The Holy Grail of Biohacks
The Holy Grail of biohacks is a method that abuses metabolic pathways so that you can lose fat, gain muscle, and eat as much as you want. I ran a half-marathon without doing cardio 3 months prior on the Holy Grail. I dropped my body fat to 11% and increased my bench from 180lbs to 270lbs in under 3 months. Since I started, I have not even so much as gotten a cough. You feel like superman, because you are superman on the Holy Grail of Biohacks.
The Holy Grail is rather simple. People always struggle to wrap their head around what they should be eating and exercise. While nutrition and exercise are critical factors, they should not be the focus of improving health and wellness. The real determining factors of overall health are leptin sensitivity, insulin sensitivity, and inflammation levels. There is all this hype about hormones like estrogen and testosterone. People need to understand that master hormones like leptin dictate your body composition far beyond testosterone and need to be considered first. Leptin influences more than just how much food you want. It controls how much energy your body puts out. If you want to spike your metabolism, leptin is the key driver. While leptin regulates how fast nutrients are used for energy, insulin tells the body how it should be handling food. Insulin determines whether nutrients are used to build muscle or bolster fat. Once the body is sensitive to leptin and insulin, and inflammation is minimized it is very easy to be lean, athletic, vibrant, and eat way more than reasonable.
While quality of food is always a concern, the quantity of food consumed does not matter. The rationale is that if you are eating high-quality foods with a proper functioning metabolism your body will be forced to use that fuel to make you healthier, more energetic, stronger, smarter, etc. Why would your body not support times of abundant fuel to grow and thrive? If you are getting fat, it’s because your leptin is out of whack, and/or you are eating “poison” foods that are ruining your hormone profile. Why some foods are “poison” is that they are handled the same as other toxins in the body. The body handles anything considered a toxin, by locking it away in fat cells where they will be safe and not effect the rest of the body.
Do you wonder why some people can eat 4000 calories a day and still remain very lean, while others who eat less than 2000 have such a difficulty losing weight? It’s all due to how the master hormones leptin and insulin are commanding the body to use those calories. It is leptin and insulin that ultimately command a calorie to become muscle, stored as fat, or used as mitochondrial energy. If your hormones are reacting properly, you can eat however much you want. If your body is not sensitive to insulin and unresponsive to leptin, that’s when fat can easily accumulate, energy drops, and overall health suffers.
Do you ever wonder why you have a ridiculous craving for sweets? It’s a tell tale sign of leptin and ghrelin running out of control. The Holy Grail of Biohacks will put these master hormones where they should be making cravings for sweets a thing of the past.
Step 1: Reviving Leptin
One of the easiest ways to improve overall health is through managing leptin through intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is one of the few ways to rapidly change leptin levels and your body’s sensitivity to leptin. Leptin is normally fairly constant throughout the day in most people, spikes up or down correlate to their meals all throughout the day. Lean people typically have low leptin, while obese people have high leptin levels. The good thing is leptin is entrainable! Through intermittent fasting leptin is forced to be lower for the duration of the fast. The longer you can keep leptin low, the longer your body will be in an increased metabolic state. To intermittent fast correctly and control leptin one must not eat for 16 hours. By intermittent fasting, leptin levels begin to peak and valley, remaining low during the fast and greatly spiking at meal times.
Intermittent fasting can be done fairly easily. It’s as simple as skipping breakfast. If you eat your dinner at 9pm, skip breakfast, and eat lunch at 1pm you are intermittent fasting. Another way is to not eat for 8 hours after you wake up in the morning. This also affects another hormone called ghrelin, responsible for hunger becomes entrained with the 8 hours you are eating. Solving the problem of being hungry throughout the day. The new levels of leptin and ghrelin make hunger and satiety a non-issue. The real challenge is eating enough in the 8 hours you are not fasting.
By intermittent fasting, your body does not become catabolic like most people think. The human body would be poorly adapted to survival if this were the case. For the first 24 hours most of the energy used will be from fat reserves. After the 24 hours of fasting, muscle catabolism is a valid concern to be addressed. This means as long as you fast over 16 hours and under 24 you will be reducing your body fat, while retaining your muscle mass. It is the Holy Grail of body re-composition.
Another added benefit of intermittent fasting is that the body becomes more adept at portioning nutrients to the body. Meaning more of your food should be diverted to muscle rather than fat. If you are at all active throughout the day while fasting, glycogen is used from the muscles for energy. When it finally comes to eating, even if you eat carbohydrates, they will be broken down to glucose and used to replenish glycogen stores of your muscles. In contrast, if you were to eat carbohydrates with full glycogen stores, your body has nowhere to put the glucose so it makes fat to store it. It’s a straight-forward system that is intelligently designed. If you use your glycogen, you need to eat more, if you still have glycogen you don’t and shouldn’t.
