Biohacking, entrepreneurship, travel/real estate

Chris Kiefer (00:00.626)

I have about 50 minutes from right now, and I can be, I'm flexible if that's slightly longer than the technical 45 minute slot. But yeah, if that is that, or do you have a hard stop at a certain time?

STEPHEN PETASKY (00:09.655)

Yeah.

I'm good on time. I have nothing after, so I'm totally, if things run a few minutes long, zero sweat at all. Get what you think is going to be valuable for your listeners and there's no problem on my side.

Chris Kiefer (00:20.298)

Okay, welcome back everybody to another episode of the Pursuit of Purpose. My name is Chris Kiefer and today I have the legendary Stephen Pataski here. Stephen, thank you so much for coming on.

STEPHEN PETASKY (00:32.86)

Legendary is a bit of a strong term, but I do appreciate it.

Chris Kiefer (00:38.092)

I ran or my path crossed with Stephen when he came to the Man on a Mission group in Coeur de Laine and he has done so much in the real estate space, luxury real estate, and I told Stephen that I'm sure that he, not that he gets tired of talking about it because I know you love real estate, but I was like...

STEPHEN PETASKY (00:56.593)

Hehehehe

Chris Kiefer (00:58.482)

I don't want to do another real estate episode podcast because there's probably a handful of episodes that people could go listen to it. So what I'm personally very, very interested in, and I just feel like in my sphere and the people that listen to this, biohacking and that topic is a big, big topic right now. And I'm personally going through, I'm getting my blood work done and looking at hormones and stuff like that. And I'm 33 now.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:05.983)

Mm-hmm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:24.952)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (01:27.478)

Geez, there is not, things don't, like I can't just ignore stuff, like diet and the food that I'm eating because it's all having serious effect on my energy. So that's the topic of today. But Stephen, you had asked, just give me a background on me before we get going. And I was, the listeners, the people that listen to this often don't get to hear much about what I do anyway, so.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:33.109)

I'm out.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:39.139)

Yes.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:45.813)

Yes, please do.

Chris Kiefer (01:54.242)

This is a great opportunity for them to hear as well as you and you can ask more questions and we'll go down this route as much as helpful for you. So yeah, I'm in the Man on a Mission group currently. My wife and I run Boolean, which consists of two parts. One is a review software that helps generate Google reviews for home services, home service businesses. Like painters is our main niche and then concrete coatings, electrical HVAC, things like that.

STEPHEN PETASKY (02:01.497)

Perfect.

Chris Kiefer (02:24.662)

And then the other side of the business is a consulting arm that I run. And, um, and I basically, the, the simplest way to say it would be the typical painting company has five to seven apps that, uh, they need to run their business and they don't talk to each other out of the box. So my, uh, team and I kind of map out a process of how things should be talking to each other, connect them all together.

STEPHEN PETASKY (02:42.284)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (02:50.398)

and we save hundreds of hours of data entry per month, literally, for $7 million size painting companies. And that's what we do. So that's like a, I don't know if you have any other curiosities on like what Chris does, but yeah, that's who I am.

STEPHEN PETASKY (03:09.336)

Very cool. And I'm super curious how you pivoted into that, into the podcast space. And I'd love to know the history of why you wanna help others tell their stories. And honored to be here, of course. And so I'd love to know that history.

Chris Kiefer (03:19.65)

So my, this is actually from the Man on a Mission group. I've had the Pursuit of Purpose podcast for five years technically. That was like when I first did, my first episode was five years ago. And it was like with starting out with anything, I was like very embarrassed to tell people about it. Like I'm podcasting now, but it was kind of, I did 30 episodes within about a year. And then we had kids, our first kid, Ellie, and I didn't do anything for like a year and a half.

STEPHEN PETASKY (03:28.804)

Amazing.

