Improve your health, physical performance, and conditioning - John Jaquish #31‪2

Full Transcript

Tony: Hi, I’m Tony. I’m an author, presenter at Sky Sports and years ago, I went to the jungle and got ill, very ill. So this is my podcast adventure to find more energy. It’s packed with biohacking, science, health tech, supplements, and some of the most well-known experts on the planet.

Tony: So that’s my podcast Zestology, live life with energy, vitality and motivation. Welcome back. Today I’m indoors. Often I like to record these podcasts out and about around London. But you know, it’s deepest, darkest winter, and it’s not nice out there. I will get out there later, but it’s not one to take the recording equipment out there in the rain. Today’s podcast guest has more than a million followers on Instagram, it’s not the only measure of success, is it? But he has got a lot of followers. He’s a Wall Street Journal best-selling author and an inventor of what is kind of like, well, it’s like a home fitness system. The technical term is an effective bone density building medical device. But what it actually is, is something you can use to workout at home to help you put on muscle. It’s handy when the gyms are closed. Dr. John Jaquish is an author as well. And we start it off talking about his book, which is number one in its category and it’s taken Amazon by storm. I hope today’s podcast will really help you in terms of getting healthy. John is very much into fasting and we talk about that as well. He’s controversial too. You will agree with some of what he says and you may well disagree with other parts. Here he is, Dr. John Jaquish on Zestology. Your book’s number one bestseller in men’s health on Amazon, isn’t it? crosstalk that’s great.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and it’s going on for three months now. That’s easy on day one. Actually, no, it wasn’t easy on day one. But it’s tougher over time to maintain that position, but we’ve been number one in both men’s health and in weight training.

Tony: That’s really cool. Wow. Congratulations.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s number one in weight training, and the name of the book is Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time.

Tony: Well that’s … yeah. I can well imagine many people saying, hang on, I need to know more about this. And especially you’ve got quite impressive physique yourself, John.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks.

Tony: And that takes up a large portion of the front page of the book doesn’t it?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right. Well, people don’t buy products. People buy better versions of themselves. And for any entrepreneur listening, you got to remember that. It’s not about how many hinges there are on your product, when Apple first launched the iPod which you and I are both old enough to remember, they didn’t talk about how big the hard drive was or how well it synchronized with your computer, because no matter what that was a headache and nobody really wanted to deal with that. What did they say? Do you remember what they said?

Tony: Remind me.

Dr. John Jaquish: A thousand songs in your pocket.

Tony: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because that is what people want. It delivered, it really did it. And so when it comes to the way I … and this is a very aggressive marketing stance, and I’m an aggressive guy, and I can also defend it scientifically for all the sideways hat clowns who want to argue with me, they can’t. They can say I’m a jerk or I’m a fraud or whatever, but they can’t back that statement up. Well, they can probably back up the jerk one. I have been a jerk before. And I kind of have known that, I’m fine with it. Tony: You can admit it, that’s fine.

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, if somebody comes at me and starts the conversation by saying I’m a fraud, I will treat them with the mutual respect that they have given me. And in fitness, the problem is the fitness industry is a wall-to-wall extremely unintelligent people. But it’s a good thing for me because it helped me define my market. So I went after smarter customers. I went after busy professionals. I’d rather it’s somebody who drives a long-haul truck for a living, that guy doesn’t have time to screw around with a gym membership and two hour workouts, he’s got to be on the move. And so something that that individual can do at a truck stop is no different than the attorney, the solicitor as you would call it. In an office, he takes his neck tie off, his dress shirt off, put the t-shirt on and can do an entire workout in his office.

Tony: Yeah. Yeah. That’s very compelling.

Dr. John Jaquish: And X3 Bar portable home gym is so small, if you are an X3 user and you know this is, it’s small enough, well, you can drop it in your suitcase. I can be in Moscow and people are like, “You bring an X3 with you?” And I’m like, “Does Thor travel without his hammer? Yeah, I have an X3. What kind of question is that? Yeah.” It weighs 15 pounds, it’s bigger than a hairdryer but … not that I need a hairdryer. But it’s so convenient to take everywhere and it’s a better workout.

Tony: I’m sold on the X3 for certain. And I think it’s an interesting place to start to explain to people why Weightlifting is a Waste of Time. Why has your book on weightlifting being a waste of time got to number one bestseller in men’s health?