The mechanism that glucose is transported to muscles is GLUT-4 which becomes more active after exercise, but more interestingly, it becomes more active the longer a person has been awake that day. This means if you defer carbohydrate consumption to the latter part of the day, you encourage your body to put nutrients into muscle rather than fat.
With master hormones in-check from intermittent fasting and carbs limited to evenings and after workouts, the body will be conditioned to burn fat and build muscle at all times no matter how much food is coming in.
Step 2: Reducing Inflammatory Factors
Common Causes
Toxins are anything that the body cannot digest. Foods that contain toxins are going to cause more inflammation. Most people walk around everyday inflamed and have no idea they are suffering from inflammation. The main source of inflammation for most people is from what are described as food sensitivities. People who are food sensitive have trouble digesting certain foods completely and what the body cannot digest is treated like a toxin. These foods cause the gut to become inflamed.
What a person is sensitive to is different from person to person. However, everyone suffers from gluten, a wheat protein in virtually everything is something our bodies simply cannot absorb. Some people are gluten intolerant where they get very sick and have severe reactions. Most people, live inflamed lives and are unaware as they blissfully shove more wheat bread down their throats and wonder why they have severe acne and are out of shape. A similar case is corn. Corn like most grains is a fertile growing ground for mycotoxins. (Toxins from mold) and should be avoided. Besides inflammation, toxin exposure from things as simple as eating tortilla chips can cause decreased brain function.
How To
The easiest way to eliminate the toxins and mycotoxins that have built up from years and years of eating can be handled by lowering body fat. Great! Who doesn’t want that? The first step is replacing the fats in your body with healthy fats. This is a fun, delicious way to get healthy.
- Replace whatever oil you are using and start using butter like Kerrygold. Butter despite popular belief does not negatively affect cholesterol and is one of the most nutrient rich foods you can find, especially if it’s from grass-fed cows. Hell, eat pure butter if you really need cheap food. Get unsalted.
- If you can afford it, eat wild-caught salmon and grass-fed beef. At least 1lb a day. I eat 2-3 lbs a day at 175lbs. This will increase your protein intake as well as your Omega-3s drastically. Don’t eat non-grass-fed beef. It will achieve the opposite of what we want.
- If you can’t afford the above, eat lots of eggs. By lots I mean 6+ whole eggs a day. Once again, cholesterol is not an issue. Pastured eggs are best, avoid Omega-3 Eggs if possible. You can tell a good yolk from the orange color rather than yellow. Yellow are sick chickens.
- Eat at least two whole avocados a day.
- If you want to snack, eat 90% Lindt Dark Chocolate bars.
- Drink lots of water.
Eat as much of the above as you want, just be sure to avoid breakfast. Don’t cheat and eat almonds at work thinking they are healthy. Do it right for 1 week. Then judge for yourself. The inflammation will be minimized, you’ll have less toxins and I bet you will be thinner, stronger, and better than ever.
Other Random Thoughts:
One problem however is that if you lose body fat too quickly you release toxins quickly as well and can overload your body and get sick. This is pretty common in the paleo community or atkins when a person decides to cut out grains from their diet. They essentially remove the largest source of toxins coming in and see massive weight loss from decreased inflammation, but then suffer headaches later. I suffered headaches for the first week, but after that I could think clearer than I ever could.
Why is it that the Japanese eat similar carbohydrate based diets to Americans, yet they live longer, and are more active far into their later years than the average American? One of the strongest correlations that might explain this between inflammation levels and cardiovascular health. Americans eat highly inflammatory diets and suffer from chronic inflammation. Inflammation is a good and normal biological process that initiates the healing process of the body. However, if inflammation levels stay elevated it can cause severe problems. The most common are obesity, acne, low energy, and decreased muscle growth.
So what are the main causes of inflammation? Toxins and injuries. Toxins are anything your body cannot process. While you are probably aware of things like Mercury in fillings and BPA, most people are blissfully unaware of mycotoxins. These are toxins produced by mold, microscopic mold like aflatoxin. What most people do not realize is that 99% of the food we eat today contain mold of some form or another. This mold actually effects our thyroids the same way metals like Mercury would. Inflammation elevates so that the body can handle the stress of the toxins and persist. And in it’s attempt to save itself from the toxin assault, fat is created to lock the toxins safely away in fat cells.
