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We need a new definition of success—one that harmonizes meaning and money.
Imagine diving into your workday with renewed energy, leaving behind the exhaustion or dread of a monotonous grind.
Traditional beliefs about success and the root cause of burnout are the same:
Prove yourself.
Work harder.
Take care of the business, and it will take care of you.
We’re recycling the mindset and practices that keep us stuck. Our souls need a jumpstart into The Age of Humanity.
Tune in for a new way of working that honors our nervous system and the bottom line, using knowledge of the brain, the Bible, and business. We’ll discuss timeless truths that amplify growth, ignite change, and reshape the world of work. No corporate speak or business BS. Let’s get to the heart of a rewarding career and profitable growth.
We speak human about business.
What’s in it for You?
Value, Relevance, and Impact (VRI): No, it's not a new tech gadget—it's your ticket to making your work genuinely matter to you and your company.
Human-Centric Insights: We prioritize people over profits without sacrificing the bottom line. Think less "cog in the machine" and more "humans helping humans."
I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hesson, your thrive guide leading you into the new Age of Humanity. I’ve navigated the highs and lows of business and life, from achieving over $40 million in sales, teaching thousands of people around the world about leadership, trust, execution, and productivity to facing burnout, divorce, raising a couple of great humans (one with ADHD), and navigating the uncertainty of starting a business.
I’m committed to igniting change in the world by jumpstarting business into profitable growth with the timeless truths of our humanity.
Sound crazy? It’s only crazy until it works.
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Want insight and advice on your real career and business challenges? Connect with me on social media or email me at rebecca@wethrive.live. Your story could spark our next conversation.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:00]: Welcome back to the Business is Human podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession, and we're here to bring you episodes that blend a meaningful work with profitable success. Here to steward what I call the age of humanity.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:24]: I believe if we transform the way we work, we can transform the way that we live. As always, my friendly request, if you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss any episode and leave a review to tell the other humans that they might like it too. Always looking to help you and connect with others.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:41]: All right. Let's get into it. Shall we? Welcome to this episode of Business is Human. Today we dive into a topic that blends science, health, and as I love to do, the human experience. Today we're going to talk about fasting. And I am so excited to talk about this. I reached out to bring this topic to the podcast because fasting is also a biblical protocol.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:01:07]: And as we know, I love the intersection of the Bible. Our brain and business and so I have invited Dr. Steven Geanopulos to the show. Dr. G, as his patients affectionately call him is a board certified chiropractic neurologist dedicated to holistic health and his fascinating connections. What he loves to look at the intersection of is the blood, brain, body and behavior.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:01:36]: So you can imagine how excited I was about this interview. In this episode, we explore fasting not just as a health protocol, but a tool for clarity, focus, and optimal decision making, especially for business leaders, as we do, navigating the complexities of everything that business leadership requires. Dr. G brings his wealth of experience to the table. Shedding light on how fasting taps into our physiology and how this ancient practice can help us thrive today. So if you've ever wondered why you feel sharper or more focused during a fast, or if you're curious about the science behind balancing health, longevity, and performance, then this conversation is for you.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:21]: Let's get started. All right, Dr. G, welcome to the show. I'm calling you Dr. G because you say your, your patients call you that. So I want that level of familiarity for this episode today. I hope that's okay with you.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:02:33]: Absolutely. That's just fine.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:35]: So to give our listeners some context for the conversation, you are a board certified chiropractic neurologist, which I love geeking out on all things, just health and science and why we do what we do and why we don't always do what we're supposed to do.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:52]: And I think you're the exact person to have this conversation. I noticed on your website that you talk about Things related to blood, brain, body and behavior, which is a pretty all encompassing set of topics. And today I want you to dig into all of your knowledge around fasting and its protocols and benefits, especially as it relates to our listeners who are business people who are working hard, making a lot of decisions and oftentimes overwhelmed by the totality of it all.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:03:31]: So welcome to the show. What do we need to know about fasting?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:03:37]: All right. So for the next 12 hours, we're going to be talking about fasting and I'm going to share with you everything I have.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:03:49]: No, I, I have to, I, first of all, I want to say how, how much I love the title of your podcast.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:03:55]: And I really think that that's something that is, is going to have legs. It's going to have longevity because business is human. I have three children who are it. College age and all the parents are worried about their children choosing careers that won't be replaced by the, the AI and all of that stuff.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:04:14]: And remember, the AI is being invented to serve us and, and there's always going to be a need for understanding what it is to be human and, and to create products and services that are serving humans. Right? We're not going to make products and services that serve the AI unless it's electricity. Right?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:04:35]: With that being said, what do we want? Well, we want a world in which we can thrive. We want a world in which we can do the best we can be the best we can enjoy ourselves, be physically active, have longevity. And in order to do that, we can allow our minds and our bodies to degenerate because of the modern lifestyles.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:04:59]: In which we have and the modern lifestyle, I mean, you could imagine where this body is, is something that, you know, took many, many thousands of millennia of years to develop, you know, 20, generations have created the body that, that you have and the life that all those generations lived was one that's very different from the lives that These last few generations have lived and the difference between the two is, is what's actually causing a lot of our problems, right?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:05:34]: Our health challenges are related to overabundance of virtually everything. Toxicity, right? Because there are 80, 000 chemicals that have been introduced into our environment just since World War II. Only a fraction of those have even been tested for toxicity. You know, sedentary living. So, you know, it used to be all the generations that came before us took care of themselves and their families by pretty much hunting and gathering.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:06:04]: You know, we had a this brief couple of thousand years of agriculture, you know, that went pretty quick. That's just a blip in time. So hunting and gathering is how we are adapted. This is the body that we've been given. And none of us hunt or gather anymore. We hunt and gather at our laptops and sitting down for many, many, many hours, consuming virtually anything that has ever been called food on this planet.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:06:34]: Virtually any time we want it at arm's reach, super cheap. So I think I'm just. Painting the picture of modern living can be something that we're absolutely grateful for and I certainly don't want to go back generations. I like my air conditioning, heat, wood floors, even the car that I drive today. I prefer driving that over the car I had in 1988, 86.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:07:01]: With all that being said, we can have gratitude for the abundance we have and for All of that while at the same time recognizing the needs that our mind and our body have. So that kind of pre frames your question a little bit and I'm sorry to be too verbose about it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:07:17]: Let me pause for a second. Don't apologize because that's, that's the context that I believe that is oftentimes missing when we dive into what we should be doing and how to be healthy because we can take our health objectives and goals and actually overdo them like we've overdone so much of our lives in our business. And so I often give that context to that where we really got off the rails in terms of. business as a human endeavor was when we went from the agricultural age to the industrial society, we unintentionally lost our sense of community, our sense of purpose, even though we were gathered together to survive, we lost a lot of the human element of work.