Max Shank - The Truth on Fasting & Longevity

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Stop by futurofitness.co to subscribe and learn more. This episode of the Future of Fitness is brought to you by our good friends at the Brand X Method. Kids deserve our best. Period. Full stop. Brand X has dedicated themselves to doing what is best for kids for over two decades. Here's the facts. All major pediatric organizations agree that youth strength and conditioning and fitness programs must be specifically designed for children and coached by those specifically educated in working with children. This seems like a no-brainer. Successful programs come from educated coaches who have all the tools to best serve youth. Brand X offers unequaled ongoing support through ever-growing relative content delivered monthly, plus the mountains of information leveraging their 20 plus years of experience. As the developers of the original Kids Functional Fitness Program and certification with over 100 state and national record holders and recognize the world's leaders in youth fitness, Brand X not only offers the fully digital, take it-your-own pace, professional youth coaches certification, but has recently added to their suite of custom education products to best serve educators and parents as well. Because kids deserve our best. So whether you are a gym owner, coach, educator, parent, or simply anyone who cares for the future of our children, Brand X is offering a 20% discount on all digital education products for a limited time. Go visit thebrandxmethod.com forward slash future to get your code today. Again, that is the brandxmethod.com forward slash future and claim your code. When you do what you love, running, racing, or simply enjoying the great outdoors, you want to do it for life. InsightTracker can help. InsightTracker was founded in 2009 by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics. Using their patented algorithm, Insight Tracker analyzes your body's data to provide you with a clear picture of what's going on inside you while offering highly personalized, science-backed recommendations for positive diet and lifestyle changes. Okay, time for straight talk. It's time that each single one of us takes responsibility for our own health. Personally, given the results of my Insight Tracker DNA and blood tests, I now have a clear and simple game plan to lower my cholesterol and stave off my family's genetic history of heart disease. The best part is that the plan doesn't include any kind of pharmaceuticals, just personalized nutrition and natural supplementation. Possibly my favorite feature of Insight Tracker is the inner age score, a singular metric that shows me how my biological age compares to my chronological age. They just gamify longevity. It's crazy cool. For a limited time, you can get 25% off the entire Inside Tracker store. Just go to InsightTracker.com forward slash future. But wait, there is more. If you're a coach, trainer, registered dietitian, or any other health and wellness practitioner, you can now leverage Inside Tracker services to help your clients perform better than they ever have. And you can offer them discounts while you earn revenue. Inside Tracker Pro is your gateway to offering your clients Inside Tracker, the science-backed, ultra-personalized performance platform trusted by elite athletes and top coaches. Just go to insight tracker.com forward slash future to get more information and enjoy deep, deep discounts. That is insight tracker.com forward slash future. Max Shank, welcome back. It's time for our annual interview here on the future of fitness. I think you, uh, my friend, are the longest running serial uh interview I've had on this show. Um it's either three or four, I can't remember. And like I'll start every show like I've done every other one that I've done with you is that I wish I recorded the last 15 minutes because it was so good. Um, but we'll just try to, you know, do something different for the audience. But man, great to have you back on. Um, today's recording is the 20th of July in 2021. And uh it's been about a year, so give us an update. What's what's going on in your world?

I'd say the biggest change over the last year is that I shaved my beard and uh and cut my hair. I haven't really noticed any other big changes in the past year. Uh no, it's it's it's funny. I mean, I uh you know me. Thanks again for having me on. I love our conversations, and like you said, I we we always end up just chatting for many minutes before we resolve to record because there's just a good connection here, and um I I really have fun on these talks. Gosh, I would say the the biggest change over the last year is just the continued evolution of my own training and the continued awe of the ridiculousness of how most people approach fitness and health in their lives, and getting really interested in longevity a little bit more. And it's been it's been a really interesting thing. You know me, I I have uh a lot of time that's not locked in on a calendar. I I don't really have many appointments at all. And you know, we turn off the internet at night. I you know, don't look at the phone for a few hours in the morning. I have these like intervals where I'll check text messages and that's about it. But it has really given me the opportunity to realize that the the the biggest enemy people really have is is themselves when it comes to health and longevity. And we just get stuck in these these patterns where people are actively poisoning themselves on a very regular basis with excess food and excess media, and it's like physical and psychic poison. And and it's so funny. It's the best recommendation is to do a little more nothing, quite frankly. It sounds it sounds stupid. It's really a funny way of coming full circle in my 15 years of coaching people. It's like first it was like, oh, do these bicep curls. Now stand on this Swiss ball and lift this barbell and do this crossfit and Olympic lift and kettlebells and calisthenics, and now I'm into neuroscience and mobility, and you know, you you come full circle. It's like, yeah, you should probably just do a little more nothing and uh go for a barefoot walk and eat a little less. And then and then we can build from there. It feels stupid, you can't charge money for that. Uh but but that seems like what everybody really needs more than anything. And I'm just I'm just kicking off of a well, I haven't eaten yet, but I'm on my I'm on seven days of no food, and I'm just drinking water and a little bit of salt and magnesium and potassium. It it feels fine. Like I wasn't a big fat guy before this, but I've been training every day. I've been doing roughly two hours of walking every day. I've been hanging out, and things have been going just fine. And so there are all these like there are these weird myths that we believe, like, oh, you gotta be you gotta be plugged in to see what's going on. You gotta, you know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day and all that uh nonsense. And it's it's hard because you have to frame this message in a way that people will actually believe, right? And what's extra hard is it's really enticing to just be eating and plugged into the matrix all day long because it's a combination of gambling and socializing and cocaine, basically. You know, you you get the you get the serotonin when you feel that, like, oh, someone liked my thing, how nice. And then you get the dopamine because you have this infinite scroll of like, ooh, what's gonna happen next? And that's where the dopamine really comes into play. Like when you're gambling, when the dice are in the air, that's when you're like, oh, what's gonna happen? And so when you're just kind of mindlessly going through all of these, look, there's a lot of content, there's infinite content, and a lot of it is quite excellent, some of it is total garbage, but shoot, a lot of it is really funny or really entertaining or sexy ladies. I mean, take your pick, you can find whatever flavor you want. So anyway, that's part of the reason I do these fast because I'm a I'm a dumb monkey just like everybody else. So sometimes I operate from more of like the lizard brain, like, oh, I'm hungry and I'm gonna go eat a bag of chips and five wheels of cheese, which that's that's something that really happens. That happens. I mean, because I don't have that that consciousness, it's all compulsive rather than conscious to be like, okay, am I really hungry?

