Unveiling the Secrets of Optimal Performance: Balancing Work, Recovery, and Critical Thinking

Hello guys. Welcome back to the Alchemist library podcast today. My guest is Alex Feinberg. Alex has made a name for himself, coaching online, helping men and women become healthier and financially free. He started his career working at Google where he quickly pivoted into a role with a hedge fund. Prior to that, Alex was a baseball player at Vanderbilt university, where he credits much of what he learned about life competition and finding success. Yes, Alex has made a, quite the name for himself in the world of Twitter or X nowadays. but this is a really fun episode to record. We put a bit of our tinfoil hat on, which is always fun. Get a little bit conspiratorial. but catchy guys inside. Sure. You guys are going to love this one piece. Alex, thank you so much for being here today. Excited. Thanks, Ryan. Yeah, excited to chat. So I was thinking we'd start with your content now. What do we need to know about you to make sense of all the content you put out and all the stuff that you're doing? I think with my background as a competitive baseball player, you know, starting at Vanderbilt University and continuing on. Into the Colorado Rockies organization. You know, life was very stressful for me at that time. So stressful that I had to realize that there were more efficient ways to go about, um, approaching everything you wanted to approach. Right? There's a, a corner to cut, and I'm not saying it in a, you know, immoral or unethical way, but there's always corners to cut. I realized this when I was bumping up against my potential as an elite athlete. And I just started to look at the world as a competition where not everybody was running the same race and there were more efficient paths to go from point A to point B. And I realized as a competitive athlete that being in good shape gave you an incalculable advantage. Um, even outside of sports, right? People treat you better when you're good looking, when you speak well, um, you get paid more money to do the same work. And so when I got done playing, I. Professional baseball, I knew that I wanted to maintain the advantage of an in-shape athlete in the workforce, but I wanted to do it efficiently. I wasn't willing to like diet and eat salads. Um, I wanted to eat delicious food every meal of every day. And over the course of several years, I accidentally assembled across a diet and training regimen that was incredibly enjoyable. Worked in ways that registered dieticians trainers, um, would say is impossible to work. Um, yet it left me completely shredded year round without counting calories or going hungry, getting paid more money to do the same job as everybody else who wasn't in shape. And so, you know, because of my divergent life experience, I realized that people who follow mainstream paths end up working really hard for very poor results or very mediocre results. And, uh, my content is very much centered around sharing, um, more viable ways to get more out of the same effort. It's an important note just because we have this perception, right? That. If you're going to lose weight or if you're going to accomplish something of significance, it has to be really hard. Like for some reason we just put those two things hand in hand. And if it doesn't, if it isn't hard, you feel like you are not doing it correctly. Right. So I'd be curious though, what was those things that worked for you that ended up moving the needle and allowed you to do this in an enjoyable way? Listening to my hunger cues, basically reducing sugar so that my hunger cues could be more accurate. And then listening to my hunger cues. Um, I found that if I just eat protein dominant real food when I'm hungry, uh, and stop eating when I'm full and train like an athlete. And when trained like an athlete, I mean like rest, right? And, and train for performance. And if my body isn't feeling good, like don't go to the gym just because you're supposed to go to the gym on a Thursday. Really measure your performance work to increase your performance, you know, month after month, year after year. Um, and don't worry about calories, right? A lot of people I think sacrifice performance when they worry about calories and at the end of the day, their metabolism is slower because they can't perform at a level that would be required, um, for them to. Burn more calories outside the gym. So I think a lot of people don't realize that a majority of the calories that you burn are burned outside the gym. And so they structure their workouts to ultimately be, and diets for that matter, their diets don't support intense workouts because they're trying to cut calories at all costs. So they're, they're under fed very frequently. They're not getting very strong workouts in and they're getting too many of them. And so their body's in a constant state of under recovery. Um, so maybe they're burning more calories in the gym and maybe they're eating fewer calories at home, but they're never affecting their resting metabolic rate, which is the thing you need to change if you want fat loss and weight management to be easy. And this is something that I figured after