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:08:05]: And so I love your context. I think it's an important missing piece that people understand that it's not their fault But it is their responsibility to choose things that get them on a better path. We've evolved into this place of too much and too many and all the things, but now it's time for us to take responsibility for what are we going to do about it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:08:27]: So I love that context.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:08:29]: Yeah, no, and and it really goes to the idea of fasting, right? So what are we fasting? You know, we think fasting, we think we're fasting from a nutritional standpoint, you know, as far as our diet goes, well, there are other things that we can fast on, right? We can fast from other aspects of convenience.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:08:48]: That, that we have an abundance of. We, we can do a fast from social media. We can do a fast from watching television. There's lots of different ways to do a fast, and of course everyone is tuned in here to discuss, you know, the nutritional part, and I, I have a, certainly have a lot to say about that. And when I think about who we are as humans, and you mentioned the agricultural age, and, Of course, the agricultural age required us to, yes, come into community with each other.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:09:15]: That marked the point where humans stopped running around hunting and gathering. When we think about the Native Americans who were here a couple hundred years ago, why did they have teepees? Well, because they were constantly moving, right? They were following their herds of buffalo or what have you. So hunting and gathering was a nomadic pursuit.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:09:38]: And again, that's the overwhelming majority of human existence. And then when agriculture came in, that allowed us to stay in one place. And when we stayed in one place, it allowed us to think and have, if there's a hundred people in our community, we only need like four or five of them to do the farming and the rest of them can like build roofs and shoes and maybe a light bulb or, or write a book.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:10:02]: So it freed our minds to do what I think God has given us the gift to reason and think. But with agriculture and staying in one place, we had to learn a lot. You know, we became very sick. When we look at the hunter-gatherers in Europe, very quickly, they went from being 5'9 to 5'11 in stature to within a couple of generations of agriculture, going down to like 5'6 or 5'7.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:10:31]: The hunter gatherers kept all of their teeth and the farmers lost all of their teeth. So we, you know, the fossil record is pretty clear that What we were farming was food that Actually resulted in some degeneration more rapidly. And then, of course, we had communicable disease because we didn't know, you know, we were living in the same place where we were depositing our waste and, you know, that's the water we drank.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:11:02]: And, you know, we didn't really understand anything about cleanliness. So communicable disease spread like crazy in the. You know, the age of agriculture. So I didn't mean for this to be a history lesson.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:11:15]: No, this is fascinating and important.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:11:17]: Yeah. Like human health, you know, where does it come from? Right. So, you know, Thanksgiving this past week weekend, you know, we had some family members, my, my mom and some in laws and, you know, they're very elderly and, and just climbing up, you know, my nephews are like, two of them are side.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:11:35]: By side to, you know, my mom making sure she gets up the stairs safely, right? And we're talking about, like, three or four stairs. And so, obviously, today people can live to a ripe old age, whereas in the hunter gatherer days, you're not surviving if you can't climb three stairs. So, how we degenerate, how we get sick today compared to our ancestors is worth understanding, so we know what What are the steps to take moving forward?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:12:06]: So when it comes to, to again, going back to the original question, which is fasting, we have to ask ourselves, why would we fast? Well, if we think back to the days of the hunter gatherers, again, the stressors that were placed on the people who came before us determined who survived. and if we were living in New Hampshire 10,000 years ago, I would say that if it were February.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:12:36]: And we're coming out of the ice age, it would be pretty darn cold. And I would say there's probably nothing growing out of the ground that we could eat between, I don't know, November and April. Right? Right. So, so if there are people there, and we know there were. Then what did they do? Well, they would kill a deer.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:12:59]: They would kill a squirrel. They would kill a mammoth. You know, whatever animals were there, and that's what they ate. Now, what if, between kills, you killed a deer today, you feasted on the deer for the next three days with your family, and now you're looking for another one? And who knows? A week might go by.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:13:18]: Two weeks might go by. What happened to them? Think about yourself. Did they become lethargic? Did they have a headache? Did they suffer such severe brain fog? Did they, after four or five days, sit there and say, If I don't get a bite, I'm not going to survive. And they're crawling up. No, that is not what happened.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:13:38]: As a matter of fact, their physiology kicked in so that they would become more likely to be able to get their next meal. If they became less likely, if they became weaker, lethargic, unable, you know, no strength, no speed, well then we wouldn't have survived as a species.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:13:58]: Right.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:13:58]: Instead, after a period of fasting, something happens, our physiology changes, and we Dip into a reserve of energy that actually makes us faster, stronger, more alert, need less sleep, more hyper focused from a brain function standpoint, so we can see that squirrel and come up with a plan to get it for a meal.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:14:22]: That's fasting physiology. It's not suffering and being hungry. So then you gotta ask yourself, Yeah, but if I go three, four hours without eating, and then, you know, I get shaky and jittery and lightheaded, if I don't get a bagel real quick, I'm gonna pass out. And this is, you know, what we call reactive hypoglycemia.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:14:41]: This is something that actually is more prevalent in women, where if too many hours go by and you don't eat something, You start to have symptoms, and it can actually trigger a headache or a migraine. Well, this is the biggest challenge, right? Because, well, it's not the biggest challenge, but it is a challenge because what you're saying is, as soon as I run out of fuel, I need to refuel, but here's the problem.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:15:06]: Most Americans have more fuel than they know what to do with stored on their body. So there's different kinds of fuel. There's the kind of fuel that we can burn quickly, and that fuel is usually what we call carbohydrate, or sugars, for lack of a better term. And the other kind of fuel is called fat, body fat, that stuff we have an abundance of.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:15:30]: Well Our liver can hold about 400 calories of glucose or sugar in the form of glycogen. So glycogen is the storage form of sugar. So this is very simple. I'm going to get a little sciency on you guys, but everyone listening can understand this. If I have a sugar here and a sugar here and I want to store it to use later, I have to Combine them, and if I string together, like a string of pearls, a whole bunch of sugar molecules, the string that holds the pearls together is water.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:16:02]: So when you have the water holding the molecules of sugar together, we call that glycogen. And because water is big and heavy, we can only store about 400 calories in our liver. We can also store about 1600 calories in our muscles. But the difference is, our liver can deliver the sugar it stores to any tissue in your body.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:16:31]: Your kidneys, your heart, your brain, you get the idea. What's stored in your muscles is only used by your muscles that is storing them. Oh, interesting. So the glycogen in my bicep can only be used by my bicep, for the most part. Technically, there might be some variation, but let's just say that's the way it works.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:16:50]: So if we add it up, it's about 2,000 calories. One day. One day. Now if you are a five foot ten, a hundred and seventy five pound male with 12% body fat, which is like really low, right? That dude's got a six pack. That dude has like a hundred thousand calories of fat that he can use for energy. The rest of us probably have a half a million calories.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:17:19]: As body fat that we, we could tap into and fat is different in that the reason we can hold so much fat is because you don't need water to store it. Glycogen needs water. If you stored as much glycogen as you did fat, you would weigh a thousand pounds because all that what you wouldn't be able to, it's just too much water.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:17:40]: So that's why fat, we can store a tremendous amount. Just look at some people who are morbidly obese. They're holding millions and millions of calories. You know, the world record for fasting is over a year. The person went doing nothing but taking vitamin supplements and drinking water, went from 400 plus pounds to 180 pounds.