And how about we make some food?

You know, there's plenty of food in the refrigerator, you don't have to just inhale the accessible snack food. But I think it's good to do these little pattern breaks because uh as I continue to research longevity and health, uh, quality and quantity of life, uh, the only real enemy is ourselves with this one, or at least by far the biggest.

Yeah. So with these fasts, I guess a couple questions, and I'm guessing the audience is probably wondering is you know, how how many times have you done this? Well, what was the impetus for the first one or two? And then with this, you know, there is obviously a lot of attention on fasting. Uh, what is it that you think people don't know about fasting that they should know?

Those are a lot of good questions. I've done lots of three-day fasts, probably probably close to 15 three three-day fasts. Uh I've done tons of one-day fasts. I mean, uh, I've I think I've gone many, many months where I would only eat one meal a day, yeah. Uh, which is pretty easy. It's easy. I agree. I've done I've done a few, a few five-day fasts. And I always start out with this idea um that I'm either that I'm gonna do three days and then I'm gonna check in and see how I feel. Because I'm not gonna I'm not gonna make myself ill. And that's why I'm training and walking every day, so I can get a good barometer of how I'm actually feeling. And so in the past, I've gotten to five days and been like, you know, five is good enough. I'm gonna get uh most of those benefits, and I'll just eat. And I've never done seven days before, so I it was more like just something I wanted to try and see how I feel and feel great. There's for me, it's more about the psychological benefit, but I do like to split it up into the psychological and the physiological. So on the psychological side, you have a pattern break, which is very valuable. It definitely gives you an opportunity to uh restore your relationship with food in a healthier way, it gives you that pause. And I would say that's probably the main thing, but it's also a really a really deep control because safety and food are number one instinctual drives. So if you can kind of bring your consciousness to that really deep desire, hunger, pain, all of those are synonyms, interestingly enough, then I feel I feel like I have an advantage psychologically. And when you look at compulsive behavior is usually what is destroying people in the first place. So if you have the ability to just pause and be a little bit more mindful about what you're doing, I mean, everybody listening to this, pretty much everybody in the world is already smart enough to be great and successful and healthy when they are conscious. But when you're a compulsive monkey eating a whole bag of chips and five wheels of cheese, it's more challenging to do that. So uh those are the psychological benefits. And I usually do uh information fasting as well. That's actually how I started uh getting off the social media and the email, which don't get me wrong, there are costs to not answering your email, but they weren't so bad that it uh ruined my life and actually not being plugged in so much enriched my life significantly because it gave me more time to focus on the things that are really important. So it's good for drawing time boundaries.

I want to ask you about that, the email thing because I know last time we talked about it, you were coming off no email, and basically your garbage didn't get picked up, right? That's exactly right.

Yeah. My credit card expired and they sent me an email and I called them, I'm like, what the heck? They're like, check your email.

So that that makes me anxious. Like the thought of not checking my email, you know, because we were talking pre-recording about the 10 different jobs I've gotten myself over the last three months, right? So uh how do you have someone checking your email or are you just like it?

Like so I have someone who checks the support uh on my website because uh a lot of customers uh who have purchased my courses, and if there's something going wrong there, I like to try to get back to them within a couple days, but uh checking them sometimes once a week, and there wasn't enough important stuff coming in that it really made a difference, and mostly I give people my phone number now, if it's important. And if it's not important enough to give someone my phone number, I probably I probably don't need to do it. And I'm in a bit of a I'm in a really comfortable position where I'm not like aggressively looking for work. I'm I'm mostly saying no to a lot of stuff. I basically have the fastest no in the West because my my calendar defenses, my calendar defenses like Isengard or something like that. It's just so strong. Uh yeah, there are there are costs, but I just remember thinking, you know, nobody nobody informed me what this was gonna be like when I got email because I was a child when I got an email account. I was under 18 years old and I was like, oh, email, how awesome! Didn't realize it was gonna be like a life sentence to check my digital mail every day. And so, you know, there's not really much good and bad. There are consequences to everything you do. And in my experience, based on where I am in life, it it was it was so easy to just say, you know, what whatever missed opportunities I may have and may have had, which have been some, it's not enough to put me back in that frantic mindset of I gotta check this, I gotta check this, I gotta check that. And the same thing's true with social media. So that's that's a lot of the the psychological um compulsiveness that we're talking about that sort of correlates back to fasting. And there's all kinds of behaviors like that. Um email and social media are just are just some of them.