Dr. John Jaquish: Because it works, because people try it and the results are overwhelming. Now, we still get people who get great results and because they’ve never worked out before, they don’t know that you don’t get great results from weight training typically, especially over extended periods of time. So, there’s that. But when people apply the principles and use the product correctly, the results are absolutely astounding. And people are getting much stronger, much more fit, dropping body fat much easier because of the hormonal effects and everything kind of pieced together really well. I did a meta-analysis, which by the way, I’ll never try to write one of those. That was like the worst six months in my life. But it was worth it because I got a meta-analysis to really understand why growth hormone is triggered in the body. And growth hormone is not an anabolic hormone, it’s an anti-catabolic hormone. So when you’re behaving in a way where you’re eating responsible nutrition, you have a lot less nutrients coming in your body, so you want nutrient-dense foods, but then you also want to trigger lipolysis and you don’t want to lose muscle, when growth hormone goes up, you don’t lose any muscle. So- Tony: You are almost losing me here John. I’m trying.

Dr. John Jaquish: You mean … okay. Yeah. It triggers the hormones so that you become very strong very quickly and you don’t lose any musculature and you’re losing body fat at the same time.

Tony: And that’s quite interesting, isn’t it? Because many of us kind of slave away in the gym and have done for many years, but actually this concept that there might be a much quicker way to work out doesn’t really tally with what we’ve always learned about how there’s kind of no pain, no gain, and you got to kind of put the hours in and everything like that. It seems so contrary to everything that we know.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Except we don’t know that we’re wrong.

Tony: What do you mean?

Dr. John Jaquish: I mean the general population is wrong about exercise. I haven’t been sore from a work … like the last 60 pounds of muscle that I have gained, I was never sore one day.

Tony: Yeah, wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Not even one day. I could have gone on and played golf right after my workout.

Tony: Wow. That’s great-

Dr. John Jaquish: The whole part. And like now, I am putting a maximum effort. In fact, the level of exhaustion you get from X3 … an X3 workout takes about 10 minutes, but you’re much more exhausted in 10 minutes than you would be with an hour of lifting weights, so that’s full disclosure. I got to be honest about. It’s hard.

Tony: I know that. And you are wobbly afterwards, aren’t you?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah. When I’m doing my legs, I have to sit down immediately. I need a chair near me, or I sit on the ground and just gasp for air.

Tony: Yeah. It’s amazing, isn’t it? It’s just kind of pushing you to your absolute max enough to build the muscle.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Tony: Interrupting this podcast for one moment. As I have an important question for you, have you had bad gas lately? I know this may be an uncomfortable topic but we need to talk about it, because today’s podcast partner will help you with that gas and that bloating, because bad gas is a sign you have undigested food fermenting in your gut. And I’m very pleased that today’s podcast partner can help you deal with it as it helps me. I won’t go into too many details, but it does. P3OM will help you have less gas and a stronger immune system. It also improves digestion, speeds up metabolism and increases your energy throughout the day. It’s a probiotic and it’s a hardcore one. What makes it different from other probiotics is that it survives the gastrointestinal tract. So it goes all the way through and it gets into the right place. It goes through your whole body to support both your gut and your entire immune response. It’s a secret weapon, if you like, for reducing or eliminating bad gas and kind of upgrading your energy levels. And this podcast is all about energy. So you can get 10% off P3OM right now by going to bioptimizers.com/zestology, you can use the code ZESTOLOGY10 for 10% off. And if you go to bioptimizers.co.uk if you’re in the UK, you can also use the code ZESTOLOGY10. So wherever you are in the world, use the code ZESTOLOGY10 for 10% off P3OM, the patented probiotic that eats up excess sugar, eliminates bad bacteria fast and sorts out your gas. It’s difficult to talk about gas, isn’t it? But I’ve just done it. Back to the show. What do you think, obviously we touched briefly at the start on the fact that it’s been such a challenging year for everybody. What we actually need, the irony of kind of being locked down and not being able to go outside, not being able to go to the gym, not being able to workout, is that we’re not doing the things really that we need to do most, which is boost our immunity and boost our strength. I guess this is something that we can do at home even if we are locked down.

Dr. John Jaquish: So it has a lot to do with exercise, but it has more to do with nutrition. The fact that Western society has such poor immunity to metabolically linked viruses, like influenza or the cold, the rhinovirus or the current one. I don’t want to say it, we might get censored. So when we look at hemoglobin A1c, the measure of how healthy the metabolism of a single cell is, it’s called hemoglobin A1c. It’s a very easy test to take, it’s a blood test, but very telling. And we live in a time where 70% of our nutrition is carbohydrates. And carbohydrates are not even a macronutrient anymore. We now know enough about carbohydrates, the amount of carbohydrates you are supposed to take in to sustain a perfectly healthy life is zero.