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:18:02]: This is going back some decades. His name is Angus something or another. You can look it up.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:18:08]: Yeah.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:18:08]: But this is the single case study of somebody who went over a year without eating food. So then the question becomes, well, how do you do that? Why would you do that? I'm not. I'm not saying anyone should do that, but, but, you know, that, that's kind of, kind of the way fuel works.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:18:25]: All right. So you take this person, she wakes up in the morning, got to have some breakfast cereal, right? So immediately you're feeding the liver. The sugar that was depleted from the night before and then, you know, a couple of hours go, go by and it's only 400 calories. So every time that little gas tank of 400 calories goes down, it sends a signal to your brain to refill it.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:18:50]: So we're going to have three meals a day with snacks in between because I got to keep refilling my liver to get to utilize, to get through my 2,000 calorie day. That's without even working out. So, then you gotta ask yourself, well, why am I not tapping into the other big tank, the fat tank, for energy?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:19:09]: Because you never have to. That's for an emergency. That is what your ancestors used when they had to wait two weeks in order to get their next meal. They would transition from the liver to the fat stores, back to the liver, to the fat stores, depending on how much food was available. Now, if you lived on the equator and there's vegetation growing all around you, you're less dependent on the hunting part and more dependent on the gathering part.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:19:35]: And you probably, because carbohydrates are everywhere, you had abundance of that. But 85 percent of the world's population did not come from the equator. The equator is responsible for 15 percent of the world's population, 15 degrees above and below the equator. is where humans, you know, came from. So, this physiology that we're talking about, the ability to shift from sugar burning to fat burning, is, in all of us, everyone can do it, but if you're 20 years old, 30 years old, 40 years old, and you woke up every single day of your life to a refrigerator and a pantry full of food, Well, breakfast, lunch, and dinner were a part of 99 percent of your life.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:20:16]: You may have skipped a meal here and there. So you've not tapped into that physiology where you have to transition from sugar burning to fat burning. So you suck at it. And when I say you suck at it, you suck at it to the point where the first few meals you miss. You have this reactive hypoglycemic event of feeling shaky and jittery and I can't miss a meal and I gotta have my fruit and my smoothie and all of that in my, my bagel or whatever.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:20:43]: So, this is…
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:20:45]: What’s more about, so it's more about the subconscious patterns of the past that you're accustomed to eating on that schedule than it is the physiology and needs for that meal or that snack.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:20:58]: Yeah, I, you pretty much take anyone who's not sick, you know, there are people who are sick who benefit from this too.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:21:04]: But let's just say you take any average person and fast them for three days, you know, drink nothing but water for three days. Each of us is going to shift into fat burning mode at a different point in that But 99.9 percent of us will make that shift in 72 hours. And when we do make the shift, it's kind of remarkable.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:21:27]: You know, all of a sudden your brain is like, oh, you know, when, when the liver is sending the signal, the liver is saying, you better get some food because I'm running low. You better get some food. I'm running low. And the brain is like, okay, I'll do what it takes to get some food. Oh, there's a bagel.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:21:42]: There's a donut. There's, you know, something quick. But if you force yourself to not do that, And go the full 72 hours, then the liver says, wait a minute, I remember when I was a baby, I only burned fat and look at all this fat. I have. Oh my God. Let's open it up. So we start opening up the fat cells, spilling the triglycerides into the bloodstream and all of a sudden your cells are exposed to all of this stuff.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:22:13]: Energy, all of these calories. Oh my god, I have millions of calories. I'm not starving, I'm just fine. And that is a physiology that people call ketosis. It's where we shift from sugar burning to fat burning. And then the brain is like, Oh, I'm okay, I got plenty of calories. And this is the phenomenon that people experience when they fast.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:22:35]: Where they say the hardest, when they do a multi day fast, let's say you do a seven day fast, or a three day fast, whatever. The first day is the hardest. The last day is the easiest. As a matter of fact, every time I've done a five day fast, I make a decision, maybe I'll go another couple of days. Like, it's really no problem.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:22:53]: The first day sucks. You can get a headache. It can be, you know. But now, if you train yourself, Then, you can find yourself doing a multi day fast quarterly, uh, a couple of times a year. You can practice what some people call intermittent fasting, which I only call it fasting if it's over 24 hours. What people call intermittent fasting is really time restricted eating, where they go, if there's 24 hours in a day, you know, divide that by 3 and you have 3 blocks of 8 hours.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:23:30]: 8 hours is for sleep and rest. 8 hours is for work and being productive. 8 hours is to feed yourself. And then, you know, you make sure you get all of your meals. I don't care how many you want. In that eight hour window, which means you're fasting for 16 hours, including the hours you're sleeping. This is a practice that a lot of people do because I don't care what anybody says, 16 hours is technically not fasting.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:23:52]: If you think about who we were prior to Thomas Edison, before electricity, well, you know, you had to wake up. And do what it takes to prepare or to hunt or to gather your next meal and you probably, if you, you wake up at dawn and it might not be until noon or one o'clock before you have your first meal.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:24:14]: So. I think it's quite natural. It doesn't have to be 16 hours. The research on this is starts at 13 hours. As a matter of fact, the religious practice of Ramadan is where it comes from, where during Ramadan is about 13 hours of fasting and they noticed a lot of healthy physiological changes were occurring, but you're not going to trigger ketosis.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:24:36]: On a 13 hour fast or a 16 hour fast, but if you train yourself to accept fasting as a regular exercise, then you can become very efficient and you can actually experience hours of ketosis per day on a 14, hour fast, and it's good to shift kind of back and forth between sugar burning and fat burning.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:25:00]: That's called metabolic flexibility. You want that all of us, all Americans. Are not metabolically flexible because we've been blessed. We've been blessed with such abundance. Just think about it. Anything that has ever been called food in the history of mankind is available to us 24 hours a day, seven days a week at arm's distance, or at least at the supermarket, super cheap.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:25:28]: Yeah. That's a fact. I think some of our biggest challenge. Is our comfort, is that we've grown accustomed to comforts in a way that we don't even appreciate the comforts so much anymore. They're more of an expectation and it doesn't allow us to feel the rhythm of emotion that we were built for. If we're constantly seeking comfort.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:25:56]: Okay, so, so now think about this. So when did the fitness craze start? You know, for my age, age group, I believe it really started in the 1970s where people started to really join gyms and, and get involved in running clubs and all of these things. Well, why do we go to the gym? We go to the gym to pretend that we're hunting and gathering that, that building shelter, whatever, like we're just doing the things that our ancestors just had to do, but we don't have to do it.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:26:26]: So. Since we don't have to do it, let's go pretend. And that way we can benefit from pretending well. The same thing holds true with food. Maybe we should pretend we're our ancestors. So I actually play around a lot with this. I practice fasting, but I do have some cautionary tales about fasting that we can get into, especially if you're over the age of 40.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:26:48]: And I also will, you know, go periods of time where I'll restrict certain types of foods. So if, if we think about it, if you want to be metabolically healthy, which is really what we're talking about here, if you're a business person The only reason to fast, to work out, to learn about this stuff is to make yourself better.