Yeah. What to to the some of my because I know I barrage you with like four questions up front there, but what do you think it is that if people are listening, because you know, I I intermittent fast almost every day. Um it's not hard. One meal a day is actually I find quite quite nice because I don't have to worry about like, well, what am I gonna cook two or three times a day? I just focus on one meal. Um so that's nice. And I do feel good when I do it. And it does people do get really intimidated by fasting, you know, they're really worried that, you know, what if I get hungry? Right? Well, you're gonna get hungry. I I did a nine-day juice fast years ago, right? Remember when juice fasting, there's a documentary came out, it was like the thing, right? I think it was like 2014. So I'm like, well, you know, my business partner and I were like, well, let's just try it. Let's do, you know, a week and we turn into nine days. And my my realization was because all you're just doing is just mixing, so you're getting more micronutrients than just a pure water fast, but I'm sure I'm pretty sure it's probably fairly similar. Day one and two, I was like, every word that comes out of people's mouths is food. So I'm like, did that mofo just say hamburger? Like everything that was like, I was hearing words about food, and that's all I could think about. And then day like two, and then three, I started to feel this immense clarity. Um, you know, just uh an elevated mood. And I was just, and then I was okay, you know, it was okay. So when you're walking people through what to what to expect in a fast and how to be successful, quote unquote, you know, I know there's a lot of different terms because people do it for different reasons, but um, yeah, what what do you what do you what advice do you bestow?

Almost the same thing you just said. The second day you're gonna feel the most hungry, and after that, you'll feel consistently less hungry. And don't be afraid of being hungry. The only reason we have all of these ideas about food is because that's the mythology that we have all agreed upon. You know, our whole world is manufactured by words. So the whole con the whole fact that there's a word called breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I mean, it sets you up to think those are necessary. Oh, you bet you better go eat. And then you have some relationships where the love is delivered with the food. Like a lot of a lot of mothers, the way they give love is by giving food. So there are all these different things wrapped up into food, and sharing a meal is a really powerful experience as well. Um yeah, don't be afraid of being hungry. The other thing I tell people is it's okay, and and we're designed to be really robust and survive really well for many days without food. You know, this whole refrigeration is being new technology, so having food all the time, even agriculture is relatively new compared to Homo sapiens. I think Homo sapiens is roughly 200,000 years ago, agriculture is about 10,000 years ago, as far as what my research has led me to believe. Or, you know, of course, the world is only 5,000 years old, whatever you believe is fine. But either way, it's very possible to survive a long time without food. And in fact, my favorite example is this guy who just took liquid nutrients for 384 days. It was a Scottish guy, and he Was like 400 plus pounds, but he didn't eat any food for over a year. Wow. And that gets that kind of gets us into the physiological reasons that you might want to do fasting. Um, which I actually just published an article yesterday about this because I thought it would be fun to do it while I'm actually doing a fast. And so there are two primary words to understand. One is apoptosis, which is the programmed death of your cells, which is normal. And that apoptosis is different based on which cell we're talking about. So your taste buds change over every week or so. So they're on a pretty, pretty quick life cycle. And and your guts are even faster. It's like every couple days. And if you think about it, it usually has to do with the oh, and the the bone is another interesting one because you have osteoclasts, which break the bone down, osteoblasts, which build the bone up, and then osteocytes, which are is what the osteoblasts, the builders, turn into. So that's the hard bone. And those are on a turnover of a couple weeks, couple months, and many years. So your cells naturally have this apoptosis or programmed cell death. And something needs to happen after that, though, because you just have all these dead cells running, running wild. And if you leave those dead cells lying around, that's when you get all the really bad stuff. You get all kinds of mutations and unregulated uh stuff. And sometimes you just get inflammation, which will you know give you heart disease and sore joints and bad everything? So the next thing is autophagy, which is eating yourself basically, like recycling. So they come in and they break down the dead or damaged cells. And your body's your body's so wise, it's so much smarter than we are. Like, how does it know to prioritize the dead and damaged cells and not destroy the healthy cells? Like, I'm blown away by the miracle of how our body works and how it works so damn efficiently, too. So apoptosis and autophagy, and both of those are increased during a fast. And so if you have a bunch of gunk built up and you eat all of the time, you are not going to clear out the garbage. So your body will be full of cellular garbage, and that's on that's when you get all these bad diseases. You get inflammation and mutations and gunk and buildup and clogged arteries. It's not, we know now, of course, that it's not cholesterol. That's a like eating cholesterol doesn't just automatically clog your arteries, it's because you have so much damage and junk and inflammation tearing stuff. That's why things like that happen. So that's on the physiological side. So, of course, it gets you into ketosis, which is a a new buzzword that we're we're going through right now.

Yeah, I've heard of it.

And yeah, basically, we're using fat instead of glucose. It's a different metabolic pathway. And I from my understanding, your body really does prefer to use glucose. So if you're gonna be uh, and you know, maybe someone will have a different opinion, but from the research I've seen, you're better off to have some glucose and therefore, you know, glycogen in the liver and muscles ready to go if you're gonna do like really high intensity stuff. But ketosis is another option for cellular metabolism, so you can keep everything going. And of course, that's using fat as opposed to using sugar.