Tony: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Now, carbohydrates can help … there’s two applications of carbohydrates that make sense. One has to do with replenishing muscle glycogen after a very hard workout, that makes sense. But that’s a very limited amount. Very limited. And also, no one’s zero carbohydrate. There’s actually muscle glycogen in meat. So when people are like, I’m zero carbohydrate and you’re a steak, it’s like, no, you’re not. You’re probably getting five grams of carbohydrates in that steak. So it’s just something people say but they’re wrong. So muscle glycogen is a real thing. And I talk about that particular application in the book because cellular hydration is a good thing because you can grow muscle faster the more blood flow you have in the cell. The second thing to keep in mind, and this is probably the most important, is that naturally, let’s say you and I were part of an indigenous tribe thousands of years ago. What part of England are you in?

Tony: I’m in London at the moment.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, you are in London? Okay. Yeah. Let’s say we-

Tony: A London tribe.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, the London tribe. And we had to go hunt. When would we have access to carbohydrates? When would the peach trees have peaches? Basically right at the end of fall. That’s the only time during the year we’d ever have access to carbohydrates. And the rest of the time we just have to go out and hunt. And if we now look at bears, if we look at bears, they give themselves type 2 diabetes every year by gorging on carbohydrates right before the winter, so they get as fat as possible. It helps them to survive. So they have greater adipose tissue, so they’re fatter, so they’re better insulated for the cold. They can also live off of that, which is coincidentally is what they do, because they go hibernate, they just go sit in a hole for four months until it warms up again. So to them, type 2 diabetes is not a dysfunction of the body, it’s a function of the body. So really in nature, if you look at that animal model, animal models sometimes are great, because the animals you’re looking at were not drinking the night before their blood was drawn. They’re kind of easy to measure, because they really eat one or two things and we know we’re not going to get any weird variables. So when you look at those, the bear model, carbohydrates exist so that we can get as fat as possible when it’s going to help us survive. Now, because of industrial farming, we have access to carbohydrates and of course we’re finding carbohydrates, we have excess to carbohydrates year-round. It’s not like, oh, it’s not carbohydrates season, so you can’t get a candy bar. We have candy bars year-round, because we will find it in table sugar which keeps for a long time. So that’s really the issues, we’re doing something that’s supposed to be seasonal and one could argue, we don’t even need to get as fat as possible, because we don’t sleep in the snow anymore.

Tony: So do you combine your workout regime, your exercise regime with a keto diet, a low carb diet?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah, I’m pretty much 100% carnivore, very low carbohydrates. And I time them to be right with the workout. So I’m just using it to replenish glycogen. So I have a very low insulin response. Because you want insulin to be secreted the least to have the best hemoglobin A1c score and the greatest immunity, which is where we started, that’s the question you asked. And so I believe if people switched to a more … I don’t like the term ketogenic diet, because number one, ketogenesis is a function of the human body, it’s not a diet, even though everybody calls it that. And also it is the absence of food that triggers ketogenesis. So if the absence of food triggers ketogenesis, how can there be a ketogenic diet? It’s a not diet. It’s an eat nothing.

Tony: Yeah. So when you say carnivore, is there broccoli on your plate as well?

Dr. John Jaquish: No.

Tony: Come on, John. How can you miss out a good nice bit of roasted broccoli? It’s beautiful.

Dr. John Jaquish: I don’t eat mushy peas either.

Tony: Mushy peas are the best.

Dr. John Jaquish: Peas are not the best.

Tony: You got to have that with your fish and chips.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Well, every time I’m in England, I’m like, let’s get some English food. Somebody takes me to an Indian restaurant.

Tony: Yeah. The Indian food here in London is absolutely spectacular.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’ve got my favorite place in Earl’s Court. It’s nothing fancy. It’s just a little curry shack but it is dynamite.

Tony: Great, great. Just interrupting this podcast for one moment from my garden shed. That’s why it sounds so echoey in here. And I want to tell you about a new podcast that I’ve just been told about, it is friend of the show of Zestology, Sarah Knight. She has launched the No Fucks Given podcast. You’ve probably heard of her, you’ve heard about Zestology. She’s the New York Times bestselling author behind books like, The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck. And now, she’s brought out the No Fucks Given podcast and I’ve just had a little sneak preview and it’s good. You can listen and subscribe everywhere you listen to podcasts. Now back to the show. It’s interesting though, isn’t it? The carnivore diet, I have looked at that before a little bit on this podcast with Paul Saladino and others and it’s not something that has appealed to me. In fact, with me, I kind of cut the protein this year a bit, and the meat protein in particular. Partly because I’m APOE-e4, one of the APOE-e4 genes. And it’s actually seemed to kind of suit me quite well. Heart rate variability score is kind of bearing that out. But I suppose everybody is individual and it’s whatever works for you.