Chris Kiefer (03:49.378)

I ultimately, and I would say I came to clarity on this through Man on a Mission, is my personal mission is to champion the relentless pursuit of a purposeful life for me, for my kids, for people in my life. And so the way that translates to everything, including podcasting, is I do automation, but what I really love is having conversations that have meaning and depth and like,

I get so annoyed by the, oh, you know, did you see the game last night? Or, man, the weather, it's getting cold, it's getting dark a lot earlier these days. Just like the nonsense. I just want to go like, tell me the good stuff. Like, what are you struggling with? What secrets do you have? What did you learn from your painful moments? And let's talk about like what it means to be human as opposed to, you know, the just the superficial stuff. So the podcast is an opportunity for me to.

STEPHEN PETASKY (04:29.06)

I'm going to go.

STEPHEN PETASKY (04:33.066)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (04:48.458)

meet with people like you. And it's honestly like one of the most fulfilling parts of my week, people have asked like, how are you gonna monetize this? And I'm like, I don't know and I don't care because my business is doing fine. And the people that I'm meeting and the stuff that I'm learning in these conversations is amazing. And hopefully the listeners are getting value out of it as well. So that's the podcast background for me.

STEPHEN PETASKY (04:58.074)

Hehehe

STEPHEN PETASKY (05:12.792)

I'm more good on you, very well spoken, obviously doing a great thing, and I have not had the courage to venture into that level of space. I do a lot of one-on-one, but not a one-on-many yet. And I have to say yes, because it's certainly being encouraged amongst the team and my partners and others to open up the Komodo and start sharing a little bit more. So I'm definitely an open book when it comes on one-on-one, but the one-on-many hasn't been my strong suit, and probably to...

Chris Kiefer (05:36.489)

Totally.

STEPHEN PETASKY (05:41.056)

that just service to few, but that's why I'm honored to be here and be able to share this part of our story and what it could mean to others who are on this listening along.

Chris Kiefer (05:49.206)

Totally, so I want like, jumping into this topic of biohacking, I'm curious, what is the sandbox that we're gonna be discussing today? To what are the reaches that biohacking is in your mind? Like how many different aspects of your life is this topic that you're starting to dive into effect?

STEPHEN PETASKY (06:11.776)

Sure. Maybe I'll give the history a little of why I'm so intrigued and have a high degree of curiosity for, for biohacking and just, you know, you know, living a more energetic life. I think that, um, I given this little thought since you and I chatted a couple of weeks ago, because I haven't actually had this conversation as a sole topic for a podcast before. And, uh, it's a great topic because I'm, I think that people could only focus on one thing and it was the energy in their light, the physical and mental energy they bring in their life. They can do so much more with life.

And I think back to what for my wife and I, it was multiple stages in our journey. And I think like most people and just get to the root of it, people exercise and cut eating to change body composition. You know, they want to look better. We were no different. I'll be honest, there's many times or probably of my time with my wife, 20 years together, you know, 16, 15 years of that was the up and down roller coaster about

body composition, trying to look good. It's purely a vanity thing. And like everyone else that does that, I'm gonna say a lot of things in generalities, but everyone else that does that, it's a yo-yo effect. And you never really actually have like the longing, long standing benefits. And like, why can't I keep all the effort I just put into something when, and immediately fails. And why does everyone else fail? Like, why don't we have, maybe I'm just, I just don't have the discipline. I'm just not good enough. You almost have like a shame component. Am I not good enough to actually maintain?

Chris Kiefer (07:28.823)

Mmm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (07:39.788)

this ultra strict regime that's totally impossible, that 0.01% of humans could actually maintain it. Like it's, I started to come to the realization that that's not the way to do it. And there's no silver bullet in this game. It's a thousand BBs as the old saying goes. And so about five years ago, my wife and I changed course and really last three years, we really dove in about five years ago when it started. And said, okay, let's stop the idea of, and my wife's.

beautiful and fit and everything else. But like everyone else, you struggle a little bit with some of these things to get to where you want to be. But I think it's reframing where we want it to be. And the reframing came from in our minds. And I think I have the curiosity with it. And my wife and I have done this as a team, which always makes it better when you have someone along the journey, particularly your spouse. And then of course your kids through, behaviors are caught, not taught. They just see it and then it just becomes part of their life. But we had to do the thousand BB approach. Instead of what are the things we need to do?

