BOBP 19: Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time

Episode 19 of The Brothers on Books Podcast features a summary and discussion of the book Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want by Dr. John Jaquish.

Full Transcript

Jack: I am Jack Allweil, and with me as always, is my brother Alex Allweil. Hi, Al.

Alex: Hey Jack, how are you?

Jack: Great. And we have a special guest today, Dr. John Jaquish, who wrote the book. Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want. John, how are you?

Dr. John Jaquish: I’m super, thanks for having me.

Alex: Thanks for being on.

Jack: Yeah, it’s very nice for you to join us. If you could just give the audience a brief background of yourself, that would be great.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. I got started in life sciences 14 years ago when my mother was diagnosed with osteoporosis. So she was diagnosed, and she was very upset. For those of you who don’t know what osteoporosis is, it’s when your bone density goes down, typically associated with age, but that’s like a correlation, not a causation kind of thing. It doesn’t cause it.

Poor nutrition causes it, which of course, is almost everybody. And then inactivity, it’s a dysfunction of disuse ultimately, because you need the stimulus to give the bone a reason to retain minerals. And most people just don’t do any type of stimulus, or what they should do. So they end up losing bone density, and my mother did.

Dr. John Jaquish: And she was diagnosed in her 70s, and she felt like she couldn’t do anything anymore because she read the statistics. You have a 50% chance of death, within a year of a hip fracture, if you’re over 50 years old. Think about that, 50 is not that old. She read those statistics and was very upset, and she read the side effects of the medication, and she was even more upset because they were pretty brutal.

And so I said, “Look, Mom, let me look into this, and maybe I can help you.” And I set out to design a medical device that would trigger the bone to absorb minerals on its own. So, no pharmaceutical intervention, a physical medicine intervention. That’s what that’s called. Sort of like physical therapy, you’re getting the body to start healing itself.

Dr. John Jaquish: In the experience of creating that medical device, I learned a lot of different things about the human body that nobody knew before. The biggest one was, that the bone density medical device is doing well, we have, its clinic locations called OsteoStrong, and we’re in nine different countries. There are 175 locations.

Alex: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So it’s doing fantastic. And anybody who has a bone density challenge, or who has a parent with a bone density challenge, look up OsteoStrong. And you’ll see if there’s one near you.

Dr. John Jaquish: The discovery I made while developing the medical device, and more specifically in the clinical trial of the medical device. So I did the trial in a hospital in London, near the University of East London. The researchers, and sort of the general staff of the hospital, all used the machine while the study was going on, but they weren’t participants in the study with us.

And so, they would ask me all kinds of questions throughout this whole process. And the best question I got, which I didn’t have a good answer for. They said, “We are pushing like hundreds and even thousands of pounds. And we’re loading our hip joints with like crazy amounts of weight, seven, eight, nine times body weight.” And they’re like, “How does that compare to weight lifting?”

Dr. John Jaquish: And I said, “Well, that’s a lot more. The strongest people in the world don’t lift those kinds of weights.” And they wanted to see the comparison. Well, when I looked up what the comparison reference numbers were, which is part of the NIA’s database.

The National Health Institute keeps a database of health and fitness information. Like what weights people lift, and what percentage of body fat people are. It’s kind of funny because it shows how unfit people are. And I’ll get back to that. But what was interesting was that humans, based on the impact-ready range of motion, which this medical device that I invented uses.

Dr. John Jaquish: So impact-ready means, if I put my arms out in front of me, the back of the hand is in line with the clavicle, 120-degree angle, from the upper to lower arm. So I can either produce or absorb the most force, in that position. So we used the impact position for loading the body, with the medical device, but that’s not how people lift weights. They use all positions, in an entire range of motion.

Well the difference between the weakest range and the strongest range, based on the data that I had, was sevenfold. So basically, you’re seven times stronger. No, this is, let’s call this one rep maximum, or static contraction against load measurement device, one position versus another. And all grades in between. So we see a very low level of force production capability in the weaker ranges of motion and a staggeringly high one in the stronger ranges of motion. But if you lift with a static weight, which everybody does, that’s not really how the body works. And you’re not stimulating very much at all.

Dr. John Jaquish:, as Peter Attia, I don’t know if you guys know who Dr. Attia is, he’s got an amazing podcast called the Drive.