Yeah, man. I mean, it's um I think the one out of all that information, which was extremely valuable for people, I think the one thing that I pulled out of there, which people may need to just like listen to over and over, is like, don't be afraid of being hungry. Like that's that's a basis of it. Like, it's okay to be hungry, and you know what? It's just a feeling, like it passes. You know, you do get sensations of hunger, but it's not gonna last forever. It's like when someone steps on your toe, like, how mother, you're like, that hurts, right? But you know what? It's gonna pass. And it's I don't think hunger is ever as bad as someone stomping on your toe. So um, I think that's the big one about it is people want and people are wanting to try it. I think people are starting to get, you know, understanding that hey, fasting's it's a good thing to do, and our bodies are actually built to do it, you know, and the confidence I think it gives you in life. Like, I don't know about you, but I'm always like somewhere three percent of my brain's always like, what happens when shit hits the fan? The whole world goes upside down. Like, what do we do? Right. Right. And I'm like, well, I I want to be able to be hungry, right? Uh, I want to be able to get my own food, right? I want to be able to find clean water. Like these things are should be in the back of our brains at all time. And I think that's also okay, not to get too well, you like philosophical stuff, so fuck it, let's do it. But like, um, you know, there's a reason why I think people are so anxious and stressed about our current world. Like everything's easy, right? This is the easiest life has ever been, at least, you know, for what the the reality we have here in the United States for most people is pretty easy. Um, but we don't have control over it. Like, you know, back in the day, like talking about Homo sapiens, like, okay, we knew where to gather food, we knew where to migrate during the winter, we knew that, you know, if uh a bear showed up, okay. I basically, if I'm a good fighter and I can run fast and I have a little bit of luck, I can survive that, right? I'm ready for it. I'm prepared. Here, like, gee, we saw in the pandemic. What happens if a supply chain breaks down? What happens if, you know, uh a million different things that are completely out of our control because they're on such a scale, it's so big? Uh, that's something that we can't control. And I do believe it causes people a certain I mean for sure, it causes me a certain low level of anxiety. It's like, yeah, what happens if the whole grid goes down, right? Or, you know, not picking up garbage, right? What happens then? That's a huge problem. And uh, what do we do? We don't have control of it, but there are certain things that we can control. We can control our ability to deal with discomfort because that's like shit, it does hit the fan, that's a guarantee, right? It's even good if shit doesn't hit the fan. Yeah.

I I agree. I will say that I think a lot of people don't feel what you feel. Oh, really?

Yeah.

I think I think a lot of people don't really think past tomorrow or even a few minutes from now, because they're stuck in that compulsive loop where they're just on some sort of autopilot. It's all the momentum that has been put on them, all the ideas, all of the movement or lack of movement. And they're just they're just looking for that quick fix. So they're not really thinking, well, what if we didn't have power for three months, which is like what you're talking about? Because that would be that would be really tough. Really tough. And I'm I'm not a prepper, right? And I know some preppers who are really proud of being preppers, they even like being called prepper. I'm a prepper, and I'm like, okay, cool. Sounds sounds fun.

If you're really a prepper, you don't tell anyone you're a prepper.

No, of course not, because you're the first house we're gonna come ransack and eat all your food. No, but I I experience the same thing because I tend to be a pretty patient guy now and think very far into the future. And if the I call it the probability. So it's a probability tree of what may happen. And you don't want to be running around the probability forever. So my recommendation is you set up in your mind what insurance would look like for that. So if you are concerned, like, okay, you know, the grid goes down for X amount of time, well, that that's where like having some canned food is a really smart idea. And having some water available is a really smart idea, or having a water source. I know you're up in Montana, so maybe there's a river close by.

So yeah, it's a lake right here.

I mean, yeah, the most important things are shelter, water, and food. And if you you have three things, you can live very, very long time. Now, you won't be able to play Candy Crush, maybe, unless you got a bunch of solar panels also. But just get get it, get comfortable with like, okay, if that, then what? And then acquire the level of insurance that you need. And for most people, you know, it's not very expensive to have three months of food and water on hand. And look, if the whole thing got so bad that no one could get food or water for three months, that would mean there's a a mega catastrophe where, like, who knows? Like, all bets are off after that. So you just come up with in your mind, do I want, you know, two weeks ready to go? Do I want a backpack ready to go? Do I want a three-month ready to six months, one year, you know, do I need a a nuke-proof bunker 50 feet under the earth with a 10-year supply of food?

And look, I'm just not on that level, you know, so it's a lot of investment of time and energy in something that may never happen.

Well, probably won't happen. For the bunker, yeah, but for but for just a few months worth of food and water and shelter, I think it's very reasonable. So that that anxiety that you're talking about, I I honestly just feel sorry for uh most people. And I know that seems like a really like arrogant kind of comment, but it's not, it's compassionate. I see people just played like a fiddle with like, you know, fear waves constantly like, be afraid of this, be afraid of this. You know, you're not the master of your domain, which is what those hunter-gatherers were. It's more dangerous, but it's also more uh of a master type of role than a slave role. So the feeling of being dependent on these this interconnected system that we have, that's you know, supply chains and uh petrodollars and oil and currency and militaries and trade, foreign and domestic. I mean, look, there's a lot of pieces to the puzzle. And most of the folks who are like screaming at each other on the internet have never really taken the time to consider how interconnected everything is and how many different variables there actually are. So yeah, with regard to that, I would say just set in your mind what would make you feel comfortable and then set it and forget it.

Yeah, beautiful. Um, there's something I want to get into because I know it's been on your mind a lot. Uh, thoughts on longevity. Yeah. So get into that. Like what, you know, over the last 12 months, what's what's been going through your mind and and what conclusions have you been coming to?

Well, you know, it's funny because you in in the ladies' magazines, it seems like the secret is red wine and chocolate. And that's that's like all you because apparently there's a lot of antioxidants in there.

Yeah.

And it's funny, there's this uh there's there's this box. It's uh called a free little library in my neighborhood. And so you just you just put books in there, you take one, you put one, it's all good. And there was like a a ladies' magazine in there from like 1992.

It was the same stuff. It was the same stuff.