Dr. John Jaquish: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Sort of. The blood type in genetic testing, it depends on which research study you’re reading. It’s highly contested and ultimately, there really isn’t a lot of difference between different human beings. Like we all have a heart and lungs, we all metabolize food the same way. So I think the pharmaceutical industry had an expression which, everybody is different, find out if such and such drug that we’re selling is right for you. Which is their way of saying, if it doesn’t work out for you, it’s not really our fault because everybody’s different, which is inaudible and it’s just not true. And so I think a lot of nutritionists picked up on that because there’s a lot of personal taste that goes into … here’s the one thing. If you switched to carnivore, your hydration … if you weren’t carnivore and you switched to carnivore, your whole body hydration changes drastically, which will give you headaches for about two weeks. So just you don’t feel good, and people are like, I just feel awful and it’s carnivore diet, yeah, because you’ve made a change. So like if you’re a cigarette smoker and you quit smoking cigarettes, you’ll also feel terrible because of whole body hydration differences. That doesn’t mean cigarettes are really good for you. So I just use that as an example-

Tony: Very valuable.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. But ultimately, as long as the quality of protein’s high, like I’m eating much less than I used to and relying more on bacterial fermentation product to provide the highest quality protein for me. So the majority of my protein is via a supplement. And then I eat one meal a day at the end of the day.

Tony: Yeah. Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: And that’s inaudible something.

Tony: And do you get … you’re not the first person I’ve spoken to who has one meal a day, but that’s not very much food and don’t you get hungry?

Dr. John Jaquish: Never.

Tony: No.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m never hungry anymore. I eat because it’s time to eat. But my insulin sensitivity is great. So once you stop insulin from being constantly secreted, you’re not hungry, and you don’t need it, and you don’t need it for energy. And you actually do better in your workouts fasted.

Tony: Great.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because fasted workout is way better.

Tony: Is it?

Dr. John Jaquish: Because all the inaudible is on your intestines.

Tony: Okay. So always workout fasted?

Dr. John Jaquish: Always.

Tony: Yeah. And then eat afterwards?

Dr. John Jaquish: I like eating about an hour or two afterwards. It’s become a little challenging for me. I’m in a new relationship and schedules aren’t really a thing.

Tony: Wow. You got to make compromises sometimes John, that’s important.

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah. Dinner’s at 6:00 and 8:00 o’clock, “Hey, we’re here.” All right.

Tony: Also, that is the thing, isn’t it? I used to laugh at my … in the North of England, people eat dinner here a lot earlier than in the South of England. And I always used to laugh at my mates who lived in the North eating their dinner so early. But now if it gets to like 7:00 o’clock and I haven’t eaten, I’m looking at my watch thinking, “Come on, I’ve got to go to bed in a few hours time.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I’d rather have an earlier dinner so I can process it before I go to bed. Probably the only time I’ll have heartburn is if I’ll do Indian food and then do it really close to bedtime.

Tony: Right, yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s just a recipe for pain.

Tony: Right. Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, John, obviously I’m a huge fan of the X3. And also I’m intrigued by what we’ve talked about in terms of diet and I’m intrigued to see your book doing so well on Amazon. I see that you’ve been called the Elon Musk of the fitness industry. What do you think of that?

Dr. John Jaquish: I think it was the Tony Stark of the fitness industry. He’s Iron Man. He’s the guy that created the Iron Man suit.

Tony: Well, either of those. You’ll take it, won’t you?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I usually get compared to Elon in a very negative way, because he has a lot of haters. So it’s like, “This guy is just as much of a scammer, because Elon Musk …” and I’m like, okay, sure. Yeah, because his cars don’t work at all.

Tony: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. Whoever writes that clearly doesn’t know what’s going on. Elon said a lot of outrageous things and he backed them up. And so did I.

Tony: And his share price is doing pretty well at the moment. I did look at Tesla fairly recently. I think he’s doing all right.

Dr. John Jaquish: He’s doing all right.

Tony: What is one book that you would recommend and one tip for living with more energy and vitality? It can be any book that you’ve enjoyed or you think might inspire people.

Dr. John Jaquish: Have you had Dr. Baker on the show?

Tony: No.

Dr. John Jaquish: John Baker?

Tony: No.

Dr. John Jaquish: You’ve had Dr. Saladino, they’re similar in their vision. So the carnivore diet, it’s important to understand even if you don’t ever plan on going carnivore.

Tony: John, what about one tip then for living with more energy and vitality? What is one tip that you would give people to revitalize and recharge and re-energize?

Dr. John Jaquish: I would say fasting. Like the whole one meal a day thing, because that really helps. When your intestines can actually repair, your heart is supposed to be going all the time, your intestines are not. Any time you’re digesting food, you’re lowering your brain function, you’re lowering your muscular function. So the idea of we’re supposed to be eating small meals all day long is just not correct. Let your body recover.

Tony: That is it. Thank you to John, and thank you for listening as well.