Jack: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: His problem with weightlifting in general, is that it overloads joints and underloads muscle. So it’s like, we torture the joints to get a little bit of growth, but that damage to the joints becomes cumulative. So basically the stronger you get, you typically see somebody having to nurse their joints more and more and more until the pain becomes so intense that they have to quit. Then, of course, the fact that they were staying strong for longevity goes right down the drain, because you have to stay that way in your older years. And they don’t, because they’re too, their joints are too beat up.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I looked at the whole situation, and I didn’t want to start another brand. I was already selling well in the medical, with my medical device, and getting physicians to refer me to the clinics. And so that was basically what I was doing, at that time. And I still do that, for OsteoStrong. I’m the chief science officer of the company. So what I thought was, I knew weightlifting was a lousy stimulus for growing muscle, and I knew that there was a better way. The answer was, “We need a weight that changes as we move.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Now, it doesn’t have to be a sevenfold change, but it needs to be pretty dramatic. Because a sevenfold change is based on sort of a one-rep maximum, kind of thing. So we wanted something where it’s lighter than normal here, maybe one-third of the way up, it’s kind of like the normal weight you pick or maybe two-thirds of the way up, it’s like the normal weight you pick. And then at extension, it’s way higher than you would ever attempt to move in a gym because that’s by our actual biomechanical force outputs. So when you do that, you can fatigue all ranges of motion, which you cannot do with weight. Ever. So I knew there was a better way to do it.

Dr. John Jaquish: I thought a little bit about band training, and I immediately realized, that band training changes the weight as you move. But the problem with band training is it twists your wrists, and it twists your ankles. And if you’re using bands at any significant load, basically if you’re using bands you’re either going so light, you’re doing absolutely nothing. You might as well sit on the couch and watch TV. Or, you’re going heavy enough to hurt yourself. Because, if you throw a band around your back and you got to wrap it around your hands, your hands are being outwardly rotated the entire time, and you’re going to get cumulative risk injuries. And eventually, you’re going to have to quit. It’s the same problem with weight training.

Dr. John Jaquish: So that didn’t solve anything, so I realized I had to invent something else, to manage the band. So I invented an elliptic bar that can retain the bands as they stretch, and provide more force through the movements, and then a second ground where the banding can run underneath and protect your ankles. So your ankles don’t twist. It takes seven pounds of lateral force to break an ankle. But when I deadlift with the X3, that’s the name of the product I developed, I pull 615 pounds. But it only takes seven to break an ankle. So, do you need the bar and the plate? Yeah, you do.

Dr. John Jaquish: And so then, people saw this product, when I came out with it. And they looked at it and they’re like, “I don’t get why I need… Why don’t I just…” It was very confusing. It seemed so simple, that it’s sort of like, “Well, I could figure this out on my own, but then I can’t, because nothing does quite what that does.” So they would ask me, “Why do I need the bar and the plate?”

And so I thought, “Okay, as opposed to answering one question from one person on social media, 50 times a day, I’m just going to write a book about it.” And so, in the book, Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want, a Wall Street Journal bestseller. I go into depth as to why I did what I did, like why I got started, why I came to these revelations. And why, if you’re out there lifting weights, you’re just punishing yourself, for nothing.

Dr. John Jaquish: And then, another point I make in the book, and I used the studies to back this up, only the top… I like looking at percentage body fat because when you look at percentage body fat, that considers muscularity also. The more muscular you are, the leaner you are. Like, if you put on 10 pounds of muscle and you don’t put on any fat, your body fat percent is going down. So if we look at that as sort of the ultimate metric for how fit people are, the leanest American males, the leanest 1%, is 10.6%. That’s pathetic.

That’s not even visible abdominals. Visible abdominals are more like, 9%. And there’s a huge difference between 10.6 and nine. And then I would argue, people should be more like seven or 8%. At least, if they want to look sort of athletic. Regular people should all be in 10%. It’s like, the idea that we have… I think the 50th percentile is like 25% body fat. That’s fat. That’s obese, that’s really out of shape.

Dr. John Jaquish: And now that we know more about virology, and how weakened your immune system becomes when you have poor hemoglobin, when you have a poor metabolic function of cells, why wouldn’t everybody just want to be in shape now? Because basically if you’re not, you’re kind of a target for some dire consequences, when it comes to health.

Jack: Do you happen to know which country’s citizens have the lowest body fat, at least in terms of studies done?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s a great question. I have never looked that up.

Alex: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: I know the fattest countries are China, Mexico, and the United States.

Jack: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: In that order.

Alex: Okay. China’s fatter than us?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, the idea that Chinese people are all healthy, that was a lie that came out of The China Study. The reason a lot of companies like making up silly statistics from foreign countries is because it’s hard to check. And, not a lot of people have been to China. So, all the time I run into vegans who are like, “The China Study, the China Study.” It’s like their Bible, right? And I’m like, “That whole book is fraud. Every single thing in that book was either a misread of data or just an outright lie.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And also, The China Study is not a study. It’s the name of a book. So they didn’t have to go through peer review or anything. I mean, just that right there, that’s all you need to know. It’s like, “Oh, it’s not even a study? Oh, okay.” So, anyway. Chinese people are not healthy. They grabbed onto the Western diet, and they doubled down on the caramel and candy and cake and Twinkies and pizza.