Oh, here's how you make your penis harder, here's how you here's how you titillate your man, here's you know, three things that you need to eat. Here's a ab workout. It's the same stuff. Like if I had seen it on a shelf in 2021, I would have been like, yeah, that's that's the same thing. Uh, but per usual, it's a little more nuanced than that. It's not like you start eating some dark chocolate and drinking wet red wine that you'll live to be a hundred. It could help, by the way. I don't know. In my experience, as far as I understand it, longevity only has a few really important things. Like there's so much research on longevity because uh one of our most universal fears is fear of death. I think fear of public speaking is somehow a little bit higher than that, but fear of death is something we're all we're all with. And of course, that's not the death of our bodies that we fear, it's the death of our egos. We're afraid that like the story of Max will end. No, don't let the story of Max end. It's such it's just getting good. So we're afraid of that, of course. So there's tons of longevity research, and there are all kinds of berries to eat, but really you need a reason to live. Human beings are very emotional, creature, probably the most emotional creatures of all. We're also the most dependent on social bonds. So you need uh a room to wake up in the morning, you need close, close friends, and you need to not eat too much food, and you need some exercise. Now, here's the here's the interesting part you don't need aggressive exercise. In fact, the Tai Chi practitioner is likely to live much longer than the Muay Thai practitioner. If they got in a fight, both in their you know, 40s, I would put my money on the guy who's you know kicking and getting kicked all the time rather than the guy who's slow dancing in the park. However, if the goal is longevity, your training doesn't need to be aggressive. You just need to be able to walk and have strong feet and bounce around and maybe roll on the floor. So yeah, basically don't eat too much, have a reason to wake up, have friends that you connect with regularly, and I would say exercise in a way that really reinforces the principle of elasticity rather than anything else. So you can bend but not break.

Yeah.

And and that's basically it. Like you could eat like garbage hamburgers, but as long as you don't eat too many of them, like your body's really good at figuring out like what to keep and what to get rid of. Am I advocating an all-hamburger diet? I'm not, but probably you could worry a little bit less about whether you get a certain superfood and focus more on just really controlling the gate at your mouth. You know, the the things that you say and the stuff that you put in there. I like like that's that's probably the mouth bouncer, is probably the most important part of longevity.

Yeah. It's uh I've noticed too when I look at my quote unquote exercise, right? Or just my movement part of life is I'm always now looking for ways to kind of multi-purpose it, like make it something that I enjoy, that I don't really know that I'm quote unquote exercising, that I'm just kind of having fun with it or something, you know. I mean, I'm always looking for ways to kind of make it more aligned, I guess, with the long-term role, right? Is well, what are we doing? Not just a checkbox of something I need to do for that day. It's not just a task, right? It's something that I'm like, well, how can I really align with everything else? Am I learning what am I doing in? Am I growing in other ways? And that that's a very big challenge within itself, is like, how do you how do you do all these things, right? And I think as someone who, as you would put it, I wear the badge of busy uh very often. I'm always trying to discard it, uh, but it always seems to be there, is I'm always looking for ways to kind of multi-purpose my time and energy into ways that I find uh, you know, just help me grow in so many different areas, right? Right. Um one of the things I want to go back to fasting too is when I do fast, I notice I have a lot more time. Yeah, definitely. Kevin, you noticed that like it's almost remarkable. It's like four hours of your day that you're getting back.

Yeah. I mean, I four hours, Eric. It sounds like you might be eating a little too much, actually.

I like to cook too, so I'll prepare all my meals.

Uh oh, that's great. No, four out four hours is totally reasonable. And yeah, you definitely have more time. I think the funniest thing for me was that when I would first start doing it, I would still open the refrigerator, like compulsively before I even noticed what was happening. So I I would have in my mind this plan of like, okay, I'm fasting for the next couple days. And then I would just find myself looking into my refrigerator. Isn't that weird? And and suddenly I would be struck by this idea like, dude, what are you doing here?

You're not Did you have anything in the fridge? Did you keep stuff in the fridge? Yeah, of course. There's there's food in there, yeah.

But it's like, wait a second, like this wasn't part of the plan, uh, lizard brain. We're not eating yet. So the going to the refrigerator itself was a self-soothing type of thing. And it gives you the opportunity to evaluate, you know, am I eating because I'm truly hungry? Am I eating because I feel uncomfortable? I mean, look, uh, diabetes is one of the biggest killers, but it's not, it's just one of the ways people die. So obesity is one of the biggest killers. No, it's not. That's just how people get all these other diseases. Well, okay, they eat too much. That's why people get obese. No, the eating too much is a symptom of the root cause. So the problem is we get so focused on these symptoms. We're like, we're gonna fight heart disease and fight diabetes, and we're gonna walk for the cure of these. It's like, no, dude. The the cure is understanding why you are engaging in this self-destructive compulsive behavior, and nothing else is gonna solve that for you. I mean, do we just like keep snacking and cross our fingers so some really smart guy can let us eat without ever gaining weight with a pill? I mean, it's ridiculous. So there are many reasons that people compulsively eat. I developed, I was chubby. I was never fat, but I was chubby.

I think there are levels. I was husky.

I was more than husky. I'm I'm husky now. I was chubby. So, and what I realized is for me, I mean, look, who doesn't love food? But what I found is that the quote, I just I like laughed to myself. Well, you can't do homework on an empty stomach. Homework was the most traumatizing experience for me because I wasn't good at it. It felt like a waste of time, it was like painful. It was just, I would like drag it out and I wouldn't like really get down to business. And so whenever I would feel uncomfortable, I would feel that anxiousness or fear or like I'm not good enough, I would, I would go to the refrigerator and I would I would self-soothe with food. So there's a good quote that I like. It's not about the substance, it's about the behavior. So thinking about, well, why am I self-soothing? With food is a great option for self-soothing, and it's a little more socially acceptable than crack. Crack, there's like more of a social stigma against, but yes, uh, there I don't I don't think there's much of a social stigma against Doritos and Hagen Das. I think that's like okay, just eat a bag of chips and eat a pint of ice cream and you're still fine. Same thing with uh social media. There's not really any evidence that you are frittering your life away doing that. And same thing with pornography, too. I mean, that's a good self soother. God, it's so easy, too. It's like right there. All the time. That's like that's tough to say no. That's probably one of the hardest things. Uh, that was one of the hardest things for me to quit doing because it's just it's like pure lizard brain, it's so easy, doesn't take much time, and there's there's no evidence that you're some sort of uh degenerate, right?