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:27:13]: Better, stronger, fitter, clear minded, and, you know, that's the reason we're having this discussion. Well, sometimes I'll go, like, three months of eating nothing but food that's derived from animal products. They call it carnivore. And I like to do that in the wintertime, because it kind of makes sense, right?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:27:31]: I'm in the New York, New Jersey area. If this were 10,000 years ago, I wouldn't have food of any kind that didn't exist. come from an animal between November and April. So that's kind of the thought process there. And when it comes to improving your metabolic health, you have basically three levers to pull when it comes to food.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:27:54]: You can calorie restrict or have some form of restriction in the foods you eat. The foods that you shouldn't say calorie restrict, you know, a lot of people are going gluten free. A lot of people are going dairy free. A lot of people are just going something free, going vegan, animal free. It doesn't matter what it is.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:28:12]: There's research you could produce on virtually every single diet benefiting you. So if you go from no rules to some set of rules. You'll probably benefit, even if it's just a potato diet. I promise you, if, if everyone listening to this ate only potatoes for the next four weeks, everything about your metabolic health would improve, if you're a standard American diet person.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:28:35]: That doesn't mean the potato diet is a healthy diet. It means that you've cut out so much stuff. That would otherwise harm you and at the same time, you've calorie restricted because by definition, you're just going to. Fasting will do that. Fasting lowers your appetite so much that when you stop fasting and you start eating again, you may eat less.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:29:00]: And this is why people experience weight loss. Interesting.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:29:03]: So it's the restriction that says to the body Oh, something's different here. We need to wake up and pay attention, whatever functions that is in your physiology. And then by the nature of you restricting, you get into a deficit, but it really wakes up parts of your body from the restriction.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:29:27]: Is that an oversimplified version of what you just said?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:29:31]: No, that was put very well. There's a lot of dimensions to this though. So, so the human body is not a linear singular function, right? Uh, if, if we're gonna, like people who go gluten free, will experience massive amounts of improvements in their health, in their bloating, in their digestion, and, and their inflammation, and, and they might even get off medications.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:29:53]: I mean, it's remarkable.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:29:54]: Right.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:29:56]: Is it the gluten, the protein that comes from a wheat, barley, and rye that you removed? Is that really it? Or, think about what foods have gluten. It's all the processed food that is in the aisles, right? It's anything that comes in a box, a bag, or a jar. So, think about the number of foods you're eliminating when you go gluten free.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:30:16]: Now, a lot of people will pursue gluten free versions of junk food. And, you know They won't experience the health benefits, matter of fact.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:30:24]: The fat free Oreos and things that were for a while.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:30:27]: Yeah, yeah. Gluten free, you know, cookies. There's other things in there, right? So, you know, it's like I would say if you eat organic, it's great, but you can still get organic diabetes.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:30:40]: True, yeah.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:30:42]: Yeah. So, getting back to, you know, what does this mean when, when we're fasting again, it's an elimination process. So you can restrict certain foods from your diet. You can restrict the time in which you eat that 16 and eight met method that we were talking about. You can experience. Ketosis by going into a longer, deeper fast.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:31:06]: So what is a longer, deeper fast? The original studies on these were done at Harvard in the 1960s. They can't be redone because they're cruel, but these college students fasted for 40 days. And it was remarkable what they learned. So what happened was within that first three days, they went into ketosis.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:31:25]: They went to a pretty deep level of ketosis. So they're living off of their body fat. They're drinking water. And they actually experimented and gave them insulin. So if you think about it, if you don't eat food, you have no reason to produce insulin. You're always making a little bit of insulin because your body will always manufacture some sugar.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:31:50]: Matter of fact, the body needs a certain amount of sugar and it needs it so bad. We're so dependent on this amount of sugar that we need every single day that you never have to eat it. Your body will make it. So there's no reason to eat carbohydrates. There are no essential carbohydrates. There are essential fats.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:32:09]: There are essential proteins. There are no essential carbohydrates. So you don't need to consume carbohydrates to have the basic level of sugar that you need. So there's always a baseline of insulin. People who don't have a baseline of insulin are called type 1 diabetics and they would die without.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:32:28]: Insulin being given to them exogenously. So what happened was during these 40 day studies, they would get these people, these college students, into deep ketosis and they would inject them with insulin. Enough insulin to lower their blood sugar, because there's always a baseline of blood sugar, to lower their blood sugar to the point they would go into a coma.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:32:52]: And they didn't go into a coma because they were fully dependent on their fat stores. And they were just fine. If they did that to you and I, injected us with insulin, while we were fasting for a day, we would go into a coma, because our sugar, our blood sugar would go from 60 milligrams per deciliter down to 20, and that's it, we're out.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:33:16]: Well, these college students who did the 40 day fast, then were given insulin, their blood sugar also dropped to like 20. And they didn't even feel a thing, because they had so much ketone production and use. For most of the people listening to this, when you first start producing ketones, you produce so much of it.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:33:35]: Not so much. You produce it and you don't use it, because all your cells in your body are like, Whoa, you know, I'm set up for the sugar. Like, where's the sugar? I'm not really geared up for the ketones. So the ketones are floating around, they're not really doing anything. So you check your urine, lots of ketones.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:33:51]: You check your blood, lots of ketones. You know, they have these meters and strips where you can measure your ketones going up, but your body's not using them. You don't really feel great. And your breath stinks because you're blowing the ketones out of your breath. You have this bad breath. But then your body starts using the ketones.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:34:13]: The bad breath goes away, it's a very temporary thing. And the body starts, so you stop spilling them into your kidneys, so the ketone strips are not as abundant. And then people get frustrated, like, oh, I was in such ketosis and now I'm not. No, it's not that you're not in ketosis, you're burning them.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:34:30]: You're using them. Oh. You're not spilling them into your urine or, or breathing them out because of disuse. You're using…
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:34:37]: Your body's actually using them.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:34:39]: Exactly. Interesting. Exactly. So this is the fun that we have with fasting. The cautionary tale I want to tell has more to do, again, if you're over the age of 40.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:34:51]: When you start playing with 16 and 8 method of time restricted eating on a daily basis, doing a three day fast, and again, there are different, you know, I used to do a three day fast once a month, then I moved it to once a quarter. I used to do a 24 hour fast once a week. Then I moved it to once a month.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:35:12]: And the 16 and 8 method, I kept doing that for years. Because I just like it. It resonates with me. I have a tendency to overeat. I wake up, I'm not hungry. And I can go hours and hours and hours. And I tend to get most of my meals in 6 to 8 hours. And that worked just fine for me. But, the cautionary tale is when you do that, and ketosis actually lowers your appetite.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:35:39]: This is why people lose a lot of weight on a ketogenic diet. You know, it's great to not have to push away from a table still hungry. That sucks. I mean, that's terrible. And when you eat carbohydrates, it's hard, you know, that's the only way to calorie restrict. The only way to lose weight is to push away from a table, still hungry.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:35:57]: And that's, you know, practicing willpower, and that only lasts for a few weeks. That, that doesn't last very long. You could do that for a few months, but it's not a, a good strategy. But when you're becoming metabolically flexible and getting into ketosis, you're not hungry. There's very little willpower involved.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:36:14]: And then the danger is Protein or ongoing calorie restriction. So you're losing weight, losing weight, losing weight, losing weight. Everything's great, everything's great, everything's great. But your metabolism is slowing down to the point where even just a little uptick, not going back to the way you were, just a little uptick, you gain all your weight back.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:36:36]: Because you're so efficient now, right? And the best way to not let that happen is to preserve your muscle. Now, the good thing about ketosis is it actually protects your muscle. It slows down catabolism, breaking your, your, your muscle down, but your muscles are your most energy expensive tissue in your body and you want more muscle.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:37:01]: We lose muscle. In the fourth decade of life, you know, at a pretty significant clip, you know, losing muscle is what causes all the degenerative properties of aging. Right,