Jack: So shifting gears a little bit, many people don’t think of optimizing hormones when they’re working out. You mention a few in chapter three. Could you describe some of those key hormones and their involvement in exercise?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, when most people go to work out… I’m realistic. I don’t talk a lot, though if somebody asks a question, I can answer the question about anything health-related when it comes to training and nutrition. However, I know why people work out. It’s not because they want to be healthier. Not at all. If they say that, they’re most likely lying. Maybe to themselves.

They just want to look better. So it’s completely ego-driven, and that’s fine. A lot of things we do are ego-driven. So I talk about aesthetics. Like, “This is what you’re going to look like. This is the change, it’s going to fix your posture. Your shoulders are going to be pulled back. You’re going to breathe better, when your shoulders move back, kind of automatically you get more oxygen with every breath. You get more energy.”

Jack: I guess if you could touch on testosterone growth hormone and cortisol, a little bit.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I’m circling back to the hormones. So the thing that people want the most, is to be lean. And then most people on the internet will say, commenters on the internet are… I mean, don’t listen to them. Listen to qualified people. Most commenters on the internet, don’t know anything.

They’re out to prove the Dunning-Kruger study, which says that the dumbest people have the strongest convictions. They think they’re the smartest. That’s the absolute truth. You can look it up, Dunning-Kruger, 1999. Great study. It’ll explain everything you read from commenters about politics, on the internet. The fewer people know, the more they believe they’ve got the whole thing mastered. It’s because they don’t know what they don’t know, so they think they know everything.

Dr. John Jaquish: But back to the hormones, I distract myself frequently, by the way. So back to the hormones. So triggering growth hormone is the number one thing… There are two things that we do, as in, the people who follow the instructions of the book. One of them is intermittent fasting. You can up-regulate growth hormones, by doing that.

The other one is a stabilization type exercise. So, you won’t catch me saying many nice things about CrossFit. But one thing that’s cool about CrossFit is, that all the movements are self-stabilization. You’ve got to be balanced while you’re picking up those weights, and X3 is the same. Now X3, because of the variable resistance, you end up dealing with more weights, you get a greater effect with X3.

Dr. John Jaquish: But when you do self-stabilizing movements, growth hormone can go up… Like, self-stabilizing plus load, you can get up to 2000% increase in growth hormone. And that’ll end up repairing your cells, making you very lean. It also regulates cortisol. There’s no such thing as a bad hormone, but cortisol, especially if chronically secreted, like for a high-stress person, can have some challenges. It can cause weight gain, whereas growth hormone is kind of the antithesis of that.

So you do want to manage cortisol down when… This is like, cortisol goes up when you get out of bed in the morning. So there’s nothing you can do. And there’s no problem when it temporarily goes up, but it’s when it chronically stays high, that’s when it’s bad.

Dr. John Jaquish: So the self-stabilization plus the extra loading from the variable resistance, X3 does very well, and people do phenomenal. And so, when these idiotic internet commenters are like, “Yeah, abs are made in the kitchen, it’s all that you eat.” Yeah, sort of. That counts, but there are other things you can do. You have a hormonal system, and it can either be working for you or it can be working against you. And if you understand it, you can make it work for you. And that’s really what I’m pushing, in that part of the book.

Dr. John Jaquish: The other hormone own thing that we need to keep in mind is, anybody who wants to gain muscle, whether it’s a female who wants her butt to stick out more and her legs to be more defined, or if it’s a guy who wants a bigger chest, bigger arms. When comes to growing muscle, there’s absolutely no getting away from heavy.

You have to train heavy, and it’s relative to the person. Like, my fiance and I don’t use the same amount of weight, when we train. However, you must go to absolute fatigue and significant weight. So what I’ll do is with X3, like in a chest press. At the top of the chest press, I’m holding 550 pounds. In the middle of the chest press, I’m holding about 300 pounds. It’s about a hundred pounds, at the bottom.

Dr. John Jaquish: So when I go to fatigue in that top range, exposing the maximum amount of muscle cells, and I know it’s the maximum amount, because that is the strongest range, so it’s self-defining in that regard. We can turn on receptors of testosterone. So the heavier you go, the more weight you put through a muscle, and the more testosterone receptors you have. Have available. So ultimately, we have a number called free testosterone.

When you get a blood work analysis, the testosterone your body makes, and then how much of it is just sort of free-floating in the blood, as opposed to potentially having an assigned location it needs to go. When you have higher free testosterone, it’s seen as a good thing.