Well, it's it's interesting too. Like we're both, you know, been in the finest. My Instagram, which I could probably just do rid of. I I've talked myself into oh, well, I need it for uh my podcast, I need to have an Instagram account, right? Yeah, but being in the fitness industry and having like I paid one of the services, just follow all these fitness people, right? That feed is pornography. Yeah, soft feed. I and that's this if you're looking through your Instagram and someone walks by and you shield it, like no one sees it. Or if you're scared or if you're scared to scroll through it while you're sitting on an airplane because the neighbor might look at what you're you're into, then you're kind of in you're in that world of pornography. And uh yeah, it's it's just per it's pervasive, it's everywhere. I like not too much the topic, but sex sells. Yeah, and when I was young, it was like, okay, you gotta have a magazine, right? You gotta had it stored somewhere.

Look, the Sears catalog was plenty for me, or like a perfume ad in the 90s was like way more than more than enough. Yeah, I was like, and I'm just thinking, like, so the evolution, you know, it it it only goes one way, just like any other addiction, right? Right. You know, you start out and you're like, oh, look, Victoria's swimsuit model. And then it's like, here's a stadium full of people fucking each other, and you're like, whoa, you like suddenly like need that to get your rocks off because it desensitizes you. So I think the most important thing is to understand which behaviors are compulsive and have someone to talk to in an open environment about because it's very few people. I mean, we all have the ability, but it's hard to sort all this stuff out on your own. It's so important to have someone who supports you and challenges you at the same time. And I think that's also what makes a great relationship, whether that's a friendship or a romantic relationship, is do they support and challenge you? So it's these are all these are all symptoms of compulsive self-soothing on some level. And with with some of the things, there's clearly evidence of it. Like if you're self-soothing with food, you're gonna have a giant belly, probably. So there's there's evidence left over. But if you're just addicted to social media, you know, maybe your eyesight's a little bit worse and you can't focus for very long periods. There's but you can't see them directly when a person looks at you. It's not going to be like your teeth start falling out because you went on a meth bender, even though the rewiring of your brain and your dopamine circuits is maybe even more destructive because there's no like there's no governor to stop you. There's just, okay, yeah, I want to look at more, more titties, more cats, more heavy lifting guys. Like, show them off to me.

Yeah. It was it brings up an interesting thought too, because I remember at the beginning of the pandemic when we didn't really know, right? We're like, how bad is this thing gonna be? And um, you know, the people like the younger millennial 20-something were getting a lot of heat because they just didn't care, right? They're out like partying in Miami Beach and all this stuff, right? Someone brought up like, well, what if the symptom was visual? What if it was like when you get this virus, like your face breaks out in like something horrible, right? Right. Or your your digits turn blue and fall. Like, what if the symptom was worse? Would people pay more attention to it? Right. And would you get more quote unquote compliance to deal with it? And I think that's kind of the same thing is like if the symptoms aren't visual, right? Then people tend to sweep it under the rug or they just let it go along. There's more tolerance for it. And I think that's some of the things that we see. I mean, it's it's really easy to see someone who's a hundred pounds over fat, right? And you're like, well, obviously they have an addiction to something, but there's so many addictions that lie under. I mean, you know, for me, I like I got into nicotine, uh, you know, and then now I'm trying to weigh off it now. One of the worst things I think for people who did into like uh chew or dip or anything like that is these new zin packets, which are healthier, right? But you can't tell, like, I'll go through five of those in a day now, right? Right. Because it's healthy, right? But it's still an addiction and doesn't show anything, and maybe there's no long-term effects. Like coffee. Yeah, same thing. It's the same thing, right? And you always think you're taking steps to like, well, I'll just exchange this addiction for another addiction, and then you're still kind of in the same loop. Yeah.

I mean, I I've gone through so many things like that. Like, I gave up coffee also this year. Yeah, tough. Uh, I I'm just I've just been tearing myself down, like no food, no coffee, no pornography. I got like I got like nothing left. So I'm just like, but but it's been a really interesting experience because that has helped me realize what we're talking about, which is it it all comes back to having that presence of mind to take a pause and act consciously instead of compulsively and to get comfortable doing nothing. So few people are comfortable doing nothing. My cousin, I guess he's like 18 or 19. Dude, if we have a 10-minute conversation, he pulls his phone out 11 times. Like, you know, I don't know if it's TikToks or texts or Instagrams or whatever, but it's just like imagine like how difficult it will be to gain traction in something like truly meaningful to you, or to have some peace. Because if you're in this state where you're constantly like ready, ready to go, like you're ready, like, oh, what if something comes in on the telephone? It's like we didn't used to live like that. So I think it's it's a lot of growing pains because technology, uh the physical sciences have developed way faster than the social sciences and psychology. So we have these crazy powerful tools, we can blow each other up, we can eat all the time and look at uh naked 18-year-olds from from like anywhere, but we don't have the control of ourselves. So, how funny is that? I mean, it's like giving a monkey nukes just seems so silly now.

Yeah. There was uh it reminds me just a couple weeks ago, I went my wife and I went camping and it was hot. It was really hot and smoky here in Montana. And um, dude, I found myself bored. I had no internet, right? It was too hot to really go for a hike or go paddleboarding or really do anything, even to chop wood, it was just too hot, right? And I was like, holy shit, I'm bored. And then it came to me, I'm like, well, you gotta learn how to deal with this because boredom should be okay. And uh it's really hard. We're we're so naturally scared of being bored. Like, you remember the times, like maybe you and I talked about it because you'd sit in line at the bank and you didn't have any phone to scroll through, and you're just like, Well, I'm just bored, you know.