doing it, I didn't really understand why my system worked when I first created it. No idea. I just knew that it worked and I knew that it worked for more people than me. Um, and then it's only been, you know, a few years of reverse engineering where I realized, oh, you know, most people have very slow metabolisms and they have very slow metabolisms because of how they eat and train. And we don't have slow metabolisms. We have very fast metabolisms. Me and the people I coach because of the way we eat and train. So what you're saying is that what lowers metabolism is doing that very, the very traditional, mainstream type of approach of like eat less, move more of eating low calorie and then going to the gym and walking on the treadmill or running on the treadmill and never really doing things like strength training and getting like that high protein type of diet. And is that what you're saying when you mean they have these low metabolisms. I'm not sure if that lowers your metabolism, but it doesn't spike your metabolism. The way that you spike your metabolism is by being able to lift heavy weights and being able to condition for a short but high intensity. Short, short duration, but high intensity. Um, if you want to burn the most calories you possibly can during a 60 minute gym session, you would just run on a treadmill for 60 minutes. You won't, you'll burn more calories doing that than you will will lifting weights than you will doing interval sprints. But it won't meaningfully impact your resting metabolic rate when you leave the gym. And so the calories that you burn in the gym are far less important than the calories you burn outside the gym. And so a lot of people will sacrifice calories burned outside the gym to maximize calories burned inside the gym. A lot of times people will sacrifice, um, calories consumed. Um, and the byproduct is they can't train as hard, so then the calories that they burn after their training session is gonna be lower, if that makes sense. Like calories are like debt, right? Most people use them incorrectly, but if you use them correctly, it's far easier to have good results than people who do not use them at all. I've never heard that analogy before. Calories like debt. I love it though. It's a great analogy because most people have this view on debt. As being a very negative thing. They wanna avoid it at all costs. Mm-hmm. But if you look at the really wealthy people, they leverage that so much. Yeah. And it doesn't seem like there's much of a difference when it comes to nutrition either. Yeah, exactly. You know, all the, the most ripped athletes that you see on tv, these guys aren't cutting calories. These guys aren't like, Exactly. Oh, you know, you know, like Christian Ronaldo isn't like, oh, I can only eat 2,400 calories today. Like, no, he's shredded because he trains at a high intensity. If, if anything, the athletes who count calories are counting them to make sure that they eat enough, um, not to make sure that they don't eat too much. Um, and so, you know, people often get misguided by bodybuilders. Right. Okay. So bodybuilders are counting calories because what they're doing is incredibly unnatural. It is not natural. To have that degree of vascularity, that degree of leanness. So there's not no way that you can listen to your intuition to get to that level of leanness because it's unhealthy. Your body will not want to be that lean. But if you're just talking about something that's aesthetically pleasing, like, you know, let me see if my camera can go, could go down low. I don't know if we're getting this, but like, you know, like that level of leanness, like. Let's go. Yeah, you can. You, I'm 37 years old, right? You know, I train three days a week. Um, you don't need to count calories to be lean. You just need to count calories if you wanna do something unnatural, like, like what bodybuilders do, because again, they're putting so much stress on their body that their body can't, there's no way they can intuitively diet to that level. But you people can intuitively diet to, to the leanness that I carry and I'm living proof. And I think even that way of training that you just described, where you're just training like three days per week, you're doing a lot of lifting, you're eating this high protein diet, the aesthetics that that produces. Versus like if you look at a marathon runner, just any of these high endurance athletes that are doing these, uh, long intensity runs mm-hmm. The physique that that produces, it just looks like it ages you. It doesn't look like healthy and full of life like it does when you're, uh, getting enough calories in and you're training correctly. Yeah. Because if you look at a marathon runner, and I'm not talking about the elite, elite, I'm talking about the average. Marathon. The average marathon runner probably runs in seven, eight minutes, right? You know, I don't know what the, what? You have to run it to qualify for the Boston Marathon, say seven minute mile, right? Well, seven minute miles, only 8.6 miles per hour. And so, yeah, maybe they run a little bit faster for shorter durations in training. Maybe they can pump it up to nine miles an hour. But if you look