Chris Kiefer (08:16.32)

Mm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (08:36.892)

And for me, the realization I came into, you know, I counted that time as busy career, busy family man, I wanna be a good boss, I wanna build a good company, I wanna be a good husband, I wanna be a good father. All those things take time and energy. And what is left over is you, you to do all the things that you want to do for yourself. So I flipped it, and the word in there is energy. And you referenced it earlier, so you have a perfect segue into it, is the foundation.

This is how I look at it. I'm not saying for everyone. How I look at it is the foundation of everything is energy and physical and mental energy. By having more physical and mental energy, you just do things differently. You play harder with your kids after a long day at work. You're better, you're a peak performer in your job or the company you work with. You have more energy for your spouse at the end of the day. Weekends aren't sitting around picking your nose watching football. It's not to say that watching football is bad.

Chris Kiefer (09:08.547)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (09:28.19)

recovering quote unquote. Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (09:29.824)

Yeah, I need 48 hours of recovery as I work so hard for five days in a week. And I'm making fun of it, but it's because I was in it. Like I was that guy for the majority of my adult life. And there's nothing wrong with recovery. Like I'll talk about recovery today. I just do it a little differently than the way I used to do it. And the old saying of Einstein, if you keep doing the same thing over and over, expect a different result is the definition of insanity. And so I just felt like that was the path we were going on. So at the end,

Chris Kiefer (09:37.146)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (09:46.455)

Mm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (09:58.956)

We had a great chat. My wife and I said, you know what? What we're doing is creating these modest results, but how do we actually move the needle for the next 50 years of our life? And it was around energy and longevity, which they can, and creating good energy, making good choices can make some good progress towards longevity, living a longer health span versus lifespan. Everyone's been saying that, but I could tell you by turning back the biological clock, which comes from biohacking, and...

And bio-hiking doesn't have to be doing very complicated things. The things I'll talk about were all the baseline we put in the front. It was just the very simple things, doing them very, very well. Knowing that there's no immediate quick results. I think that's probably the problem with society in general and people feel defeated because you need immediate results to feel validated for your efforts. And I said, everything I'm doing, everything in my business I do, everything for the kids is all for the long game. There's no like immediate gratification we do on a day to day business, but why do we expect that personally for

our bodies and our minds. We expect to have one good meal and work out hard two days in a row and to lose 10 pounds. Like it's just, it's not realistic, but that's because you actually can do that. And it's actually obviously fake weight and it's water weight and, but you actually see an immediate change, but it's not real. It's not something that is sustainable. So we changed the foundation of it and said, okay, we are focusing on creating higher degrees of energy in our life. What are the things that we can do?

to create more physical and mental energy. And let's just assume that energy now is going to give us one big tool to take another step further, another step further. Shoot another BB, wake your way through. And I think the opposite effect what people do because they look for the immediate results, and what I did is, especially when you're thinking body composition is like the primary initial motivator, you're upset, I'm just saying how it is, you're upset at how you look, you're frustrated.

Chris Kiefer (11:33.716)

Mm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (11:51.332)

cutting 20 pounds, I'm gonna do it by exercising six days a week, I'm going to cut calories in half, I'm gonna move the needle. Again, recognize it's not sustainable, but that is the, those two things extract such an immense amount of energy. To cut calories first, you're actually taking physical energy out of your body, and you're burning it at multiple times the pace that your body's not used to, so you're actually depleting energy. You do get endorphin highs and some initial feeling good component with some high energy exercise, HIIT or weight lifting.

Chris Kiefer (12:19.587)

Mm-hmm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (12:20.332)

But at the end of the day, you're doing the two things in the wrong order, like, or not in the wrong order. You're feeling terrible. Exactly, so at the end of the day, now you've done two things to extract more energy out of your system versus gaining energy, and that's why we fall off the bandwagon. So long story long is what we decided is, okay, what is the true foundation of energy, or what are the foundations rather? And...

Chris Kiefer (12:24.086)

You're feeling terrible in the process. Yeah. And you just can't wait for it to end. Yep.

Chris Kiefer (12:43.39)

And to clarify, when you're doing, this is like, you're discussing this, I'm sure, were you reading books, talking to people? Like, where was the, who were you going to? What sources of knowledge were you learning from?