Yeah, you you don't have to be bored ever again if you don't want to be, because of the tools we have available. Yeah, and I would argue that you don't have to be bored even without those tools because you can balance on one leg, you can meditate, you can there's stuff that you can do. It's it's more that our cult the culture is really the the tail that wags the dog a lot of time. So we we don't want to feel exiled from the group. That's a really deep instinctual desire. So doing something antithetical to that is like social suicide, pretty much. And just think how much more common it is to hear, hey, do you want to go out and have lunch versus hey, do you want to go out and throw the frisbee? Right. Like, like who I mean, I I have I am weird and I have weird friends, and we invite each other to play frisbee or like just to play. Hey, do you want to come over and play? And uh it's great. It sounds like so ridiculous, but I think that's also a big part of aging, you know, kind of to tie it back into that is uh my friend Rob, he's 70, and he says, Don't let the old man in. You don't let the old man in. Don't you don't start acting like an old man, you got to keep playing, you gotta do something that's fun and a little bit frivolous, and you know, everything has to be this this measurable improvement. And if you're not getting a measurable improvement, measurable improvement, you're you're somehow bad or or lazy. And so there are all these negative, all these stories are just spun out of words most of the time. So it's just basically magic spells that make adults really sad. So when you go back to the intrinsic enjoyment, you you learn that boredom is the exact gift that allowed us to get to this point. People being bored and doing nothing and having time to like free their mind to think about things so they could be like, you know what? What if what if we made a a steam engine or something like that? Or uh I wonder if we can refine this ore into steel. You know, they're all those are like the worst examples of inventions ever, but you know, farming engine's pretty good trans steam engine's pretty good. The lathe is a big one. Yeah, that's probably one of the biggest game changers ever is the lathe. But you get the idea. That boredom is where you're gonna have your moments of your best creation, and so you look at the consumption to creation ratio, and creation is the highest uh virtue of human beings, even in the the i ching. That's that's number one creative force. And if you are consuming so much, you don't have time to create, you you're not gonna remember most of the stuff that you just consumed anyway. So it's so valuable to have that time where you take your consumption, what you have consumed, like you and I, right in this moment, have uh some sum of all of our experiences. So all of the stuff we've done, all of the stories we have heard, and more importantly, the stories we believe to be true. There's some like version of us here and now. Oh crap, there there it just went. Okay, well, right now there is. And so you can you can take that and you can let it marinate a little bit without stuffing more into it, and you can see what comes out of that, and you can say, Well, okay, what's important? What do I really like? What am I afraid of? How can I connect some of these ideas together? Because if you're just consuming all the time, you have no time for creating. And you know, just to tie that back to the the eating aspect, if you're digesting all the time, you're not really optimizing your ability to move around and do things. It's gonna make you more sluggish. I mean, that that's just uh that's just physics. You know, if if you're using more energy to digest and using more blood to digest, you're gonna have less for your muscles and brain. You know, you you have a fixed amount, basically.

Yeah, man. Um I believe it or not, we're actually coming up on an hour again. Wow, that was fast. That was fast, yeah, man. I'm curious, just for you know, people would uh I know you're always kind of diving into new areas to research or thought. Is there any um this because this question is called, so I never actually ask it, but I will ask it today. Is there is there a book or something you're consuming right now that you find fascinating that you'd like to share with the audience?

I guess what you're looking for. I really like the sci-fi book, Dune.

Oh, dude. That's like a great book. We it's my number one book of all time. And yeah, that's terrific. It it's really good. Uh I'm glad you brought it out.

Talks about power, it talks about uh scarcity. Yep. I mean, it really has a lot of those uh lessons deeply embedded into it, and it's it's highly entertaining. You don't want to put the thing down. That one I do recommend on audiobook though. Yeah, because audio on the audiobook is amazing. Uh the second one I thought sucked, but the first one's really good. Yeah. Uh just Dune. Um, yeah, Frank Herbert, I think. Yep. Frank Herbert's dude.

So, really cool side note on Dune. So I had uh the one one, you know, everybody has one or two classes that they remembered that they took, right? A teacher or something who made it different. I uh there was a class in my senior year, which was an elective in high school, and it was this guy, Mr. Alessandri, got it. And if you everyone wanted to be into a science fiction class, right? And I got in super excited. It was everything I had dreamed of. But you read at the end of the semester, you read the book Dune. And then what a class! Oh, it's great. And but wait, for the last week, you have the Dune trials, so you act it out in class. Everyone's a character, like I was uh Stilgar, right? Later leader of the Fremen, that was my role. And then someone's Madeb, and Wadib's on. Um, people are listening to this, so like these guys are nuts, but he he's on trial, right? And so this whole thing's played out. Everybody has a character, but you don't know where it's gonna go, right? It's unscripted. And to me, that was like, and then you really start to understand like the universe that this guy created in his mind is really the archetype for so many different things, right? Uh Star Wars, um oh god, what's uh what's the one with Neo and uh Matrix? Matrix, like all of these are really kind of come from the book Doom. Uh it's it's very uh it's very influential in that area. So anyway, I'm glad you brought that up, man. I think it's a great book. I think people should read it. I love it.

Yeah, I think you know, most of the like because usually you get a recommendation like self-helpy kind of stuff. And probably if you want to get like good cliff notes of something like that, I thought Tools of Titans was awesome because it's just little, it's just little snippets of like 400 interviews with some really high achieving people. But once again, the truth is like we already know what we should be doing, it's just that we don't. So, so how do you that's kind of like the Martin Rooney quote a coach is someone who gets you to do what you know you should.

Well, I think everybody's looking for like a fasting pill, right? Like, how do I get all the effects of fasting with a pill?