at the way I train, I'm running intervals at 12 miles an hour, right? And so, I'm running at a faster speed than people who do marathon running, and I'm doing far less of it. But the end result is that I'm like just as lean, if not leaner than them. And they would be too if they ran less, but at a higher intensity. And so my entire approach to training kind of revolves around like, how do we get, um, more output but a lower volume of it, um, and we can recover from that. And, and that gives us, uh, greater metabolic benefit. It's more enjoyable. We can look forward to going to the gym and yeah, and then it just doesn't take that willpower and that discipline, like people have this approach. I mean, we talked about at the beginning that they think things need to be hard. Um, but if you, if you actually train with somebody who goes to the gym consistently and lifts weights and does it, Correctly and responsibly. The gym's like a fun place for them. Mm-hmm. Like, it's not this like suffer fest. Right. But because people don't have this like clear idea of how to train and how to do it correctly, they do it in a way that is one isn't enjoyable, and two just doesn't make sense. Right. It's because people often neglect their fitness for months, if not years, and then they look in the mirror and they're horrified by what they see and they say, I, I'm willing to do anything. I'm willing to do anything to get in shape. And that almost never leads to good decisions. If you think I'm willing to do anything to do X, almost certainly you're gonna make bad decisions to do X. And so what they end up doing is they end up trying too hard. They, they go by, you know, what they see on movies or on tv like, this is, we need to go all out. We need to do rocky style training. This is what you need to do to be in shape. It's like, no, you don't. Um, you need to be able to put work in for a long period of time. So it's far better to get three intense workouts in per week, 50 weeks out of the year. Well, you should probably take more, more deal loads. So it's far better to get three intense workouts in per week, 40 weeks out of the year. Right. So it's better to get 120 good workouts in. For the year, like you'll get in quite good shape if you get in 120 good workouts in over the course of one year. But these people will be like, well, I want to get, I'm gonna work out every day for a month, right? I'm gonna work out every day for 75 days, do 75 hard. It's like, no, your body's not gonna respond linearly to that additional volume. It's actually gonna respond negatively. So I'll get far better results, training hard 20 times in, in 75 days. Then you will train 75 times in 75 days, and who's gonna want to train on day 76? The guy who's trained 20 times, or the guy who's trained 75 times, right? It's just, it doesn't make sense. But of course, most people's relationship with, with diet and fitness doesn't make sense, right? They look at it as, um, as a, a punishment. They look at it as, I've been bad because I've been undisciplined. Therefore, I'm gonna be the opposite of undisciplined, which is I'm gonna do way too much. That's not true. Right. The, the opposite of, um, of being undisciplined is simply being disciplined. Right. And just making responsible decisions day after day, not going gung ho about it. It, it, that, it reminds me of, I mean, I've been training this past summer with one of my friends who's a football player at Rutgers. Mm-hmm. And. I feel like even though strength coaches get stuck in like this rocky montage way of thinking mm-hmm. Because like we're doing their training program and I'm, and it just to me, like obviously I'm no expert, but I feel like I know a thing or two about training. Mm-hmm. And the amount of volume and the frequency at which they train, just like, does it, it just didn't make sense to me. It was like training heavy legs day. Four days a week and it was like back to back sometimes. And it just, the way that, um, movies in particular have shaped our perspective on things is fascinating. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You need to be on a, a heavy dosage of anabolic steroids and human growth hormones to even not get injured training legs for his a week. And that's the thing, they have all these injuries. Yeah. That's ridiculous. And, and not surprising to me, having played baseball at a high level. A lot of the strength and conditioning coaches don't know anything on Twitter. You know, I'm friends with a lot of trainers who work with individuals one-on-one. You can DMM them, you know, Zach Holwell, Alexander Cortez, they know far more about keeping people healthy than most of the college and professional trainers that I, that I. Played under. Um, I remember speaking with the major league player. I looked at his posture and I asked him if he had shoulder issues just from looking at his posture. And he did. And I told him like, okay, we should like work your posterior chain, do twice as many back movements as pressing movements. Nobody had told him that, and that's something that's very common knowledge in our corner of Twitter or X, if you want to call it that Now. Um, it's just not that common knowledge