercise research done in the last 20 years was sponsored by, uh, large corporations who wanted to make this link between, uh, exercise and weight loss so that they could continue to sell sugary, ultra-processed foods and drinks, and just say it's, you know, childhood obesity is because we've, we don't have playgrounds and we don't, uh, encourage this. And that's why the Cokes and the Pepsis are always there at the Olympic, sponsoring Olympic events and associating themselves with sport. And they gave hundreds of millions to various physiology departments, sports departments, nutrition departments, to do research in this area. Basically, it was really hard to get anyone to do research into how sugary drinks make you, uh, gain weight or cause problems, because they, the amount of money for nutrition has been abysmally poor, you know, in, from, from governments. And that's why, you know, we, the only, the first ever study of ultra-processed food in a controlled trial was only about three years ago. And it's been around for, you know, 30, 40 years. So, such is the power of that lobby that it, it doesn't necessarily distort the research in a sort of, you know, evil way. But they point it to make sure that the researchers are, are working in an area that they want, uh, people to work in and distracting them, keeping away from talking about sugars or even artificial sweeteners, which, in my view, are nearly as bad, 'cause they're sort of, you know, hidden. Um, and, and deflecting us from the idea that yes, giving kids sugary drinks or even artificial sweet drinks is going to be bad for them and, and cause obesity.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Wait, so I'm, I've been, I've cut my, I cut out sugary drinks about a year ago. I still have the same brands, but I have the no sugar version.
- TSDr. Tim Spector
Oh, dear.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Oh, shit. What do you mean, oh, dear?
- TSDr. Tim Spector
Well, all the, all the, the summary of the trials shows that if you take, uh, a young yadults, young adults and kids, and they were, say, on two cans of, you know, full sugar sodas, and you change them to the diet version, there's no real difference in, in weight or, um, metabolic, um, changes in their blood. Um, the, you will go to the dentist less, so you don't get as many fillings, but the, and yet, you know, we, you should be gaining 300 calories, right, if you were doing two cans a day. So, it doesn't work out, uh, as it should do, and that's because of the extra, these chemicals are not inert. So, the sweeteners, in kids, they change their, their brains to give them, uh, they want more sweetness in their food, okay? So it, it could reflect your wish for your, your late night milk chocolate, who knows? Um, and it, it makes kids, ki- it very difficult to train kids to have more bitter foods or sour foods if they've got these artificial sweeteners in their diet all the time. But they've now shown that all these sweeteners actually affect your gut microbes. So, even stevia, you know, these sort of so-called healthy ones have an effect on your gut microbes, and they're not inert. So, we know that saccharin and sucralose also cause spikes in your blood sugar. Um, when I did it, you know, I have a trace. They're s- not supposed to, but they, they actually do things they're not supposed to. So, we know very little about these, these products, and my view is that they are harmful. Probably not as bad as having the sugar, but they are absolutely not a health drink, and we should be encouraging people to have, you know, teas and kombuchas and, uh, more b- more bitter tasting interesting flavors and foods than just this ultra-sweet, uh, chemical concoctions.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Is this, this sugar conglomerate that have been funding much of the research that points towards, um, some of the things you're talking about there. Th- th- they're, that's also the conglomerate that wants us to believe the calories in, calories out approach. Because if I just view every, uh, all foods as kind of equal and on this sort of calorie number, then I can drink some of the f- sugary, fizzy, fizzy drinks and some of the processed foods. As long as I keep it within that sort of calorie deficit, I'll be fine. And so are they, is that sugar conglomerate, is the processed food conglomerate...... for the calorie model?
- TSDr. Tim Spector
Absolutely.
- SBSteven Bartlett
They need that, right?
- TSDr. Tim Spector
They l- absolutely. It's vital, you know. Zero calories or one calorie, you know, on the can, that's what you see. And you know, you're fooling people into thinking this is a, a healthy drink. And, oh, you know, if I used to have full Coke or Pepsi and now I'm having the diet version, I'm getting 300 calories less a day, I should lose weight. It's exactly what they've been doing. And they're also desperate to show that artificial sweeteners are s- really healthy, and they come down on anyone who, who tries to say that they're, you know, could be in any way dangerous. And yet, they're not obliged to test them. So none of it, none of the chemicals added really go through rigorous testing on how they affect our gut microbes. And this is, uh, this ... You know, Their testing mechanisms haven't changed in 50 years.