Dr. John Jaquish: So what I’ve noticed is that every time I get my blood work done, my free testosterone keeps going down and down and down, because I’m training heavier and heavier because I’m getting stronger. My endocrinologists are like, “Oh, this is bad.” And I’m like, “No, you don’t understand. It’s great. That means my body is using the hell out of everything it has.”

And so, ultimately you do up-regulate and create more testosterone, so those numbers become matched because everything in the body has got some homeostasis, some balance to it. So getting more testosterone receptors active, that’s much more important than having testosterone in the first place because the muscles are looking for it. And when it’s in the bloodstream, then it grabs ahold and uses it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Between the testosterone and the growth hormone, those two things we are optimizing the up-regulation of, and optimizing the use of. So, up-regulation, meaning your body is creating more of it, and then with the receptor sites, your body is like, “All right, bring it over here. This is where it needs to go. And those two things are tremendous, it amazes me how most people’s workouts give them the opposite of what they think they’re getting.

Like I say, “Weightlifting is a waste of time, and so is cardio.” Well, the reason I’m anti cardio is that you get a heart benefit, a cardiac benefit, from strength training, as much as you get from endurance-type training. There are more than a hundred studies that confirm this, and they’re listed in the book. Now.

Dr. John Jaquish: So why do we do cardio? Let’s look at what cardio does. It up-regulates cortisol, chronically. Remember when I said that was bad, right? So we chronically up-regulate cortisol. And what does cortisol do? Cortisol, once it’s in your system and it’s high for a longer period, it gets rid of muscle. So it metabolizes your muscle and preserves your body fat. So you stay as fat as possible, as long as possible, while you’re sacrificing muscle. Does that sound like anybody’s fitness goal to you?

Alex: No.

Dr. John Jaquish: Stay fatter, and lose muscle? And yet you walk into a gym, and there are just people on acres of cardio equipment. Before doing any of this, when I saw it… I mean, I still do have it, but when I spent 100% of my time with the bone density business, with OsteoStrong, I would go into gyms from time to time on tours, because there’s some crossover between some fitness brands and some healthcare stuff. And so, I typically get invited to high-end gyms and they would say, “I’d be very interested in that.” And I would just ask people, “So, I saw you doing some cardio, what are you trying…?” And they’re like, “Oh yeah, just trying to drop some body fat.” That’s what people are told. And they’re all being misled.

Dr. John Jaquish: And then, to my point, who’s fit? Because I’m trashing the industry, and of course, I’m the most hated guy in the industry right now. But you know, I don’t care. That’s like, why homeless people are mad at you. The fitness industry is not full of smart people. And so, they’re mad? It’s like, “Okay. Yeah, the homeless people are mad at me, too. So whatever. I don’t care.”

Dr. John Jaquish: But the reason they’re mad is that everything they believed in, I’m pointing… Now keep in mind, that I’m pointing out that they’re wrong, with published literature that has been around for 40 years. So the fact that the fitness industry never had anybody smart enough to read this stuff to somebody, I can’t explain it. But it’s there, and it’s obvious and you shouldn’t be doing it.

Alex: Concerning running, just for your general health, probably just doing the X3 would be good for your posture and physique. But what about high-end athletes, that need high levels of endurance? Would you just recommend intense sprint workouts?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yes, exactly. Well, the X3 is kind of like a sprint workout. It’s very intense, but it’s very short. But I would tell people… Now, okay. If you want optimumX3 heart health, you don’t need to go and run or ride a bike, or anything. But if you want to be a great distance runner, you got to distance run, and you’re going to have to put up with those consequences.

You’re going to be skinny fat, which means you’re going to lose muscle and preserve your body fat. There’s no way around that. And you look at marathon runners, and they all have like flat glutes and a bunch of cottage cheese on their butt. They have cellulite, even… You just look at any cardio event, the people look deconditioned. It’s because they are, their body is working as hard as it can to get rid of the muscle, and preserve the body fat. So they’re just sort of like, sloppy skin and just bones.

Jack: You then go on to talk about, what one can do for getting enough protein in their diet and the usability of different protein types. Can you describe the mechanism that makes one type of protein more usable than another type of protein?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. So our bodies, what we need is essential amino acids. But I hate saying that in a way, because there are hundreds of essential amino acid products, that either doesn’t have the essential amino acids in them or are they made in a way where the body can’t use them. It’s sort of like if you take a multivitamin.