in, uh, in college and professional sports. A lot of the people who are instructing the players are completely incompetent and a lot of the players would have far better results if they trained, and I'm, I'm serious with one third of the frequency. One third. I think the optimal amount of frequency for these athletes to train is somewhere from one third to two fifths of what their coaches are are prescribing for them. It's crazy that, that, like, that, that just blew my mind. One, one third to two fifths. Think about it, if you're doing legs four times per week right, exactly though. Yeah. One third to twos. So I think, you know, you should be doing legs anywhere from 1.33 to like 1.6 and Right. I do legs one and a half times a week. Right. So that's like, literally, that's like right in the middle of that. And, and I'm saying that they could probably handle more volume'cause they're younger, but they're also doing a bunch of running and, and conditioning on top of that. Yeah. Which I'm not doing too, right? So I do some running, but I don't do the volume of running that, you know, I would be doing if I were an elite football player and my body would benefit actually from a little bit more running if I were an elite football player. But like, and, and all the skill practice that they need to do, like they should do way less, they'd have way better results doing way less. And that incompetence that you described, it's such an epidemic. Throughout all domains like it, it is not solely just strength, strength and conditioning coaches, like you see it everywhere. Just this, um, even at a very high level, there's so many people who just don't have this base understanding of how to do things correctly. Right, and part of that's because the people who select them don't understand how to select competent people either. You know, we're going through like a credentialing crisis where people are realizing that the institutions that generate credentials are fairly corrupt. Themselves. And so in the institutions that generate credentials are corrupt, the people who have the credentials are not necessarily more qualified than those who don't. And so, you know, why did you hire this guy? Oh, well he graduated from this program. Okay. He coached in this area. Alright. Um, there isn't like a, a fully transparent, uh, injury database where you can say, okay, this trainer was, uh, at this school and this many hamstring injuries occurred under him. It'd be very nice if you could almost like, um, you know, car insurance where it's like, okay, you got in this accident at this time. If they actually kept that data for football players or various athletes and they could link the trainers to them, then you could say, okay, this trainer actually, um, has incredibly good numbers. Uh, when it comes to injury resistance. They do that in baseball, like for pitcher's, arms, you know, certain. Um, organizations are known to just run through pitcher's arms. It's like, well, yeah, because their approach to pitching is wrong. Their approach to pitching and training is wrong, then more guys are gonna have arm problems, uh, in your organization than anybody else. Um, and so that's been known in baseball for a while, but I think it hasn't necessarily crossed over into, uh, other injuries and other domains as well as it could have. There's a quote that I'm, I'm gonna butcher, I don't know the exact quote, but it's something along the lines of never assign conspiracy that to which can be explained by incompetence. Yeah, no, that's true. And um, you know, I mean, in this, in this world we kind of live in right now where things seem to be conspiracy on, on many different, in many different avenues. Mm-hmm. To me. I mean, I wonder how much of it is just mere incompetence. Oh, I don't think there's a conspiracy to get more players hurt, right. I don't think the, no, yes, yes. I, I wasn't talking about that particular example, but just on a broader scale, I mean, a lot of incompetence exists and it's only going higher in my, in my opinion. I think the conspiracies that exist are kind of out in the open. I think where, you know, if you look at like. Um, what I would call them, the, the Democratic party, the university system and the mainstream media kind of represent this circle jerk of, um, of smoke and mirror credentialism, where people will talk about, oh, this person's so smart. He went to this school. This school is so prestigious. They create great graduates. Um, uh, this study is trustworthy because it came from this research institution. We can, you know, we know that this is true about, uh, you know, this minority group in the workforce because, uh, this, this research institution, you know, was like funded X. Like, it's all just like a circle jerk of, um, of people saying, well, we know that this institution is trustworthy. And we can, we can trust the claims that it's making that also make me look good. And so, and that's kind of the, the, what the scam is. Um, that's been going on for a while. And so, you know, I don't think this is a, uh, you know, smoke and, uh, you know, backroom, like cigar smoke, smoke-filled room type conspiracy where they're just like plotting like