- SBSteven Bartlett
As you'll know if you've listened to this podcast before, I'm an investor in a company called Huel. I'm on their board and they sponsor this podcast. And I have a very exciting announcement to make. This product called Daily Greens is one of the most highly-requested products at Huel, but it's never been sold in the UK before, until now. It's often difficult to get all of the greens into our diet that we need to have a healthy gut microbiome and a healthy body. And with Huel's Daily Greens product, with one scoop every morning, a very, very delicious scoop, you can get 91 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced nutrients into your diet. The most important point here is, I genuinely believe it tastes delicious. It's maybe my favorite Huel product ever, for all the reasons I've described. So if you want access to this product, you can sign up right now. The link is in the description below. It launches in the UK in January. Because of the demand, I'm pretty sure it's gonna sell out. And here is the single
- 56:53 – 1:06:19
The contagion of stress & how its causing us to put on more weight
- SBSteven Bartlett
most replayed moment as it relates to health on the Diary of a CEO of 2023.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So the first thing I came up against, 'cause this was around the time of the financial crisis, was the lack of understanding of the brain-body connection. So these high-performing executives were kind of acting like their body was just the vehicle that was moving their brain around from meeting to meeting. And both disrespecting their bo- their physical health, but also not understanding that what they were actually really being paid for was to use their brain. And they weren't creating the best conditions for that brain to operate in. Um, and I'm talking about really basic things like sleep and a good diet and hydration and not being sedentary, managing your stress, et cetera. So you know, this tiny organ, if it's not in an environment that is giving it the best chance of doing its job, it's not going to, and a crack's going to appear somewhere. Um, and the first time I really kind of had a big confrontation with a bank was when people were dropping dead on the trading floor of heart attacks. And they asked me to work more in my capacity as a former medical doctor to help with the physical stuff. And I said, "I can't do that if we don't address the mental and emotional piece, because that's what's causing this." And they just could, could not get that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
What did you want to do with those people in a specific and practical sense? What ... If you could have, you know, been in charge of preventing them from dropping dead on the trading floor-
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... where would you have started?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
The understanding that stress, so everything that you're experiencing mentally and emotionally that's challenging, and things like a lot of travel, which is challenging of your body, that that raises levels of the hormone cortisol, which comes from your adrenal glands. And that cortisol courses around your blood through your entire body and brain. And the brain has receptors for understanding what's going on in terms of threat to your survival. So in a 24-hour cycle, depending on your age and your gender, there's a normal range for cortisol. So it can go up and down like this. You know, if something challenging happens, eh, we need to adapt and rise to meet that challenge. But when that level is above the top range all the time, these receptors in your brain basically think that there's an imminent threat to your survival. So there's this whole cascade of hormones. And they, basically, cortisol causes inflammation in the body.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So inflammation of your vascular system, inflammation around your heart, and everything else, gut, and you know, other things. But particularly around that time, we were seeing a lot of heart attacks caused by stress. This was in the absence of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking. It was all stress.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Once upon a time I Googled, um, 'cause I had a th- thesis, I Googled, "Is stress contagious?"
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Mm-hmm.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And it came up, and it said it was contagious. Well, is it contagious? In what circumstances do we need to be aware of that contagion? And more importantly, how and why is it contagious?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Okay. I will tell you the answer to that, but I'm gonna ask you a question first. Have you ever walked into a room with someone, and by the time you've left that meeting with them-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yes.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
... you just feel so drained?