Dr. John Jaquish: And unfortunately, this is not a fraud. It should be. If you take a multivitamin and it’s a solid pill, and it’s got vitamin E in it or vitamin D, either one, E or D. Those are both oils, they’re fats. And so, they’re only usable by the body in their liquid form. You can dry it out and put it into some super vitamin pill. But is it usable by the body? No, it’s not. So you take a multivitamin, and maybe a third of the vitamins that are in there… They’re in the pill, so they’re not lying, but your body can’t use it. But it doesn’t matter, because most of the vitamins your body doesn’t need because those recommendations were just pulled out of the air. They were made up, in the 1950s. It was expert opinion in the 1950s.

Dr. John Jaquish: Coincidentally, you guys will like this, or maybe you read in the book. If you were to eat a whole foods diet, meaning no pills or powders, just-food. Fruits, vegetables, meats, whatever. Do you know how many calories you would need, to get all of your vitamins?

Alex: I think you say it in the book, it was like 27,000 or something. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s it. Aw, you’re awesome. Yeah, 27,000 calories you need, to get all of the micronutrients. Now obviously, that’s ridiculous. No human has ever eaten that much in a day, I don’t even think a rhino eats that much in a day. That’s completely idiotic. And nobody ever ate like that, therefore that is not the recipe for optimal health. That’s just ridiculous. So I tell people, “Just ignore vitamin recommendations, get blood work done. If you’re low in something… "

Dr. John Jaquish: I actually think the recommendations for vitamin D are too low, because I beat coronavirus in two days, by taking 50,000 IU of vitamin D. And I always try and be outside with my shirt off, as much as I can, so I can absorb as much sun as possible. Because your body makes its vitamin D, but then in the wintertime, I supplement with vitamin D. It’s so critically important for your immune system.

And people ignore it. There was a study that came out about a week ago, that said nine of 10 critical COVID cases could have been avoided with vitamin D. Yeah. It’s very powerful. Your immune system needs it. And remember, only liquid.

Alex: So just sort of going back to the protein, you talk about the protein usage rate between, and I guess this was just a general question. As you mentioned, eggs had the highest usage rate. I think you cited like 48%?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. 48%. The only thing that’s higher than that is human breast milk…

Alex: Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: … which makes sense. Most meats are like 38%. Whey protein is 18%. So if you think, if you have two big beer steins of whey protein, like a shake, mixed with water. So, each one of them is 50 grams of protein, you’re only getting… So that would be 100 grams in your head, but in reality, your body’s only going to use 18 grams of that.

Alex: With comparison to plants, do you know what it is, about the difference between the egg protein, versus the plant protein, that makes plant protein so much worse? Because I’ve heard that, a lot, but I just never really understood why.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Plant protein’s not even worth ingesting. It’s usually about, anywhere from like three to 9% usable, by the body. There are two reasons for that. One is our intestines. If you look at our intestines compared to other animals, our intestines are much smaller than other animals. Like a gorilla, they’ve got a gut out to here. Well, it’s because their intestines are huge, and they need that surface area to leach the nutrients out of the plants they eat. So we just don’t have that surface area. Protein is there, we just never get to it, it just passes right through us, so that’s problem number one.

Dr. John Jaquish: Problem number two, is the amino acids are wrong. So kind of ratio of different amino acids, as they’re needed, versus as they’re presented. With meat and eggs, what’s presented is very close to what’s needed. When it comes to vegetables, it’s wrong, totally wrong for human consumption.

Alex: Is it sort of like, unnatural amino acids? Or just, I guess you sort of mentioned like the eight essential amino acids.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s just either not there, or they’re there in such low quantity that even though you’re having amino acids, they’re not the essential ones, and those are the only ones that count. Your body can, other than the eight, your body can make the rest of them itself when it needs it.

Alex: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: So all that matters is those eight.

Alex: Eight. Okay. Interesting. Do you just briefly want to go over your diet? And I guess, you mentioned, intermittent fasting? Maybe some of the benefits of intermittent fasting. Quickly.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Jack: And maybe start with your definition of fasting, because there’s a lot of different…

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, yeah. We talked about this, last week.

Alex: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. A lot of people say they’re on a fasting diet, and they only eat 500 calories a day. And you’re like, “That’s not fasting.” It’s sort of like, “I’m abstaining from sex, so I just use condoms when I do it.” “Oh, is that abstaining? Okay.”

Dr. John Jaquish: I can tell you where that idea came from. There have been a couple of studies that compared one group who was doing caloric restriction, with another group who was just doing a more extreme version of chloric restriction, which they called intermittent fasting. But it’s not. So, if you have 500 calories in…

Fasting means, you don’t eat anything. Like, nothing. So when somebody… Oh, here’s another one. I see this all the time, there’s a whole bunch of products. The fasting-mimicking diet, and of course, you have to buy a bunch of products and consume them to mimic fasting. But it’s like, why don’t you just not eat?