STEPHEN PETASKY (12:50.243)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (12:55.688)

Well, I'll say the very first game changer book for me and source of knowledge was Sean Stevenson with sleep smarter So bought the book sleep smarter Every human being should read it Like there's there will not be a wasted hour or five hours or takes to read it of your life to read Sean Stevenson Sleep smarter and that book's been out for a while. So a lot of people have read it It's a bestseller of course and Sean Stevenson as a regular guy like you or I had his own personal health problems

solved it. He became one of the foremost biohacker health experts, whatever you want to call it on the planet, by just being like you or I had been like, I'm dedicating my life to understanding this. So that for me that we looked at and said, okay, if the single biggest thing to improve energy is having incredible sleep, because that's where all your recovery comes from effectively, almost all your recovery comes from when you're sleeping and the level of sleep you get and the quality of it dictates how much energy you have the next day. We're going to start with that. It was kind of funny. It took me probably.

three months to read the book because I fell asleep every time reading the book. It's like total proof it works in a literal sense. And I would read the pages to my wife and then she'd fall asleep then I'd fall asleep the book in my chest. But you know you read it at night. So probably took me longer to get through but there's so much good detail on there. You're like taking notes.

Chris Kiefer (14:08.494)

Is that one of the things like read at the end of the night in bed?

STEPHEN PETASKY (14:12.224)

That's what we did because again, life is crazy. I don't have time. I should say I don't have time. It's like has control over me. I choose not to make time during the day because I choose, you know, personal time. I choose my work. I choose my time with my family. And then when all that's put to bed, nine or 10 o'clock at night, I have that little moment to time as all parents do before they fall asleep and I would dedicate it to that. I've now since found other ways to absorb content and stuff during the day, podcasts obviously being the primary source, audiobooks. And that's been a huge help where I can now

driving to and from work, but that at the beginning thing, the very first thing was just reading that one book and changed my life, like I can say, it changed my wife's life as well. Phenomenal book, he breaks down simple concepts or complicated concepts into very, very simple propositions. Again, thousand BB approach, but I hate to beat that horse, but I cannot emphasize it enough or the impact it made. All of a sudden in a period of probably.

six months, again, this isn't an overnight thing. You do a couple quick wins that help overall with your sleep, but then you quickly start adding the layers and layers and layers and also you're like, oh my God, I feel, I don't think I've ever felt this rejuvenated after a sleep before. Now I can't not have a good sleep or I'm unproductive at the level that I want to be. And so a lot of people, I don't know, I've probably lost friends of this over the years. I don't go out party anymore. I still drink, there's still things, we'll talk a bit about that a little later and you know, certain vices, but.

Chris Kiefer (15:21.646)

Mmm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (15:37.272)

For me, I almost prioritize sleepover or anything else because that gives me the day I need to do all the things I really want to do. And, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (15:44.442)

So quick question on that. So you focus on your sleep. These are things that I have heard. Tell me if these are changes you made or not, but very consistent going to bedtime and wake up time.

STEPHEN PETASKY (15:53.017)

Fire away.

STEPHEN PETASKY (15:57.696)

Definitely. Yeah, the more consistent you can keep with that the better a lot of people have spoke about the concept or like recovery Sleeps like sleep an extra four hours one day. I personally haven't found success with that I think getting an extra hour on the weekends certainly helps But I now just find myself getting up at the same time and wanting to go to bed at the same time Consistently and generally speaking and again everything not everything for every person, but that would be very accurate

Chris Kiefer (16:21.202)

Yeah, and then another one is the temperature of your room. I don't know if you use, have you heard of the eight sleep mattress?

STEPHEN PETASKY (16:25.54)

Correct, so.

STEPHEN PETASKY (16:29.02)

I use a different one. We bought this before sleep became bigger, but I struggled a lot with night sweats. Like my body, this is my whole life and now stress compounds in life later, it kind of just gets worse. But I could never get the temp. I could have the room temperature so cold. My wife had like nine blankets on and I would have nothing on and I would be cold on top and hot on my back and I'd still wake up with potentially damp sheets from sweating. So we actually bought this called the perfectly snug.