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
(laughs) Okay. So you know-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Of course, yeah. Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
Yeah. You know, so you know the feeling.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Yeah.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So I'll t- I'll tell you how it works physiologically. Um, I'm gonna start with something else to, like, build you up to this story. So, did you know that women who live together or work closely together will synchronize their menstrual periods within two or three months? So whenever I want to explain something that's complex or I don't actually know the current neuroscience, I always take it back to what happened in ancient times. So when we were living in the cave, the men hunted and gathered and lived quite nomadically. So sometimes they would go away for months at a time. And in those days, the most fundamental, important thing for the survival of the human species was that the alpha male must pass on his genes.So if he was gonna be away for months and he couldn't, you know, the, there weren't men there to defend the women from predators, maybe there was gonna be a spell of the Ice Age and they would all freeze to death or they wouldn't have food, um, he needed to make sure that at least five women were impregnated with his sperm at the same time. So that if there was a food shortage or there was, like, stillbirth or miscarriage or whatever, at least one out of five would survive. So to be able to do that, they had to be fertile at the same time. So that's why that mechanism exists. Now, we don't need that mechanism now, but it's still wired into the way that we operate. So those sex steroid hormones, like estrogen and progesterone, they leak out of our sweat about this far around us. And that's why if you're living with another woman or if, you know, you're sitting across the desk every day, then particles of hormone from my sweat would go into the s- through the skin of the other woman.
- SBSteven Bartlett
If she's within what distance?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I mean, it's not... (sighs) You wouldn't have to be sitting next to each other. If you live together, then that means you're interacting enough that it would happen.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Okay.
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
So particles-
- SBSteven Bartlett
But, but not if you work together?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
If you work together and you sit right next to each other every day, then it does happen too. So, you know, in a, a small office that's got, like, six girls in it, that, that, the menstrual synchronization will happen. Interestingly, it's led by the alpha female. So yeah. (laughs) So you can, you can work out, if you don't know already, who the alpha female i- Well, if you, you know... Basically, let's say my cycles don't change and everyone says, "Oh, I got my period early," or, "I haven't had my period yet, but now it's started," then that would mean that probably I was the alpha female.
- SBSteven Bartlett
How does the body know who the alpha female is?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
That will be to do with levels of testosterone.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Why, why did the body... Why does that matter who the alpha female is? Why does it matter that they sync up with her?
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
I, I don't, I don't know if it really matters. I think it's just a case of physiology. So it's a little bit like in the, um, troops of gorillas, the stress levels of the silverback gorilla affect the other gorillas more than gorillas who are peers to each other. So there is... We have a natural hierarchy. Um, it must be related to survival as well.
- 1:06:19 – 1:18:30
Bonus moment, my favourite moment from The Diary Of A CEO of all time
- RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee
- SBSteven Bartlett
For any of you that are still here, I have a bonus moment for you. I often get asked what is my favorite episode of The Diary of a CEO of all time, and I often try and avoid that question because I don't wanna pick one particular episode. It's kinda like picking your children. However, because you've gotten here, I'm gonna reveal it to you and I'm gonna play you a moment from that conversation. My favorite ever episode from The Diary of a CEO of all time is Episode 101. And it just so happens to be the most shared episode we've ever had of all time on WhatsApp. And I know that sounds a little bit obscure, but the interesting thing about WhatsApp is it's one-to-one typically. So it's typically one friend sending it to a family member or to a friend or something like that. And for it to be the most transferred between one person and another I think is telling about the value of that conversation. Here is one of the most important moments from my favorite episode on The Diary of a CEO of all time.
... to understand what happiness is, you have to understand the cause of it.
- MGMo Gawdat
Yes.
- SBSteven Bartlett
And you write about that extensively in Solve for Happy. So, what is the cause of unhappiness as you see it? Especially if you're building sort of machine learning applications that are gonna, you know, um, solve, you know... Make people arrive at contentment or happiness in a personalized way. We must be able to know what's causing this-
- MGMo Gawdat
Yeah.
- SBSteven Bartlett
... lack of happiness.
- MGMo Gawdat
A- a- allow me a bit of time to explain it-
- SBSteven Bartlett
Sure.