Dr. John Jaquish: And also, all this other crap is like full of oxalates and inflammatories, and will completely not do what actual fasting does. It’s kind of funny. So I do, right now the experiment that I’m running is, that I eat one meal a day. So I get like a 20-something hour benefit, of a fasting period.

Now I do dry fast. So I consume all of my liquid in four hours, basically from four o’clock until eight o’clock. And that’s it, that’s when I eat and drink, and whatever. And then I got to get my hydration in, in those four hours. Because after that four-hour period is over, no food, no liquids until the next… For 20 hours.

Dr. John Jaquish: And that one meal I eat in there, it’s usually like a pound of meat. I was told, I spend too much money on meat the other day when I was laying out my food. And I said, “Yeah, I’ll eat a rib steak every day.” People were like, “You know, ground beef is like two bucks a pound,” or something like that. And I was like, “Really? I have no idea. I didn’t know that.”

So, yeah. I spend too much, and it took control to tell me. So like a pound of meat, and then I use, do four doses of Fortagen. So that makes up for 200, the equivalent of 200 grams of protein. But like I said, you count it as 200 because it would be the equivalent of 200 of a standard quality source.

Very easy on digestion. And it’s an appetite suppressant. And so I consume that because I got to drink it with water. I consume that at the beginning of the four-hour window and have dinner towards the end of the four-hour window.

Jack: I think in your book, you mentioned some Bulletproof Coffee you used to drink. Are you still doing that, or none of that?

Dr. John Jaquish: When, because I say in the book, there are a lot of different ways to go about fasting. What everybody starts with is water fasting, where you just don’t have food, but you can drink as much water as you want. And then when you start kind of running out of energy, or I know a lot of us are over-caffeinated, anyway. I don’t think that’s the biggest problem in the world, we got a lot of other, bigger problems.

Sugar is a much bigger problem than caffeine. However, a couple of things. When you’re intermittent fasting, and you’re going multiple days. So instead of like a meal, you have a Bulletproof coffee. So there might be 90 calories in the Bulletproof Coffee, which is butter, MCT oil, and the coffee. And it’s usually put in a blender, so it mixes well.

Dr. John Jaquish: It is very satisfying, very satiating. And then, it tastes great, it’s like the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had. But right now, I’m not doing that kind of fasting, and I’m doing water fasting. So I’ve stayed away from Bulletproof Coffee, for the time being. Because, not everybody is going to jump into dry fasting, right away. And I don’t recommend it, they do.

Dry fasting is like, that’s the final level. That’s when you… I’m trying to come up with a video game analogy. You’re at the last level. It’s okay. You know, like in a video game, where you only get like the cool sword or the cool armor, right before the end? And you’re like, “Damn it, why didn’t I have this the rest of the time?” Yeah. You guys know what I’m talking about.

Jack: For people that are listening to that, and think it’s kind of crazy, how do you feel you’re functioning during the day when you’re at work?

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.

Jack: Awesome?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, just high energy. My fiance’s 24 years younger than me, and she has trouble keeping up with me.

Alex: Is that something you’ve just gotten used to, or when you’ve been fasting, have you always felt like that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Fasting? Yes. Before fasting? No. I was just as… I was ketogenic, I’ve been ketogenic for like 15 years. And when I say ketogenic, a lot of people interpret that differently. I wasn’t 24, 7 ketogenic. I’d kind of drift in and out of it. But when I had carbohydrates, I’d have a bowl of rice or something like that. And I’m going to have some rice later because I’m going to a Southern place and I’m going to have jambalaya.

Yeah. I like that, jambalaya’s great. So I’ll have the rice. And so, I’ll be out of ketosis, but by the time I wake up tomorrow morning… It’ll be less than my body weight cut in half, in grams of carbohydrate, which is coincidentally the result of a meta-analysis that came out this year. That showed when you have half of your body weight in grams of carbohydrate, within an eight-hour window after the workout. Of course, it’s in a four-hour window for me, when you have that, it goes to replenish muscle glycogen, and not as fat cells. So I can have a few carbohydrates.

Dr. John Jaquish: So drifting in and out of ketosis, so I just want to point out I wasn’t in ketosis the whole time. I never really felt super high energy, until I started dry fasting. And here’s the best part about dry fasting. When you go with no liquid, your body will only let you get so dehydrated. And you’ll feel dehydrated. You have a kind of cottonmouth, you have trouble blinking. Your eyes are drying out. And then all of a sudden, it’ll be over. And your mouth will kind of rehydrate itself, and your eyes will be fine. What happens is you get dehydrated and then your body goes, “Oh, we’re going to go after metabolic water and use that, because there’s no water available.”