If you want to decrease inflammation, it is pretty simple. Aspirin NSAIDs are an easy out. Ibuprofen decreases inflammation levels drastically. Why do you think cardiovascular disease is greatly reduced by individuals who take aspirin daily? It is all from inflammation. While aspirin is a cheap solution it doesn’t solve the problem, and can never solve the real problem completely.
Possible things to look into: Leptin Set-Point Theory, Leptin is pro-inflammatory, Insulin is pro-inflammatory, Systemic Enzymes – Empty Stomach, Essential fatty acids, Digestive enzymes
One study shows that effects of Intermittent fasting/Calorie restriction may inhibit skin healing if a wound is present. For those trying to solve issues of acne, it may be wise to stop washing your face and load up on the clean foods until the issue resolves. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22037865
can i drink coddee with splenda to help get me to 1PM?
Coffee sorry it was early.
When you did this, what kind of food did you consume when you were not fasting? and how long did you do this for?
Coffee black and if you can’t do that, go with a strong yerba mate or green tea in morning. Martin Berkhan says diet coke is ok… I disagree, but its still 0 calories. Diet coke can get really bad if you have it with calories because it increases insulin resistance. I personally just have 1-2 cups of coffee black every morning.
I do this every day. Usually with 100% compliance. If I am not working out that day, I might have an apple and peanut butter in the morning or something similar. The important part is, you should strive to exercise fasted and remain fasted on the majority of your days. Breakfast now and then won’t kill you, but it can ruin the habit of skipping breakfast and cause you to get hungry again. I don’t get hungry in the morning anymore and I train hard most days.
As for the food question - Bulletproofexec.com’s diet is pretty close to what I eat. I do eat carbs at night sometimes and I tend to eat carbs after heavy lifting as well. Mostly green veggies like Broccoli, fermented veggies like sauerkraut, raw milk every night, and solid amounts of wild sockeye salman and grass-fed beef.
So this is your lifestyle and how you live? its not a do this for a week and go back to eating breakfast. Sorry for bombarding you with all these question. I only ask because my trainer who is a old school body builder and muscle head as well as I though you go catabolic so you need to eat protein in the early am for breakfast. I showed him this and Im going to try it. Thank you for all your help. I just found you on twitter. Have a great weekend.
@Brianhkerr I had my 1st intense workout since ive been doing the intermittent fasting and I feel wipped out like not enough food to fuel off of. Will that change after time. My workout was at 5pm. Much respect
I had my 2nd & 3rd intense work out both around 9am and I got very weak and light headed. I work a 7days on 7days off workout schedule. I think what I will do is do intermittent fasting on my 7 days on so I can fast at work because those days I typically can not make it to train because of my work schedule amd on my days off ill eat good and clean for breakfast typically 4-5 eggs.
Wound healing on an “obesogenic diet” - fat causing diet … IE GLUCOSE/FRUCTOSE HEAVY, is delayed in both subjects prone to being obese through genes as well as those resistant.
Moral of the story, to heal your body faster, skin faster, etc once again the answer is more protein… not fat, and definitely not carbohydrates.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21806853
Really really no bad side effcets associated with DR?I’d become really depressed if I were to do it though ..Oh and those concentration/performance-enhancing drugs. I heard they do work, with side effcets’ such as decreased appetite and weight loss (ooooooohh). Aside from the ethical problem, would you say those are good’ for brain health?
Marlon,
I would say Diet Restriction is not for everyone, but the benefits do make it very appealing. As for the mind enhancing supplements, I think there is a time and a place for them, but it is not for everyday use for sure. For example, professional weight lifters snort ammonia before doing heavy lifts for focus. They do not do it all the time. It has a purpose and is only used during their record lift attempts. (at least in most cases). As for brain health, if your diet is optimized, I would say they are not good for brain health. If your diet is not optimized, they could be very helpful.
I found your article The Holy Grail of Bio Hacks very interesting and informative but am wondering why you recommend eating the whites of eggs only not the yolks. That seems like ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’!
Sheila, thank you for pointing that out. I mean’t to write - “just be sure to not avoid the yolks” It’s very important to eat yolks if you are eating eggs, they are the better part! I have changed the section to read ” If you can’t afford the above, eat lots of eggs. By lots I mean 6+ whole eggs a day. Once again, cholesterol is not an issue. Pastured eggs are best, avoid Omega-3 Eggs if possible. You can tell a good yolk from the orange color rather than yellow. Yellow are sick chickens.”
+BK
“Also I love that phrase - “Throw the baby out with the bathwater”. Did you get it from Carl Lanore of Super Human Radio? He says that all the time.