Mr. Burns. Like, oh, we're gonna go like, Fool everybody. It's sort of just intuitive to them where, okay, I went to Harvard, I'm gonna make everybody, I, I'm gonna, uh, push everybody up. Who went to Harvard? You went to a good university. We're gonna talk up the value of the university degree. It's sort of like, um, they, they speak of their, the institutions that, um, they're associated with as sort of like beyond reproach. And if they came up with a study, it's trustworthy. And if everybody else came up with a study, it's not trustworthy. It's conspiracy theory. And that's sort of how, you know the, the Overton window of society shifts to determine like what is credible and what is not credible. It's sort of like, what are the quote unquote, smart and trustworthy kids say is credible. And if you dig a little bit deeper, you realize that the smart and trustworthy kids aren't so smart or trustworthy. Maybe they're kids, but, but they're not. Right. And I think Covid showed that with a lot of us, for a lot of us, that like all of these people who, uh, were supposedly well educated, representing, supposedly trustworthy institutions were just wrong about everything or lying about everything, or obviously incompetent about what they were doing. And, you know, I think trust in, in. Mainstream organizations had been diminishing for decades leading up to Covid. And Covid was sort of like a boiling point where it's just like, who are these people? These people don't know anything about anything. And then if you look at like the fallout from that stuff that we're still experiencing, I mean yesterday you saw the stuff about Brownie James and mm-hmm. It just, it's scary and yeah, the direction of which people will just. Fail to deploy critical thinking when it comes to some of these things. Mm-hmm. Fail to make an opinion for themselves. Mm-hmm. And just follow what, um, Dr. Fauci tells them to do. Right. Because he is the, he is the official expert. Right, right, right, right. And that's what our school system teaches. It teaches people to. You know, it's true because this person said it. You think about like how you write a five paragraph essay that, you know, citing sources in college to get a good degree. It's like you have to cite what other people say. Right. This is true because this person said it. This is true because this study says it. It's like you can create your own study. Right. You know, I don't, I don't, it's not hard to create your own study. It's not hard to, and, and realistically the smartest people like use a combination of heuristics, um, and anecdotal reasoning combined with studies like, because mm-hmm. The heuristics and anecdotal reasoning are gonna be ahead of studies. So if you wait for studies, you're gonna be years too late to jump on any new idea. Um, and so the smartest people aren't like, they don't actually think in the academic manner, uh, because they're too slow If you do that. Um, That's an argument that I have with my dad all the time, like the best entrepreneurs don't think in a manner that's rewarded by the, uh, mainstream academia because they, you have to trust sources that are deemed untrustworthy if you wanna move fast enough to win. That is such a great point. I don't think I ever thought about things in that terms in that term, but like if you wanna wait for studies, you're too late. In a lot of regards. Uh, when it comes to being on the cutting edge of things and being, especially in business being like that first mover, that man that jumps on opportunity, you have to think differently. You can't think of in the way in which everyone else is thinking. Yeah. And that's why everybody like kinda laughs at the leader until they, like, before they take the lead and then they took, taken the lead and then it's like, oh yeah, we knew he was gonna be right. All along. I'd be curious, your take on this question, if I were to give you a school and I was like, you have full reins to create the curriculum for these kids K through 12 or K through college, what do you think that curriculum would look like? Like what differences would you install if you were leading the school system or a school system? I would have it be more functional. You know, I would have kids create their own shops. Learn math by buying and selling products. Um, I would have it like more of an agricultural component to it where kids could learn, you know, how to cook food, how to, uh, produce meat, um, like learn with their hands. There wouldn't be that much sitting going on in school, negligible sitting, I don't know, 20% of the time or something the kids might be sitting. Um, but having, having kids sit down in desks, like we wouldn't have that many desks. We would just be doing things and playing games all the time. Um, and so I think, you know, the, the areas of school that I would keep math, I don't, I wouldn't teach it the way they teach it, but math is, is gonna be very important. I wouldn't teach history the way they teach history with like dates and names. Um, I think history could be taught as a, as a story. Right. Because mm-hmm. The most important facts of history are what they teach about human nature. They're not who did