I mean, that's kind of yeah, but you'll never get the psychological benefits. So, like I said in the very beginning, you know, I I like that I'm getting some cellular recycling happening right now. Um I like that I'm letting my gut microbiome kind of have a little forest fire and cull out the the weak ones so I can add back only good stuff into it, taste buds change, all that good stuff. But for me, I just want a psychological advantage more than anything else. I want to get comfortable uh saying no to my compulsive behaviors. And fasting is, you know, that that's the deepest one, you know, say safety, food, and sex. That's that's what we got. So there's not a there's not a pill you can take for that. Similarly, there's not a pill you can take for skill either, you know, and and the training programs that I create now are very skill and attribute focused. So I don't know if I talked about primal athleticism last time I was on, but it's uh talk about it again, man.

I mean, this is when I ask you anyway, like what are you currently up to and what's what's going on on the business side of things.

So yeah, yeah, give us the gig. I launched a couple programs in the last year. One is primal athleticism, which is a modular daily practice where you go through some important skills like being able to do a shoulder roll and you know, bouncing and moving and commanding the space a little bit better. And it's basically a daily checklist for all of these attributes that I see deteriorate so fast in adults. And it's interesting because I refer to it as the high cost of zero. So being able to bounce and move, whether that's just you know, jumping on one leg or skipping or uh doing a Jenga, which is that capoeira move, which I find really meditative and good for the feet and ankles. If you don't do something like that, so high that you will deteriorate so quickly if you're not doing some sort of bouncing, some sort of bouncing. And there's that proverb that says we age from the roots upward. So I basically put this checklist together. It's roll, bounce, balance, rub, squeeze, shake, uh, crawl, climb, and carry. And then there's wrestle, dance, and play, I think. And of course, I just gave away the whole program. But I go into I go into excellent detail about how to make those part of a daily practice. So it was really fun because I made it much more about sustainability. And it's it's not a program, it's it's a checklist that reminds you like, here are these very important qualities like bouncing, balancing, and being able to roll. And if if you don't use it, you lose it, basically. So the the adaptability, I I just did a podcast with my buddy Anders, who's the head coach at my gym about adaptability yesterday. And that's the chief attribute for survival is adaptability. And it's driven primarily by the said principle, which is a neuroscience term that means specific adaptation to imposed demand. And that's heavily dependent on the frequency with which you do something and the intensity. But the the key with understanding the said principle, it's two words, always and exactly. So you're always adapting specifically to exactly what you do. So making this modular practice that you can do every day, and you can do one minute of each, or you can do five minutes of each. So depending on what your uh schedule allows, you can adjust it. So you still are getting that adaptation to really maintain those most valuable skills, where the cost of doing some is very low, but the benefit is tremendous, and the cost of doing zero is is catastrophic, basically. Like it'll just help you deteriorate. So that's uh that was the one thing. And then I also made a program recently called elasticity, which is more of a traditional program, just focusing on that one attribute of bounciness, basically, you know, trying to bend but not break. So the the evolution of how I see training has changed so much. And actually, if um I I had my um I had a code set up for your listeners. So if they want to use the code go primal, they will get 30% off. And yeah, you can find it at macshank.com or primalathleticism.com. And yeah, that that's that's mostly been what I've been working on. I I have some secret projects that I can't say anything about yet, but I love those. Yeah, uh otherwise, uh it's great. You know, you don't need to do much, you don't need to you don't need to bust yourself up to get jacked and shredded, really. And when you think about it, the whole way that we look at fitness is so twisted from these like monsters. And then, like, you know, it's it's always the top fraction of a percent of people who are like, you know, buy my meal plan, do this arm workouts, and you will get big in four weeks. And it's like, didn't you haven't you been trained? For 20 years? Like, are you really going to tell me that if I do your four-week workout, you're going to be suddenly jacked? It's ridiculous. So the whole idea that we have these really short periods of like, if if you do this four-week plan, then you'll be jacked. It's so the word I'm looking for. It's so, I think it's just rude, quite honestly. Uh because if you're not encouraging someone to engage in a lifelong fitness plan, then you're just kind of an a-hole, really. If you're not, if you're not promoting something that a person can do forever, you should come right out and say that. Like, I don't know, the Bulgarian squat program where you squat your absolute maximum in Olympic lift every day. That's not something you do forever, but it's also not about health and longevity. It's about peak performance. And it's important not to confuse those two things together. And so you realize that that top fraction of a percent wants one thing. The general population actually wants something totally different than that. You know, that if you ask them, hey, are you willing to sacrifice your health so you can lift more weight? The average person would be like, no, are you kidding me? That's why am I eating all this dark chocolate and red wine?

Circle it back. Oh man. Max, uh, it's a pleasure. I'm actually gonna go uh I'm gonna go get that elasticity one. I think it's exactly what I need kind of at this phase, too. So it's exciting, man. I um yeah, I always enjoy these. I feel like, you know, due to you know, my kind of rhythm that I find myself in this podcast with like executives and entrepreneurs and what's new in the tech world, that our conversations always bring a nice, I guess, reset for lack of better term, to okay, well, let's talk about the philosophy of what the hell we're doing. Like, why are we doing all this? Right? We're in fitness industry is in a big hustle bustle, you know, like a lot of things are changing. We're all trying to adapt, we're trying to reopen our gyms, we're trying to, you know, adopt new technology, we're trying to follow the trends, we're starting to be more connected, all these different things. But sometimes we just gotta be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, what are we doing here? Like, are we overcomplicating things again? Because the the industry has a tendency to overcomplicate things for we've been doing that a long time, you know, to your point. So, anyway, I love these conversations. It's a nice, you know, kind of philosophical reset for what we're actually doing um in our industry and just health and just being human beings. So thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks for having me. This is one of my uh this is always one of my favorite conversations. I feel like we could just talk all day.

Yeah, we could. We probably could. So next step is uh, you know, me to curse you to get you up to Montana. We'll see what happens.

Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun. I'll take you up on that.

Awesome, ladies and gentlemen.

All right, brother, Mac Shank.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minnesota. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the future of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.