- MGMo Gawdat
... because it, i- it's simple when we get it, but it's not simple to get to it. So, so happiness is very predictable. Okay? If you look back at any point in your life where you ever felt happy, there is one commonality across all of those moments that can actually be doc- be documented in a mathematical equation. Okay? You've never felt happy because of a specific event in your life. Okay? Uh, t- m- take for example rain. (laughs) Rain doesn't make you happy or unhappy. There is no inherent value of happiness in rain. Okay? Uh, uh, rain makes you happy when you want to water your plants and it makes you unhappy when you're on a sunbathe. Right? And so it's not just the event rain, it's the comparison between the event and an expectation in your mind of how life should be. Okay? If you're worried about your plants, then life should be generous to me and get me rain, so I can water the plants. And if life does that, then life meets your expectations and you're happy. Okay? And so happiness in that sense becomes equal to or greater than, so it's really mathematics, the, your perception of the events of your life minus your expectations of how life should be. Okay? And apply that to anything. Apply that to anything. So, you know, my favorite example is nature. Hmm? We're all happy in nature. Why are we all happy in nature? I mean, you go out there and there are a- ants, and there are flies, and you know, trees are crooked, and there are, you know, shrubs everywhere and bushes, and it's just really not that hedged and organized. But that's what we expect. So, you know, nature's chaos is what we expect nature to be, and so we feel happy. You know, nobody's ever sits in front of the ocean and says, "I like the view but please mute the sound." Okay? You just take it, you know, it's, it's the monotonous sound and the view and the wind and, and the sun and, and the whole experience. Right? Uh, a- and because of that, hmm, uh, happiness becomes very different than what was defined to us. Okay? What was defined to us is that happiness is found in a, a, m- a gathering at the pub or a party or a, you know, an activity or some kind of pleasure or fun or elation or whatever that is. That's not at all true. These I, I call these the state of escape. Okay? Happiness as per the definition of the happiness equation is events equal to or beating expectations, life going my way. Okay? And so basically happiness is that calm and peacefulness you feel when you're okay with life as it is. It doesn't really matter what life is. Okay? What matters is that you can be okay with it. Right? So, so you take, you know, the, uh, uh, uh, any example, huh? If your boss is annoying, hmm, and your expectation is, yeah, bosses are annoying, this is what life is about, they become bosses because they're annoying.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- MGMo Gawdat
Right? And, and so if, if that's your expectation, you're gonna look at it and go like, "Yeah, I need to learn the skill of managing annoying bosses." Okay? And if that's the case, then you're not gonna be upset about it. Hmm? Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, similarly anything else, huh, if you look at it then it's not just the event. Hmm? It's your perception of the event, so you have a, a, a something to influence.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Mm-hmm.
- MGMo Gawdat
It's not just the event, huh? Your partner might say something hurtful on Friday at 4:00 PM, that's the event. "My partner said something hurtful." At Sunday morning you tell yourself, "He or she doesn't love me anymore." Okay? That's your perception of the event. That's not actually the event. The event is something hurtful was said. But your perception of the event is your work, is your, is your brain adding color to it. And then you compare that to your expectations. Right? You compared, "My boss is annoying," to, "My boss shouldn't be annoying." Where did you get that from? Right? So we blur the happiness equation, we break the happiness equation, because of what I call the six and seven. Okay? Six grand illusions and seven blind spots. Hmm? Which are, the six grand illusions are basically, uh, call them pathways, uh, that the modern world teaches us to navigate the modern world that are illusions, are not true. Okay? Uh, take for example control. Everyone knows that to succeed in the modern world you have to learn to control certain events. Right? So you start to believe that the way to succeed in life is to control everything. But the truth is, even if you go down to the basics of physics, that we never are in control, that the, the absolute design of nature itself, of the universe itself, is entropy and chaos. Right? That's the actual design. And so if you try to control it, you're bound to be disappointed, a lot of events are gonna miss your expectations. Okay? And yes, I'm not saying don't control anything at all, but start to understand that you're ha- you're gonna be s- selective because you have a finite amount of effort. And, by the way, even if you're selective and you, you try to control everything, sometimes things will fall out of control. Okay? And that should be your expectation. Once you get that right, that was one, that was my biggest illusion. Okay? I'm a mathematician, I'm a software developer, I am a, uh, uh, uh, physicist, I'm an engineer, and I'm a senior executive. It doesn't get worse than that.