what at what date. And so if you learn who did what at what date, and that's what you got outta history class, you didn't get much outta history class. If you learn that this is, this is the human condition and this is what we can expect from people in this situation and that's situation, then you've got what you're gonna get outta history class. Just, you should probably be within like a century or two of like when it happened, but it doesn't actually matter when it happened. It doesn't matter the specific date, um, or the specific name of the specific general who did whatever. Um, and so I think that's how I would teach math. That's how I would teach history. Probably wouldn't teach chemistry. Um, probably wouldn't teach a lot of biology. I think, you know, I, that could probably be reserved for college to be honest. Um, if you wanna be a doctor, you wanna be a chemist, you wanna be a biologist, like you can learn all that stuff fast. You're smart. If you can do math, you can learn all that stuff fast. Um, if you can read and retain information, you can learn all that stuff fast. But I think, you know, generally speaking for a, a, a compulsory education, people should learn math. People should learn history, um, you know, math, good enough to buy and sell things and know when you're getting ripped off history, good enough to understand the human condition. Um, you know, you should be able to read and write. I think, uh, you know, if you look at Americans right now, a lot of Americans are enumerate, which a lot of people don't even know what enumerate means, but enumerate is the numerical equivalent of illiterate. They can't do basic math, and if you can't do basic math, you don't know if your politicians are lying to you about where the money they're taking is going. Um, and so you could say this is by design. I just think it's kind of a. Byproduct of a non-functional university system or non-functional school system. Um, people need to learn math. Um, they don't need to be sitting all the time. I think kids can learn for like 90 minutes a day. And so if you actually look at what school is, it's a daycare, it's jail, it's it's kid jail, creativity jail. So I think ideally school would not be creativity jail. It would be like, let's learn a little bit of math or learn a little bit about the human condition, learn a little bit about animals and nature. How to prepare food, how to avoid getting sick, and how to play with each other. That's the, that's the most important thing. Do you think you're gonna homeschool your kids? Yes. Is that, is that something like I, I've thought about this question a little bit. I'm on the younger side, so I, I still have a little ways to go with it, but like the social component, like what do you think about that, that side of things? Well, I mean, are kids who go to public school? Well, socialized. Right. Like you, you can't compare it. That's good point. You can't compare it to like my generation, right?'cause my generation, everybody went to school. Nobody, all the, all the weird kids were homeschooled. In retrospect, maybe more of us should have been, um, homeschooled. Um, but, uh, we weren't. And, um, And the other thing is like if your kids are playing sports, they're gonna play sports with other kids. Like, it's not like they're gonna be reclusive. You homeschool kids with other, other homeschooled kids, so you create your own pods. Homeschooling is really just like not state sponsored schooling, non-factory schooling is the way you should look at it. Homeschooling should be looked at, looked at as non-factory schooling, right? Even private schools, public schools, those are factory schools. You wanna get smaller, you wanna get, you know, 10 people, eight people, four people in a homeschooling pod. That is, you know that, that's more bespoke schooling. Right? What do you think people did 300 years ago, right? They didn't have all schooling 300 years ago, is homeschooling, right? You have a private tutor. Come and teach rich people's kids. Well, poor people's kids worked in. Sewing and, and child labor jobs, they seem to be adjusted fine society. Um, and so the difference here is like, you know, we'd still have kids in juujitsu, still have kids playing sports. They're still interacting with other kids. They're just not sitting in the same prison cell as'em sitting, you know, regurgitating what the teacher says. The reason why I asked the question is because, so I graduated college this past spring. And I probably spent my sophomore through senior year of college feeling like all school was doing for me, was getting in the way of me actually learning. Right? And you know, especially if it's like run by the PC police, which is basically communists, right? Like a lot of learning is politically incorrect. They're not gonna teach you politically incorrect things in school. They're actually frequently gonna teach you the opposite of politically incorrect things, which is the opposite of truth. And so if you, if you try to teach kids the way the world works, but you have to be nice about it, you're actually lying to them, right? You're, you're miseducating them. And so a lot of schooling, you know, particularly