As of the end of January I had lost 23 pounds over 5 mostnh, eating low-carb/high protein but had been stuck, stuck, stuck for well over a month. I found IF and began on February 1. I do a daily fast of about 18 hours and continue to eat low-carb/high protein.In 23 days I’ve consistently lost about 3 pounds per week and just dropped another pound this morning. I’ve also lost about 6 . While I realize that there is no way I could have lost 10 pounds of fat, I am being told by some experts’ that this is mostly water weight. While I have a general understanding of glycogen and lost water when you deplete glycogen stores through fasting how can I consistently be losing water weight? I’m very confused and would love to be able to tell these experts’ that they’re full of it!!Any help would be great I love this blog!
Fat cells don’t really die, but get smaller. Inflammation and water weight play a big part of the initial weight loss… but you should only see about 10lbs of water weight in total weight loss. Regardless, maintaining low levels of inflammation via IF and low carb, you will actually promote more fat loss and boost testosterone levels.
Cheers, BK
I cook everything in ccnoout oil or ghee to begin with, and I am taking krill oil as well, so no matter what I know I will be getting good fats. I also eat egg yolks (I started tossing the whites when I found out they are a known gut irritant) and I get animal fat along with my main protein sources (grass-fed beef, free-range turkey sausages, etc.), and I am quite the avocado addict (it seams to be the one food I can never get tired of). And if I ever finish a meal and still have cravings for more fat, I eat a table spoon of Nutiva Coconut Manna. As it stands, I never have hunger for lunch and go all the way until dinner with nothing but tea, water, and coffee (though I am trying to cut my caffein as it causes spikes in blood sugar).
how does it boost your test level brian?
I am stressed through the roof and have been so for over three years from being self employed - not sleeping, not eating well, depressed, etc. I am fighting adrenal fatigue to where my progesterone levels are scary low, I have gained 20 lbs. and have begged my Drs for help - they blew it off as stress even though I told them it was more than that, that something was very wrong. I am full of fluid (shocker) and have now stopped eating gluten (I didn’t know about corn), and am seeing a naturalist who actually saw the problem through testing. (beyond the weight gain, I am weak, developed migraines that put me down for 3 days or more, hair loss, motion sickness in the car, motion sickness when trying to run, etc) I am taking some supplements now and we think things are getting better. I want to start your program, but do you think it is a dangerous thing considering my health concerns at this time?
Corinna, I am by no means a doctor, so don’t take anything I say as medical advice. First, if you feel like your naturalist is getting you results, I would say to continue down that path till you are better. If you do too many moving parts at the same time, you risk messing up the good that is being done by some parts, by being over zealous with others.
Since exercise seems to be an issue, I would focus on things that you can do, like sleep. I would make sure my sleep is good 8-9 hours everyday until things right themselves. You can’t sleep? Get a zeo and find out what kind of sleep you are getting. You might be seriously REM/DEEP sleep deprived. I would really focus on light exercise and try to build in walking as a focus everyday. (Take your lunch and walk 1 hour fasted, say 12-1pm, then eat while you work after) Then once again, another hour later in the day.
Inflammation is your main concern, sleep and walking, and a solid diet should get you back on track. A solid diet and walking 2 hours a day should also make your sleep amazing as long as you stay away from screens… on that note… have you checked your vitamin D levels with a blood test? Depression and weight gain are often issues of low vitamin D.
So I am understanding that I should still fast, but please explain a solid diet (is it the low carb version, or should I still ingest some carbs while trying to help my body heal)? Should I still eat carbs because I will walk 2 hours per day? Do you recommend a speed walk? Also, there must have been a vitD problem, because that was one of the supplements I am taking. I understand you are not a Dr, but appreciate the advice - it seems that my medical Drs are lost in their recommendations and have completely missed the mark.
protein and a calcium supplement (if you are avoiding dairy) are what is important for the healing process, not really carbs. Just be sure to eat vitamin and mineral dense foods. Grass-Fed beef and wild sockeye are good staples to have. Good clean fats are also key… avocados should become your friend
, they are full of fiber too.
Walking vs speed walking isn’t really the question… you need to look at your heart rate throughout the walk and see if its where you want to be. I prefer to walk slowly and destress and enjoy the walk itself much more than speed walking to raise my heart rate and burn more calories. I am a big advocate of doing what feels best, because it reduces stress and therefore reduces inflammation, the cause of most issues.
So, to keep this metabolic rate high, do you fast every day - from the previous night until around lunchtime the next day? Do you ever add back in fruits/veggies? What about dairy? and what about PAM to cook the eggs?