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:37:13]: right.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:37:13]: Osteoporosis, dementia, I mean, I could go on and on and on. There's nothing that will give you more benefit than building or holding on to your muscle, especially women.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:37:25]: Oh, especially women. And don't want people to miss that, especially women and I've made a huge shift in that in my life, prioritizing muscle building later, but I want to also say from a business perspective, this over 40. When we hit 40, we have all of this experience and wisdom and things that we can use in our business, things that we can share with our teams in the world.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:37:51]: So we want to make sure that from a physiology perspective, That we're maintaining the things that we need to be able to use the capacity of wisdom and experience that we've gained. And what I see far too often, and not necessarily in the people that I work with because they're hyper fixated usually on health.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:38:13]: We get to this over 40 and just at the time that you've got all this that you could be sharing, your health is starting to decline. So you don't have the energy and the capacity and the fortitude to go and do great things. And I want to Be a part of the messaging in the world that says, let's make sure that we're the healthiest.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:38:33]: We can be over 40 so we can go and share all of our gifts and talents that we've learned with, with the world. So, so muscle building over 40, is that the thing? Is that the thing that you said? If there's one thing you're going to take away from this after 40 to maintain that diligence and gumption, is that it?
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:38:54]: I know there's a million other things, but yeah,
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:38:56]: yeah. No. What, while you can never. Outrun a shitty diet and what that means is you, you can't out exercise bad, you know, dietary habits.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:39:07]: Right, can't outrun cheeseburgers. Although I would say a cheeseburger is probably better than the sugar free Oreos or whatever that is.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:39:14]: Oh, that's for sure. While that is true, there is nothing you can do. Singularly, nothing you can do that even comes close. To giving you the longevity benefits and giving you a health bang for your buck than exercise. And there's different kinds of exercise and, you know, flexibility, strength, endurance, all of those things, but.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:39:39]: If you had to only do one form of exercise, where would you get the most benefit? I probably would say resistance exercise, building muscle. But, at the same time, there is a form of endurance training called Zone 2 that is just indispensable in my life. So, Zone 2 training refers to long duration, low intensity exercise, a brisk walk, an uphill tilt on your treadmill, getting your heart rate up to a level where you're sweating, you're panting a little bit, you know, not, not panting, but if I were in Zone 2 right now, we would be able to carry a conversation, but it would be a labored conversation, it would sound like I was exercising, I would be sweating.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:40:25]: But we can certainly talk to each other. But if I were taking a hit class, there's no way we're talking to each other. Like one of those bootcamp classes, there is no talking to each other. So that's zone three. I think people over the age of 40 are doing entirely too much of that. Causing inflammation and all kinds of sex hormone disruption over the age of 40.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:40:46]: I think we need to do more zone 2 and resistance training. There is a place for a very high intensity exercise, but that zone 3 So if there are five exercise zones, zone one is like yoga, zone two is, again, if you and I are in a treadmill and we can carry a conversation, but keep the sentences short, if people were listening to us, they would know that we're on a treadmill, that's zone two, that should be no less than three hours a week, then there's zone three, which is kind of the bootcamp Zone, which is great when you're young, but if you do that five days a week, like I see a lot of people in my gym do, like women between 45 and 65, they look fantastic, they're taking hit classes six days a week, they're 55 and they look 25, and you talk to them and they have no libido, they have no energy, they're brain fogged, and they're destroying themselves, even though they look great, but then there's zone four and five, which is super high intensity, But that, if you do once or twice a week for five to 12 minutes, that's all you really need.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:41:55]: Now you have a great mixture of fitness, right? So zone two for three hours, resistance exercise two to three days a week. Just make sure you hit all the different muscle groups for muscle building, progressive resistance exercise. Zone four and five, super high intensity, once or twice a week for just a few minutes.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:42:14]: And then throw in there some flexibility. type things just to make sure your joints are able to continue to move through their range of motion. That's a great fitness routine.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:42:25]: But I want to underscore what you said that about zone three, because I have several female high achieving clients that I have instructed, even though this is not my training.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:42:37]: I just know it from the studies that I've done and people like you that have informed me. They'll be dedicated to a 5 30 a. m. bootcamp class five days a week and they're sacrificing sleep. They are in the brain fog. They're stressed out. And I say you're treating your health like you treat everything else.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:42:55]: Which is if, if I'm not torturing myself, it's not working. And it's this belief system that we've taken on that is not helping us. So I just wanted to, for my clients out there that are, maybe have heard that advice from me. I want to, I want to just say, see, it's, it's not, it's not giving you the real benefits that you think it is.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:43:15]: So, yeah, my, my, my specialty is blood work. I do this for a living. This is, you, you, you give me that client of yours, who's, uh, 28. Everything is going to be fine. You give me that client of yours who's 48, I'm going to see some stuff. Yeah. So just because you could do it doesn't mean you should do it. More is not necessarily better.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:43:36]: And when it comes to fitness, the objective from a longevity standpoint, my number one fitness objective is don't get hurt. Because the older, I'm, I'm 54 years old. If I get hurt, knocks me out for a couple of weeks, three weeks, four weeks. I decline very fast if I'm sedentary. So that's my number one objective.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:43:58]: Don't get hurt. Uh, one of the best ways to get hurt is to over train. But more importantly, inflammation. I don't know what's important to people. To me, sex hormones are super important. Anything that's going to sacrifice my sex hormones is out of the question, and five boot camp classes a week will destroy Your sex hormone production as you get older.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:44:24]: Good advice. Oh my gosh, so good. I want to go back to something you said earlier. Two things actually. One, you started to give us the three things. We started with restriction. I want to make sure we fill in the other two. And then I want to go back at some point, wherever it makes sense. When you talked about, you know, back in the day when there was those long stretches between the, the kill and, and being able to get the protein and the, the food that you needed, you did experience, like your mind got sharper, you were honed in because you're looking for.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:44:58]: What you needed to kill to go eat and I have experienced that with fasting and you alluded to it as well as after a certain number of days, I wake up without an alarm. I have energy. My focus is there. So I want to at some point come back to that. Like, how do we get to that place of focus for ourselves that aids in better decision making and on all the things that we need in business?