like more modern schooling, um, where it's like the emotional, social, like whatever. Way of teaching is just brainwashing kids. Like a lot of schooling is brainwashing. And so if you look at, if you look at schooling, it's, it's, it's partially functional, it's partially, um, babysitting, and it's partially brainwashing. Then yeah, obviously those last two things aren't good for you. I don't know why this reminded me of this, but one of your tweets that really struck a chord with me was when did you realize the average doctor is really awi? Mm-hmm. And it's a funny, it's a funny tweet, but um, It struck such a chord with me because we look at these doctors as such like a beacon of knowledge, right. And so many people rely on them with their lives. Mm-hmm. And like they take their word as gospel. Mm-hmm. I had a, a prospective client reach out who, uh, have a thyroid condition and you know, a lot of times thyroid conditions can be exacerbated by, uh, vitamin B deficiencies. And, um, I asked them, you know, when did you get diagnosed 10 years ago? Whatever. Okay. Did the doctors. They put me on this and that. Did they tell you to change anything about your diet? No. What? Like, you have a, you have a, a, a gland that requires, uh, vitamins to function properly. The gland isn't functioning properly. The first thing they want to do is write a prescription. They don't wanna, like, uh, why don't we make sure that he's getting the right nutrients so that the gland can function properly? It's shocking that that was, that that happened. It's shocking. It's shocking and it's shocking, especially that you have to go to like a functional medicine doctor. Mm-hmm. Or you have to go to someone who's like not even a doctor. Mm-hmm. To get that level of treatment and like that's not even that holistic of a perspective. Mm-hmm. But to get any type of holistic perspective whatsoever, you have to look so far outside of what is the mainstream. And you have to learn how to think for yourself. That's an interesting, uh, interesting conversation of thinking for yourself. Do you think that there's, there's a skill there, there's a skill to learning that critical thinking. What do you think is, is most important when it comes to cultivating that skill? Well, it, it's, it's a hard, that's a hard thing to answer briefly, because unfortunately there's two types of learning that people. Pursue. One is learning for, to to understand it, and the other is learning to mimic. Understanding. School teaches you to mimic school teaches you that learning is mimicking, understanding. Um, how do I get good grades? This is what an A paper looks like. Okay. Create a paper that mimics an a paper. That's terrible. When teachers say, this is an A paper. So when, when students say, well, this is an A paper, they just, they don't know exactly what makes it an a paper. They just try to mimic, this is what smart people say, this is this, these are the sources that smart people cite, but they don't actually understand the mechanics of thinking, right? If I'm thinking through this problem, how can I sanity test my logic, right? How can I, um, how can I check to see what biases of mine are? Um, convoluting my thought process. Uh, most people don't actually know how to think, which is why they rely on credentials to, to, to tell them who is trustworthy. People who do know how to think, look at thinking mechanics, the way an athlete would look at. You know, movement mechanics. I can look at somebody's squat and tell you that this person, um, is too weak in this area, uh, immobile in this area. Uh, the movement just doesn't look right. Well, I can look at somebody's thought and the way they express it say, okay, well this person's taking this for granted. They're taking that for granted. The mechanics of the thought are wrong, but if you don't actually understand how to think, you can't understand correct thinking mechanics. You can't identify correct or incorrect thinking. Mechanics. And so it really starts at a young age. You can't just take a dumb person and say, well, this is how you think, because it, they're, you're requiring that they work muscles in their mind that have been atrophying for decades. That's terrifying. It's terrifying to think about. I mean, I think Richard Feinman is the guy who comes to mind is like one of the most original and just like clear thinkers. Mm-hmm. Like, uh, that ability, the Fineman technique where you just write out. All your knowledge on the, on the subject. Mm-hmm. And go and assess where, where, where am I not strong in this argument? Mm-hmm. Just redoing that process until you really have a solid foundation. Mm-hmm. It's so critical. But to your point, like unless you learn that at a young age, it's very difficult to adopt that type of thinking later in life. Yeah, that's why most can't do it. What is something that you think is fundamental to health, happiness, just life in general that we haven't discussed today? We haven't really gotten too deep into the tactical side of nutrition and diet, but what do you think some things are that all people should be doing or just are fundamental to living a life worth living? You just enjoy every meal that