I fast 9-10pm to 1-2pm the next day, just about every day. I do occasionally snack on dark chocolate during that time or have an avocado in the middle of the night, but those are high fat with less than 10g of carbs. Essentially, because the carbohydrates of those (aside from fiber) is low in those foods, blood glucose/insulin won’t spike because of eating them so I don’t worry too much about that. I eat carbs when I try and get stronger/bigger or when I am in periods of intensive cardio/training. Carbs like rice or sweet potatoes work great surrounding cardio type exercise/tennis because they trigger anabolic responses and tell my body to grow which counteract the effects of cardio which promote ketosis, protein breakdown, and all the signals that want to break down my muscle.
If I’m not exercising… I don’t eat carbs aside from veggies and alcohol. Dairy… aside from butter and ghee is awful idea in general. Raw organic milk can be good idea if you are trying to put on weight because it causes a huge anabolic response and provides great protein. I do eat raw cheese every now and then, but only at times when I am trying to spike carbs and anabolic responses… so when i want to get big… risotto is an amazing dish to do with Rice and Raw Cheese. PAM? really… butter or bust. Butter is your friend… especially grass-fed cow butter.
Do you eat like this every day or is it just for a week at a time every now and again?
I see your answer above!!!
Also, without any type of carbohydrate, how do you not get hungry during the day (and it screws with my sleep). Do you have to eat like this for ever or can you add back in some things carefully (minus corn and wheat)? Do explain the long-term plan as well
The long term plan is to move your muscles from using glycogen to using primarily free fatty acids. If you exercise a lot… you need more glycogen and protein. If you don’t exercise much, you need very little, but you still need lots of fats.
Trust me, carb cravings are not real… every time you want bread.. eat some bacon or dark chocolate instead. Everytime I get hungry, I eat some dark chocolate or devour a whole avocado. I probably eat a bar or two a day and 2-3 avocados. You really can’t get hungry eating as much as I do. Caffeine throughout the morning and from chocolate later in the day helps me a lot. I never really feel hungry since I have done this. Leptin/Ghrelin reseting and being entrained is the most probable reason. Also add lots of Himalayan salt/celtic salt for flavor on avocados… it makes them delicious.
My long term is much more than this… I live on an intermittent fasting, high HIGH fat diet with large amounts of protein eating roughly 4.5k calories a day. I cycle carbs throughout and try very hard to design my binge and lifestyle around the overall long-term plan. IE - Carb loading weekends or around heavy active days.
I am on the Ideal Protein diet trying to get my insulin levels and sensitivty back in check. How does the choc effect your insulin levels?
If it’s 90% dark chocolate, it wont effect your insulin levels at all. (Maybe 8%-10% at most) there are only 10 grams of carbs per serving. Fat has a low insulin response and because most of the carbs are fiber in dark chocolate, the carbs won’t cause a big insulin response either.
Awesome thank you!!!
Ever since I started listening to audiobooks at work, and skipping my breaks in order to finish my job, I’ve noticed I am almost unable to gain weight. I literally eat so much at home, but while I am away for 8 hours, I have water and a cup of coffee. My girlfriend gets so frustrated with me, and in all honesty I do have an extremely high metabolism (I used to ride my bike 20 miles/5 times a week) I have since slowed down. If I have weeks of eating at work, I gain a little weight. If I stop eating at work, I lose it.
About the mycotoxin thing, it doesn’t hurt to be overly cautious. Just trust me on this. Can’t say how I know, but I just know to watch what you eat. The recent weather (droughts, etc…) are making it a big issue.
Really enjoyed this article. Gave some insight into my life.
NewMe the leptin panel coniatns the thyroid hormone tests and they are important, as you know. Since it’s less expensive to get them in the full panel and the panel also includes the leptin test you need, it seems like a good deal.Leptin resistance and thyroid hormone resistance are linked through the liver (the all-important liver!) though in a round-about way. Leptin gets produced by the adipose fat cells. They signal the hypothalamus about the state of your fat (assuming your leptin signaling is working properly). Your brain then makes a decision about whether to Burn or Store the nutrients you’ve consumed, and signals the liver to handle thyroid hormones in a certain way to do this. If your brain decides to Burn, it tells the liver to make extra T3 from T4. If your brain decides to Store, it can tell the liver to make more RT3 instead of T3. Only knowing the state of your leptin resistance (if any) without understanding your thyroid hormone resistance (if any) is like only seeing half a puzzle. The final piece of that puzzle is insulin resistance, so getting another fasting insulin test now on the same blood draw isn’t a bad idea. Hope this explains it all
How did you find about the mycotoxin thing?
First in a class at UCDavis called - “Mushrooms, Mold, and Society” Then through additional research - I was skeptical for awhile about it… but now I just can’t ignore the evidence.
What a great read. Going to try this