Chris Kiefer (16:37.631)

Yeah, me too.

STEPHEN PETASKY (16:59.244)

And it's a similar to 8 Sleep. Yeah, same idea. 8 Sleep's a better version. It's got another level of the sophistication to it, but inexpensive, perfectly snug, is I'm gonna say it's 1500 bucks. It's a mattress topper, and you can adjust the temperature to whatever you want. And that has been like complete game changer. All the places that we may travel, aside from my vacation, we have them. Yeah, I have to. I can't, again, I'm not sacrificing sleep anymore. So I make...

Chris Kiefer (16:59.53)

Okay, same idea.

Chris Kiefer (17:23.246)

have that, yeah.

Yeah

STEPHEN PETASKY (17:29.344)

If a second home somewhere, even though it might be there for a short period of time, the perfectly snug is the first thing that's there. It's just mandatory. Yeah. So that's a good, there's others too. People have used like chilly pads and things. Anything to, I think what you're saying, the general sense is yes, a cooler approach at night does help regulate your body temperature lower, which creates a more restorative sleep.

Chris Kiefer (17:35.575)

That's awesome.

Chris Kiefer (17:50.41)

And then what other tips are like, oh, we started doing this, started doing this, never, I know that there's something with eating a certain amount of time before bed or stopping eating.

STEPHEN PETASKY (18:00.748)

Yeah, so I think there's if I think of maybe just off the top of my head the key ones There's again go to the book and there's a thousand but a really dark room Is very helpful. I actually sleep with a sleep bass now And I have for years and I have a tough time sleeping if there's a crack of light in one window Now, of course, it's probably psychological more than it is actual but it's I'm now programmed when I put that on it actually Just slows everything down for me allows me to sleep better. And if there if I do wake up in the middle of night

Chris Kiefer (18:21.539)

Hahaha

STEPHEN PETASKY (18:29.796)

um, you know, to use the restroom or the dog needs to go for pee or something like that. I'm like, literally like the fraction of eye that could have open as possible just to not fall down the stairs to any light. Correct. As soon as you get light in your circadian rhythm gets messed up and it starts to think that it's daytime and then it's really hard to pull that back. So you want to like limit light in your room and if you have to get up for a tinkle or whatever it is, then limit what you put into your eyes. Like I'm talking the fraction of a fraction.

Chris Kiefer (18:39.875)

To make sure you don't get light in.

STEPHEN PETASKY (18:59.384)

So that's so light and light also extends the blue light and TV before bed. It's not, I know it's a hard thing. People fall asleep to their phones, watching movies. It's just a fact. It's not good for you. I still, I still do this from time to time. I was watching the hockey game last night, very angry at my weathers losing. And so I was a little bit angry going to bed and that forced a longer sleep or for a longer time for me to fall asleep. But that was my own mistake by watching that in bed at that time. But sometimes you gotta, you can't be perfect all the time.

Chris Kiefer (19:24.046)

Mm. Yeah, yeah. And I'm thinking that red light, like I've thought if I was gonna go extreme, like putting in like, you know, the little lights you can have along your wall in the house, just have them be like the super dim red light. Is that, would that be better? Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (19:36.737)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (19:40.undefined)

Amazing. Totally, totally. Because if you don't have to use your flashlight in your phone or you don't have to turn in the light in your bathroom, and I haven't gone to that level, but I've heard that, that anything you can do, like the, the download lights on the floor, so you don't have to have direct eye exposure to it. It seems so small, but how quickly you'd lose 30 to, you know, 60 minutes of quality sleep, like REM sleep or deep sleep, like your listeners probably know, but you got your, your different levels. So it's light, REM, rapid eye movement and deep.

The REM and deep is where you want to spend most of the time, but you don't control and it goes into a rhythm. Kind of every 90 minutes or so is about the rhythm and you spend most of the time in light. REM is a lot of dreaming, so you're not in full deep and then deep is when it's like you're under anesthetic. And that's where you get the deepest level of sleep that you can get. So we wear the aura rings and stuff and they're not perfect, but they do help us get a sense of kind of, you get an idea where it's at. There's no, unless you're like hooked up to a sleep machine, you're not gonna really know.