you eat. Like people, people think that. Healthy food has to taste bad. No. Healthy food can taste very good. It should taste good. Um, you don't have to eat bad food to be on a diet. This is like, to our earlier point, people think that they need to suffer to have good results. You don't, sometimes you do. I mean, some degree of suffering is inevitable, but you don't need to have the highest degree of suffering to get the best results. To get good results. You want a sustainable amount of discomfort indefinitely. Which means you do some hard things to the amount that you can manage, but not more than that, and you do it forever. Right? So, you know, I train hard, but I don't train hard every minute of every day.'cause I wouldn't be able to sustain that. Um, I make some diet trade offs. Like I'm not eating ice cream every day, right? That's okay. I don't need to eat ice cream every day. But every meal I eat does taste great. That's a rule. That's a rule I gotta follow. It's that consistency and understanding that. The compound interest is found through that consistency. Yeah. And found through doing that thing every single day. Mm-hmm. And just showing up. I, I always use the example of a podcast because you can do it one of two ways. You can make it ultra difficult for yourself. Mm-hmm. Try to come out with a million clips per week and do all this type of stuff. Mm-hmm. Which is great, but how sustainable is that? Mm-hmm. If you just try to make your view a little longer, like you were saying before with the person who. Says they'll do anything to lose this weight. If they just extend their time horizon. It makes that goal that you want to accomplish a lot more simple and a lot easier. You just have to stay in the game long enough to accumulate that compound interest. And that's people, that's one thing people don't get. They don't understand that duration is more important than, than like duration that you can repeat it years, year after year after year is more important than sprinting really hard for. Three months and then fizzling out. And such a big part of that is just like the people you surround yourself with. Mm-hmm. Surrounding yourself with people who are aligned with you in that vision mm-hmm. And aligned with you in, in just the things that they do. Mm-hmm. And the things that you want to accomplish. Mm-hmm. Like, you have to surround yourself with other killers. If you wanna be a killer, you have to surround yourself with other killers and you will, you know, because when you, when you start developing that killer instinct, I. You start recognizing it in other people and you start seeing it as indispensable for your own life and for the people who you surround yourself with. That's a great point, because oftentimes I think that people, at first, they, they start doing something. Let's say they want to quit drinking. Mm-hmm. And all their friends drink all the time, and then they end up falling back into the same, same habits because the people they're surrounded with aren't those type of people. But if you just stay consistent with it for. Even just a little while, you'll start to find those people who are more aligned with you. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Um, I think fortunately for me, it was natural to want to compete in things. So I was all naturally friends with competitive people since I, since I was a young kid. But, you know, if you're not competitive, it, it does, it, it is hard to, to turn your life around as a non-competitive person. Um, but I think anybody can start by competing for a single thing and like finishing it and completing it and noticing that it makes'em feel better. And then, and, and seeing the value in surrounding themselves with people who have similar goals. On that note, is there a challenge you want to leave the people listening with today? Like if they hear this conversation and they're kind of inspired to get after it a little bit, what would you recommend that they do? Depends what their goals are, right? If you wanna break free of your corporate job, start a business and within 90 days, make$500 in your fourth month with anything. Just do it. And like your first$500 is gonna be the hardest$500 to make. Just make$500. Figure out a way to make$500. Um, if you're starting a business, if you want to, if you wanna fix your body. Start with not eating sugar unless you crave it. And everything else should, should begin to more properly auto-regulate. When you start reducing your sugar consumption, right, check the labels of the food you eat. You'll notice that there's a lot more sugar that you're eating than you realized. Um, that's where it starts, I think for if you wanna get your body better, reduce your sugar consumption. If you wanna become independent of your employer, um, start making money. On the side, even a small amount, once you get the habit of making a small amount of money, it'll be a lot easier to make, a little bit more than a small amount of money. Alex, I so appreciate you taking the time for this conversation today. Thank you so much. I, I really did enjoy this conversation and I think people will get a lot out of it. You bet, Ryan. Thanks for having me.