Dr. John Jaquish: So, metabolic water is the water that sits within fat cells. So your body starts leaching the water out of fat cells, and so you’re hydrated again. And you feel fine. But it destroys the fat cells. And remember, when you lose body fat normally, you just shrink a fat cell. This is why obese people when they go back on kind of a normal eating program, they can blow right back up. I mean, like everybody on The Biggest Loser, right? There have been plenty of memes about his little videos. Every contestant on the show, The Biggest Loser, put all the weight right back on. Like, they’re all obese again. At least last time I checked, a hundred percent of them, were either as big or bigger than they were when it started.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, this breaks that cycle. With dry fasting, you’re reducing the number of fat cells you have. Now, your body can create new fat cells, but that’s much harder. You got to be a real glutton.

Alex: Sort of a little bit of a tangent, but off of that, of the hydration. At the end of the book, you go into this sequence of hyperhydration, followed by stretching and lifting. Can you expand on that, about how that helps you build muscle?

Dr. John Jaquish: How much time do we have? Because I could go on this, this one subject, like an hour. I’ll give you the brief. So, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: The idea is, that we want to trigger something called hyperplasia, which is the splitting of muscle cells. And previously, maybe, I want to say like 20 years ago, most physiology professors would tell you there’s no such thing. Hyperplasia happens when you’re an embryo, and cells split when you’re just growing, but it doesn’t happen when you’re lifting weights or anything like that. As an adult, not going to happen.

Dr. John Jaquish: But it is odd, that the stronger people tend to have way more cross-sectional fibers, way more cells, than the people who don’t train. When it’s like, “Well, if we’re just born with the same number we’re born with, and a few get bigger or smaller, then why is it that all these strong people just seem to have an abnormally, super high level of cells?”

Well, it turns out they were splitting. And there’s a way you can force it to happen faster, by super hydration. So what I do is I take a vasodilator. Some supplements are vasodilators, like nitrogen oxide. You can buy that anywhere. You can get epimedium, which is a supplement. And you can find that in just about any vitamin shop, or health food store, or whatever. But that stuff smells bad. It’ll give you bad breath, just so you know.

Dr. John Jaquish: The best way to go is, like a Viagra. Or a Cialis. So I think it’s tadalafil or sildenafil, which are the chemical names. And so, you just go to the doctor and say, “Hey, I’m having a little trouble. Do you mind giving me a prescription for Viagra?” They’ll always say yes. It’s not like you have to prove you have an erectile function or not, and it would be weird if they asked you. You get the prescription and then what you do is, you take it an hour before your workout, then you take…

Or at least, I take 40 grams of glucose tablets. So I don’t like fructose, fructose is stored as body fat way too easily. Glucose has much more trouble becoming fat. It wants to be used as energy. It’s in the form that it is used in, already, and you just… So it’s like, already right there. It’s sort of like, would you rather have a five-gallon drum of fuel for your car, or would you rather have a five-gallon drum of crude oil, which you can probably do nothing with. You’d take the gasoline.

Dr. John Jaquish: So, I take that about 15 minutes before the workout, do my regular workout. And I drink a lot of water, while I’m doing the workout, like tons. Maybe two liters of water, while I’m working out. And then, at the end of the workout, because the glucose is doing its job, it’s taken all the water with it as well as, because of the vasodilator.

All the blood vessels are opening up and supplying the musculature with so much more blood, to replenish what was used during the workout. And that stretches the muscle out. Then on top of that, you do a stretching routine for the muscles you just trained, at the end of the workout. That can create enough room inside of the muscle fascia, which is the casing around the muscle so that the cells can split. And if you train hard enough, they will.

Alex: I’ll have to try that one.

Jack: So I think we’ll start wrapping it up. We are a book podcast, and because of that, we normally do a favorite quote of the book. Al, did you have a favorite quote or message, for this book?

Alex: I don’t know if I have a favorite message, but I’ve started eating a lot more eggs.

Jack: Good. That’s one thing I am going to be more cognizant of, just my protein intake.

Alex: Yeah, sure.

Jack: I did like the quote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Jack: And I think a lot of the books that we’ve read thus far, have kind of made me more aware of incentives and…

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Jack: … how everyone’s operating.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. That’s a quote from Upton Sinclair, who was a politician I would have never agreed with, on any subject other than that. I’m a very open-minded guy. I listen to the people I have very little respect for, at the same time, because it doesn’t mean they won’t have a good idea.