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:45:22]: So what are the other two things and how do we get our brains into that? Like, yeah. almost hyper focused level of performance.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:45:29]: I'll say there are three levers that you can pull. There's fasting, there's macronutrient restriction, which means, so there's three kinds of food, carbohydrates, fat, and protein.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:45:43]: You take one of those out, right? The one that I choose to take out is carbohydrate. It's not essential at all. We have calorie restriction, which includes fasting. We have macronutrient restriction, and we have food timing. Some people like to pull on all three levers at the same time, and you can do that, but it tends to be too restrictive.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:46:04]: And you can have muscle atrophy. Again, the last thing you want to do at 40 plus years old is go through a weight loss program where half the weight you lose is muscle. It's hard to get that back. Which is,
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:46:15]: which is what happens with a lot of the injections and the things that are being marketed to people right now that, yeah, I get it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:46:23]: I mean, and especially as a woman, there's nothing more attractive than, can I lose 10 pounds this week? Sign me up. Kind of like, I'll pay what, like we are programmed from a societal perspective to want that at a primal level, which I'm sad about, but it's just, it's true. But it takes away a lot of the muscle mass that we need for the longevity is what I've heard you say.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:46:47]: That's far more important.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:46:48]: And this is, this science of ketosis really a few years ago was misunderstood and people just thought get into ketosis, that's all you need to do. And they were consuming massive amounts of fat and they were pouring olive oil on things and. All of that. And they were protein restricting and they lost a lot of weight and they lost a lot of muscle and their metabolic rate went down and it made it very difficult to have long term benefit from that.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:47:12]: So
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:47:12]: I remember I had some friends. I mean, they were living off of like pork rinds, but their hair started to fall out and they look like shit.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:47:19]: Exactly. Yeah, they lost weight.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:47:21]: But I'd look at him. I'm like,
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:47:23]: You don't look so good.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:47:24]: But you don't look good. Like, I'm worried about you, but I also, I believe this all or nothing approach to our health goes back to, if you look at the root cause of burnout from 1974, it's prove yourself, always work harder, and basically take care of the business in the belief that it will take care of you.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:47:44]: So basically it's saying sacrifice all of your own needs and go all in on the business. And so this going all in on the business, we take that belief system that says I have to go all in on whatever it is, and that's going to give me the benefit. And that's not actually the science of the way that our body works in a lot of situations.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:48:07]: And so especially the over 40s. Hello, shout out 58. I'm at the age where I'm starting to lose track. Nice. We need a better perspective and belief about our longevity so that we've got. far more years to pass down the generational wisdom to our kids and our grandkids. And this no pain, no gain and got to go all in thing isn't serving as well.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:48:34]: And, and I'm glad that you're really underscoring that today.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:48:37]: Yeah, yeah, look, when it comes to doing a health analysis, and again, please stop me if I'm going off on tangents, but I think it's important. The annual physical you get from your doctor is a very, you know, 20 markers on a blood test. It's, you know, let's look at your throat, look at your eyes, look in your ears, feel your lymph nodes, listen to your heart, listen to your lungs.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:49:01]: Right. Check your height, check your weight. What's your blood pressure? What's what? What's your heart rate? This is the annual physical and the, the most common thing to come out of the annual physical is blood pressure, medication and cholesterol lowering medication. And every aspect of that exam that I just described to you is to identify a disease.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:49:21]: Did I look at your throat to see if there's an active infection? Why did I look for your lymph nodes to see if there's an active infection? Why am I listening to your lungs to see if there's any obstruction? 'cause you've been smoking for the last 50 years, which again, that annual physical is born out of decades behind us.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:49:37]: Don't get me started.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:49:38]: My friends and clients know. Don't get me started on the difference between a good functional check-in and, and a second. Yeah. So, so I stopped going because they looked at me like I was. Because I'm not on any medications over 40, I was the anomaly and they didn't know what to do with me, and it was kind of a shaming experience, so I stopped doing those.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:49:57]: Right. So then what do you replace it with? And I believe a great replacement for this audience is comprehensive set of blood work. So let's just say instead of 20 markers, it's 72 markers, right? Or, or whatever. More is not necessarily better when it comes to diagnostic testing and all that stuff, but a comprehensive blood panel to be not only read, but interpreted.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:50:21]: Then I look at. VO2 and resting metabolic rate, and I do that with a device, well, VO2 max testing is where we put a mask on your face, we have you rest for 10 minutes to get your resting metabolic rate, then we put you on a treadmill or a bike, and push you, push you, push you, push you, until we get a good understanding of how your body takes in oxygen, distributes it, uses it, and gets rid of the waste products.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:50:52]: VO2max is the number one health marker, bar none. Nothing even comes close. You can get a 20, 000 scan of everything in your body. The most high tech, advanced imaging in the world. Nothing is going to give you more value in understanding longevity than your VO2 max if it's done properly, and it, it might cost you 300 bucks.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:51:21]: So if somebody's out there, they can Google VO2 max testing near me…
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:51:25]: Yeah, there is a, let me go through the five. So there's the blood work, VO2 max and resting metabolic rate, they're together. Then there's body composition, visceral fat, subcutaneous fat, lean muscle mass. You want to know what you want to have as least amount of visceral fat as possible. Just today, a study was released about visceral fat contributing to Alzheimer's. And then after that, muscle strength. So, get this, your grip strength is a greater predictor of a cardiovascular event than your blood pressure.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:51:56]: I just saw a report on that. Yep.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:51:58]: And then flexibility, the ability for you to use and move your body and move in a functional way.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:52:04]: Those are the five assessments that I think are best. Now, a comprehensive wellness panel. is my specialty. That's what I devote my life to. Now, the body composition and the VO2 Max can be done in the same place. There is a franchise called DexaFit and I think it's like 300 bucks. You get a VO2 test and you get a Dexa scan that tells you your subcutaneous fat, visceral fat, lean body mass.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:52:31]: Dexafit, D E X A F I T?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:52:34]: Correct. That's a franchise. Now, the only criticism that I've heard about that franchise is when you do the VO2 max testing, and it depends on your abilities, but let's say between 12 and 15 minute tests. The assumption is they're going to push you for 12 to 15 minutes, and it is similar to a stress test in the sense that it's pretty low level activity for 90 5 percent of that time, but the last minute or two, they really do push.