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- MGMo Gawdat
Okay? I'm like the worst, absolute the worst. Hmm? I used to give my wonderful wife, I swear to you, Stephen, uh, d- don't judge me, I used to give her a spreadsheet that would tell her when to wash the colors and when to wash the whites based on our average consumption as a, as a family to save the environment. And poor Nibel would, would actually smile at me and say, "Sure, baby, I will use this." (laughs)
- SBSteven Bartlett
(laughs)
- MGMo Gawdat
We were like... (laughs) Of course, and ignores the hell out of me, because that's how crazy you can be when it comes to control. Now, these are the illusions. If you live your life through the illusion of control-Good luck finding happiness. So six grand illusions, the illusion of thought, the illusion, the illusion of self, the illusion of knowledge, the illusion of time, control and fear, okay? Now that's one side and that disrupts your entire view of what to expect from life because you're expecting life to behave through a lens, a lens of an illusion. The other side of it is what I call seven blind spots, okay? And the seven blind spots are not really defects in your brain. As a matter of fact, they are the very design of your brain, okay? Your brain is designed to tell you what's wrong, okay? It's not designed to, you know, if a tiger shows up right here now, my brain has no use whatsoever in telling me, "Oh my God, look how majestic that animal is," right? Yeah, it's a beautiful animal but my brain will say, "We're going to die," okay? And we're going to die is the idea that basically makes our brain constantly look for what's wrong, blur the events of life, huh. You ask a mother and she will say, "Oh, my daughter's been sick all winter." No, she just had two episodes of flu three days each. But to the caring heart of a mother, that needs to be exaggerated too. Exaggeration is one of the blind spots. Your brain is trying to get you to take action so it pushes you, hmm, it pushes you by exaggerating the event a little bit so that you jump in and take action. And accordingly the event you're comparing to... You're comparing the wrong event to the wrong expectation and the happiness equation falls apart.
- SBSteven Bartlett
Isn't this cool? Every single conversation I have here on The Diary of a CEO, at the very end of it you'll know I ask the guest to leave a question in The Diary of a CEO. And what we've done is we've turned every single question written in The Diary of a CEO into these conversation cards that you can play at home. So you've got every guest we've ever had, their question, their name, and on the back of it, if you scan that QR code, you get to watch on your phone the person who answered that question, the next guest. We're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that answered the question. And we've just released the updated conversation cards. We released it the first time and it sold out instantly. We released conversation cards again and they sold out instantly for a second time. We've updated the cards, put all the new questions in and we've introduced a twist. On the back of the conversation cards now, we've got different levels of vulnerability. So level one, these are more sort of surface level questions and by the time you get down to level three, the questions become a little bit more challenging, a little bit more vulnerable and that's really where connection happens. To test the power of these cards, we invited 20 total strangers to come and have dinner and the only thing they had to do was answer a level three question that was put in front of them in a room full of strangers. And we saw unbelievable, almost magical results. People in tears, people forming lifelong friendships and people unlocking truths within them that they'd been too scared to confront. Vulnerability is the door to connection. That is what we've always done here on this podcast and that's exactly what these conversation cards do. You can play them with your partner at home, you can play them with your colleagues at work or you can play them with your best friend on the weekend. The stories we've heard about these cards, about a grandson playing it with their grandfather to get to know them, pulling them out in the midst of a divorce with their wife and saving their marriage. As you've often seen on this podcast, sometimes one question and someone who is genuinely open to answering it is all it takes to unlock a truth that will end up setting you free. And that's exactly why we made these conversation cards. And you can get them right now at theconversationcards.com. I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below. They sold out twice instantaneously so if you are interested in getting a hold of some limited edition conversation cards, I really, really recommend acting quickly. And let me know how powerful they were for you and/or for your relationships. Thank you. (instrumental music) Do you need a podcast to listen to next? We've discovered that people who liked this episode also tend to absolutely love another recent episode we've done, so I've linked that episode in the description below. I know you'll enjoy it.
Episode duration: 1:18:30
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