Right? I tell people, “Don’t be political. Political parties are for idiots. Just forget all about that. That’s just a recipe for unhappiness. Listen to each person, like they didn’t belong to a party. And just vote on the guy or girl.” Don’t determine it based on, “Well, they like these things, and those are the things that matter to me.” It’s like, if you’re a one-issue person, man, you shouldn’t even be allowed to vote, you’re so dumb. Really? Nothing else counts, except your one issue? That’s just sad.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I always try and consider all these things. And the irony of that comment, with Upton Sinclair, was that he felt that people wouldn’t listen to his positive statements on socialism and communism. You’re like, “Okay.”

But we have plenty of evidence that I mean, that’s only failed 23 times with 23 different governments on Earth, but by all means, let’s give it another shot.” So it’s really funny that he came up with a brilliant quote, but it was about something that was beyond failed. Funny.

Alex: 24 is the charm.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. Yeah. There’s another one in there, that was by Milton Friedman. He was the person I have limitless respect for, a brilliant guy. The best economist the world has ever seen, and said, “You’ve got to judge programs based on the results, not their intentions.”

And I used that quote in there because, and that’s like the only big text I have in the book, other than the chapter headings. And I put that in there because it’s like, while we have so many people defending standard fitness, standard fitness has failed. Where are all the fit people? People going to gyms right now, we could walk into any 24 Hour Fitness, or Planet Fitness, or LA, what is it? LA Workout or, I don’t know the names of them, anymore. I haven’t been in a gym in years.

Dr. John Jaquish: You walk in there, and the people that are there don’t look any different than the people that are sitting in the Pizza Hut. Like, where are all the fit people? Are there some fit people? Yeah. Some people look incredible. There are like 30 of them. . There are only like 30 guys, and they’re in all the ads. Okay, so there’s like only like 30 male physiques that are admirable, I guess?

Alex: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Shouldn’t that be a red flag, to somebody? If the fitness industry delivered on its promise… 50% of males in the United States lift weights, either at home or in a gym regularly. Now most of them are at home, yet the fitness level in this country is pathetic. And then you get responses from people like, “Yeah, well, it’s because they’re not dedicated.”

And then you look at the person who’s commenting, and they’re fat. So yeah, it’s just hilarious. I tell people, “There’s no good reason. You cannot justify defending this industry, when it has failed either completely or almost completely.” Maybe, one-tenth of 1% of people are incredibly fit. And that’s it. Or one-hundredth of 1%. And everybody else is just kind of an average nothing. So I beg people to question why they’re doing what they’re doing if it fails for almost everyone.

Jack: I am curious, of all the people you’ve trained, I saw you worked with NBA and NFL players.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Jack: Which player would you say is just like the charts strong, or the most surprising that you’ve worked with?

Dr. John Jaquish: Honestly, there are a lot of really strong bodybuilders. I kind of, I mean, yeah. You can’t get away from having to be, right? So they’re incredibly strong. The NFL players are a lot stronger than they look because they’re not training for an aesthetic.

They’re not trying to look big, they’re just big. But their focus is performance. So they look a little softer, they look a little more normal, but they’re very fit people. They are incredibly strong. NBA players are very fragile because they’re so tall. And when you’re tall and you jump and land, you’re limbs are longer, so there’s more stress put on all the joints. The joint integrity of an NBA player…

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s funny because, it’s almost like that’s all that matters to an NBA player, is if they can keep from getting a joint injury. You don’t talk to an NBA player about getting stronger. They don’t care. And is it going to help them? Yeah, maybe, but that’s like so far down the list. It’s like, “Keep me playing basketball longer. Keep me from getting injured.”

And I’m like, “Okay, we got that.” And so, they use X3 just like everybody else does, but they don’t eat the same way everybody else does, because their focus is not gaining mass. It’s building the tendons, the ligaments. They’re trying to get the myofibril effects, and not the sarcoplasmic effect, meaning the density of cell versus volumizing the cell. But that’s down to nutrition.

Alex: With that said, John, do you want to give yourself a plug of where people can find you, or find your products?

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure, yeah. So, because my last name is difficult to spell, it’s difficult to say, most people look at Jaquish and they have no idea how to pronounce that.

Dr. John Jaquish: So I have a landing page, it’s just doctorj.com. D-O-C-T-O-R, the letter J, dot com. And that landing page. It has links to all my social media, videos, all the products that I’ve launched, and both my inventions, the OsteoStrong, and the X3. You click on Superior Exercise for the X3 and Superior Nutrition for Fortagen. That’s one of the nutritional… It’s the only supplement I take. And then, I produce the most content on Instagram, so if you’re going to follow me somewhere and use Instagram, follow me on Instagram.

Jack: Take care.

Dr. John Jaquish: Jack, Alex, thanks.