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:53:03]: And when they push, they really should, like the person should be a really good coach to get you to really get to that point. And that way, you know, your VO two max, because if your VO two max is. Starting in the fourth decade of life, which is starting in your thirties, that's the fourth decade, your VO2 max is dropping 10 percent per decade.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:53:31]: There is no better predictor of health and longevity than your VO2 max. Nothing is better. So it's dropping 10 percent per decade. So, if you're 55 years old, and your VO2 max is 23, Well, you can calculate how quickly you're going to get to 19. According to Medicare, you're fully disabled once you hit 20.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:53:55]: So if you do that calculation and you're seeing that number hit 20. When you're 70, 75 years old, you're in deep mess, because now you need care. You can't manage stairs. You're osteoporotic. You're gonna break bones, right? These are, this is just, this is the way it is. So you wanna be What I target myself, you want to be competitive.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:54:19]: You want to be one of those HIIT class, competitive people, fine. Do it by improving your VO two max, if you can be so the way they categorize it, there's elite superior. Excellent. Average. Right? So if you could be superior for the decade behind you, in other words, in the top 10 percent of the decade behind you, it's a nice goal to have, right?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:54:46]: There are ways to improve your, I got this little thumbs up thing popped. Did you see that? Yeah. If you, yeah. So if you can do that. Boy, there's nothing better that you could do for your longevity, because you can't fool a VO2 max test. It is dependent on who you are and who you have been for a number of years.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:55:06]: You're not going to increase it if you
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:55:07]: already have, if you get the test and you're like, Oh, this is not great. I want to be better. Oh,
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:55:12]: there's so many ways to increase it. So many ways and that's probably another series,
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:55:17]: another,
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:55:18]: yeah, it's a whole other conversation, but it's, it could be simple breathing exercises.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:55:23]: It could be breath holds while you go for a walk. It could be very high intensity zone four and five that we were talking about, but for short bursts, not necessarily for, for 45 minutes, by the way, you can't do zone four and five for 45 minutes. Because by definition, a bootcamp is zone three because zone four is something that A really well conditioned person can only do for like 20 minutes.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:55:48]: Zone 5 is something a really well conditioned person can do for like 30 seconds. So, we can have another discussion about that. But you can improve your VO2 by doing a lot of Zone 2. So think about your, your, your fitness as a pyramid. And this is not my analogy, I can't remember where I got it from, but There's a famous doctor who's uses this.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:56:09]: And so if it's a pyramid, if the base of the pyramid is narrow, there's a limit to how high it could go. So if your zone five is the peak. And your zone two is the base. By doing a lot of zone two, you have this really wide base of your pyramid. And that way the peak can get higher and your VO2 max can get higher and higher and higher.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:56:33]: So doing low intensity exercise is a great way to improve your VO2 max. If you want to trash your VO2 max, do nothing but zone three. Do nothing but boot, you know, boot camps. Again. above a certain age. And the reason I say that is because your efficiency, you're just going to get worse and worse and worse over time, because that's just working on the middle of the pyramid kind of a thing.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:56:57]: Got it.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:56:57]: So I said blood work. VO2 max resting metabolic rate. So resting metabolic rate is important because that's the number of calories you need just to exist, right? You wake up in the morning, you lay in bed for all day and then you go to sleep. That 24 hour period is your resting metabolic rate. If you lose weight too fast and you're losing muscle.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:57:19]: That resting metabolic rate is going to tank, it's going to, it's going to drop too much. If you preserve your muscle, your resting metabolic rate is going to not drop as precipitously. So it's a valuable measure, especially during weight loss. And then when it comes to body composition, visceral fat, visceral fat, visceral fat, and, and of course, lean muscle mass, right?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:57:40]: So I'm losing weight, my visceral fat is going from 10 percent to 2%, great. My lean muscle mass only declined a half a percent or it didn't decline at all, that's great. Which means my resting metabolic rate is high, everything is golden. And then of course strength, there's different ways to measure that, you know, dead hangs.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:58:02]: Farmers carry, grip strength, these are the different ways to look at your muscle strength. Grip strength is, again, one of those things. You can't fool it. It tells you who you've been for years, not just the last few weeks. And then flexibility, functional movement screen. There are a lot of doctors Offices and fitness facilities that will do a functional movement screen where they'll have you do certain movements and score you based on your quality of movement.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:58:34]: So those are the five assessments that I think should replace the annual exam and knowing where you are in those five. Now again, let's go back to fasting. So I no longer fast as much as I did. I went through my fasting craze in my forties. over 45, under 50, and I got tremendous benefit, but I lost a lot of muscle. Took me a long time to build it back.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:59:00]: Interesting. Interesting.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:59:01]: A long time to build it back. So I'm, I'm cautious. I still do 16 and 8. I will do a three to five day fast at least once or twice a year. I tend to do it in the wintertime just because it's, it's natural to fast in the wintertime. I think it's unnatural to fast when it's a summertime or there's vegetation growing all around you and you're not eating.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:59:24]: I just think it defies kind of…
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:59:26]: I love connecting things to the way that God created it in nature designed it to be
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:59:33]: Seasons. Yeah.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:59:34]: Yeah seasons, but that goals. I
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:59:37]: I don't eat bananas in January Let's just put put it that way right, you know watermelon, you know, there's no reason for me to get a watermelon from China in January.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:59:48]: There's just no, no…
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:59:51]: Amen.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [00:59:51]: Tastes terrible.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:59:53]: Even in whole January goal setting craze, January is really about hibernation and reflection and rest. And so I say to my clients, do your reflection time in January, but don't start setting The goals and going after it until you start to move into those spring growth seasons that you're more naturally aligned to.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:00:18]: Oh my gosh, I definitely want to have you back. The last thing I want to hit on before we close out today. This has been so great. Thank you so much. I want to know what is it from a fast that peaks? That I wake up early. I'm more focused. I don't have brain fog. What is the science behind that?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:00:45]: Okay, so that's ketosis.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:00:47]: So just think about it this way. You consume food, right? So let's just say we're eating, you know, just a mix of everything. Let's just say we're eating rice and potatoes. A hundred percent carbohydrate, right? It's not a hundred percent, but mostly carbohydrate. I take that carbohydrate. I fill up my liver. I fill up my muscles with glycogen, but, remember, that's only 2,000 calories.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:01:13]: So now, what do I do with any extra? Well, I can't, you know, sugar is toxic in the blood. Let me help your audience understand this concept. If it's been 90 minutes since your last meal, or 9 hours since your last meal, or 9 days since your last meal, or 9 weeks since your last meal, I don't care. You have in all of your blood, if I take all of your blood and I put it on a bucket on my desk, it's a 5 liter bucket.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:01:45]: In that 5 liters is 1 teaspoon of sugar. So we're used to putting a teaspoon of sugar in a Cup of coffee. Well, in your entire five liters of blood, 90 minutes after your last meal, you're supposed to have a teaspoon of sugar. That correlates on your blood test to about 85 milligrams per deciliter of sugar, of glucose.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:02:07]: Now, if you had a half a teaspoon, you'd be in a coma. If you had a teaspoon and a half, you'd be a diabetic. That's how tightly regulated sugar is. So when you were 13 years old and you ate a stack of pancakes, drowned in maple syrup, scoop of ice cream and some chocolate, and you had, you know, a thousand teaspoons of sugar, within 90 minutes, your body does backflips to get you to that one teaspoon. But the older you get, the less efficient that is. Now, what we do is we take that extra sugar that we can't store, we send it to the liver. The liver packages it into triglycerides, which is not sugar. It turns the sugar into these triglycerides, and we send those to be stored in our fat cells.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:02:57]: So, eating carbohydrates that you don't burn, Turns into fat. That fat is there stored for when you have lack, which most of us don't, but when you have lack to start spilling into the bloodstream to create ketones. Ketones are a preferred fuel by the heart and the brain. There's controversy there. The brain has a preference, ketones over glucose.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:03:29]: The areas of the brain that are using fat for fuel or ketones for fuel are gonna, it's gonna dramatically reduce inflammation and immune responses. It's going to create a more sustained form of energy and that's where That sense of focus and mental clarity comes from when you do an extended fast.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:03:56]: You're shifting from sugar burning to fat burning, which means ketones. And that physiology gives you the energy clarity. Again, for the purpose of solving problems, hunting and gathering, right? Remember, when you're hunting and gathering, if it were 10, 000 years ago, you're solving problems. What's the problem?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:04:19]: I need food. What's the problem? There's six feet of snow on the ground. What's the problem? They're hiding from me. You know, I have to solve all those problems to get my next meal. When you're in ketosis, you are an efficient problem solver. Right. You have the energy and the strength to hunt and gather physically, but you have the mental clarity and focus to solve problems.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:04:45]: I love the geekiness of knowing how all this works. And again, I said this to you when we met this morning, I'm always looking for the connectivity between business, our physiology, our nervous system. And I tie it also to biblical protocols and practices. And fasting is very much throughout the Bible as a strategy to break strongholds and spiritually align and get answers to tough questions.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:05:17]: And while there is a spiritual component to it, it's attuning our physiology to Read that spiritual awareness and connectivity that we need to solve bigger problems than we can solve with our own.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:05:32]: Remember, remember I, I remember I mentioned the, the Harvard study where they took the college students and they fasted them for 40 days.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:05:39]: Well, the only reason they chose 40 days is because it was biblical.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:05:43]: And I've done a 40 day fast, not all water, but it's profound.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:05:47]: Profound. And, and when, when we think about the biblical story of Jesus Christ, you know, 40 days in, in the wilderness and what he experienced, well, again, the human part of Jesus Christ was experiencing ketosis, right?
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:06:03]: It was, it was experiencing ketosis for sure. And then, you know, the spiritual side is the story we read. So I agree with you. I think there's wisdom in the great religions. You know, I don't know too much about. Fasting for, you know, I'm raised Christian Orthodox, you know, being of Greek descent and fasting is a big part of it.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:06:23]: And it's a big part of the Muslim faith. It's a big part of the Jewish faith. There's a reason why there's, again, the Abrahamic religions, you know, there's wisdom there. And even in the rules they have about food. and agriculture. I mean, they knew what diseases were going on in the agrarian world, and they had rules that are biblical, that are written in the Bible about how you produce your food.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:06:49]: And no doubt it had to do with food safety and abundance and all of that. I'm not a scholar in any way, so please, I hope I'm not…
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:06:59]: Nor am I, but I love having these conversations that raise the awareness that Just going after the next title or the next financial goal isn't the whole story. And the more that we know about our bodies and our brains and the way that the world was created to work, I think we can have a better business experience for ourselves and for our teams.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:07:22]: And I think business and commerce is a beautiful way to serve one another in humanity. And I just want to bring these conversations out to the world to say there's a different way to do this, that making money just ought to feel better.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:07:38]: Yeah, and you know, just like pursuing health, business and success is super old.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:07:46]: Right. As old as humans. And there's wisdom in the generations that came before us. We just need to apply that wisdom to our modern life lifestyle. What's that old saying that there's nothing new under the sun and we're just using research to figure out why what they did so many generations ago was good for them.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:08:05]: It's so true. I worked for the Franklin Covey organization for about 20 years and I had a potential client call me one day and say, I want something new in leadership. And she was just. Dead serious. And I said, I'm so sorry to tell you, there's been nothing new in leadership for 6,
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:08:20]: 000 years. Right.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:08:22]: Exactly. I don't think
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:08:23]: I, I don't think I sold the deal on that, but truth is truth. I just had to.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:08:29]: Agreed.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:08:30]: Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much. I want our listeners to be able to continue to follow you. You have so much amazing content out there. So much so you have well over a million followers. You are Dr. Stephen G on Instagram. And I know you also post to
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:08:46]: Everything. Everything. YouTube,
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:08:48]: all the places.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:08:50]: D R S T E V E N G. So Dr. Stephen G. And that, that's also my website is DrStevenG.com, so anything that I, and it's a blog site, I write articles about this stuff, I do Instagram videos on this stuff, I create YouTube videos on this stuff, I, I just love to, to share and communicate, I try to take a very complex thing like human physiology and try to simplify it as much as possible.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:09:14]: Excellent. I'm so glad you are. It's serving us in a really beautiful way. Well, I'm anxious to hear what kind of feedback we get from our listeners. And I think based on that, I'll probably come back to you and say, Hey, here's the other questions that they have. Can we talk about that next? So stay tuned for another request.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:09:29]: I'm sure it's coming.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:09:30]: I would love that.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:09:32]: Thank you so much.
Dr. Steven Geanopulos [01:09:33]: You're welcome.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [01:09:40]: Thanks for being here. You can follow us on Instagram, business is human or Tik TOK, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession. It's a great way to share some of the clips with your colleagues and friends. All right. Make it a great day. Love you. Mean it.