Chris Kiefer (20:21.826)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (20:30.178)

Get an idea.

STEPHEN PETASKY (20:35.564)

perfect, but this does give a pretty good sense. So I'd recommend some of these little hacks that kind of help us understand where it's at. But anyway, the more deep sleep you get, and a lot of people will say to me, oh Steve, I sleep nine hours a day, or nine hours every night, or I don't need that much sleep. Everyone could use better quality sleep. And I'm just gonna totally generalize it. I don't know if there's anyone aside from maybe Andrew Huberman from the Huberman Lab, or Sean Stevenson, of the true, true pioneers of talking about this stuff.

Chris Kiefer (20:54.027)

Mmm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (21:03.032)

that truly get the best sleep they can. So for me, this hunt is out over. Like we're constantly looking for ways to improve sleep because I know if I have a great sleep, like a really good sleep, I'm, I would say I'm beatable, but I feel a level of energy that I, so good. And one quick thing on diet, I just wanna reference the diet point, is the singular best hack probably, I say hack, for sure don't eat within a couple hours of bed. Your body's now taking energy, should be releasing melatonin.

Chris Kiefer (21:15.446)

It feels so 100% agree, yeah. So that's, yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (21:30.356)

in your body to help you sleep. Instead, you've got cortisol and you've got things going on in your gut as this is starting to digest. So you want to limit eating certainly at least two hours, three hours if you can do it. But magnesium is a really, really good thing to have. So magnesium, and I don't know the percentage, so don't quote me on this, but let's say it's 75% of North American society is deficient in magnesium. There's just not enough magnesium in our standard North American diet. And so we just take a magnesium supplement at night. And it also helps with just...

being honest, like bowel movements and things like that, but it's actually very, very good for sleep. Selenium, there's other things as well. The level of impact it has in your life may or may not be as significant as others. For me, I can't say, I could go without it, but it's noticeable for me now. So that's kind of a regular thing. So you can just research magnesium on sleep, and there's a million studies that will tell you it's a good thing. So those few things, dark room, don't eat a few hours before bed, try to cool down your room and take some magnesium.

Chris Kiefer (22:01.216)

Mm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (22:27.724)

you're probably going to improve your sleep dramatically from where you are currently.

Chris Kiefer (22:31.252)

Love that. So on to the next pillar.

STEPHEN PETASKY (22:34.528)

Yeah. So then from one sleep goes as diet in my mind, I think again, people flip it. They go exercise first, diet, and then everything else is like an afterthought. So sleep, diet. The biggest thing again, this is the mythology we're looking. This smart goes about two and a half years ago. So now I'll give you another book. Sean Stevenson again, Eat Smarter. So he came out with Eat Smarter about a year and a half ago, I think. And again, a great way to distill a ton of complex information about how your body works and digest food and produces energy into.

He uses movie analogies and different things to get it. So it's just, it's a really easy read compared to maybe other books that are more just pure science that science based, but put in a thing that's easy to absorb. So we did an opposite approach for diet. For me, this is really important. I've never talked about this, so I'm glad we get a chance to discuss it. And this comes from multiple podcasts, multiple things. This isn't like Steve's magic secret sauce. I give all the credit to everyone else I've listened to, to this. It's just, it works for me. But the common approach.

for adjusting body composition is cutting calories, obviously, which sure calorie restriction does help for body composition. And but it does not it's not the silver bullet. So we looked at diet is in two phases. First one was there's three ways you can restrict basically consumption there how things you put in your mouth, you can restrict the number of calories you put in your body, you can restrict the macros you put in your body so you can adjust to be more fat versus carbohydrates versus protein, whatever it may be. And you can restrict the time in which

you're putting things in your body. For me personally, I cannot, I have not ever been able to, and I don't plan on it, at least in this phase of my life, to start counting calories. I don't wanna weigh my salmon, I don't wanna measure how many pieces of broccoli are gonna go in my broccoli, whatever, I just don't. And I know generally, of course, because I've done this enough, how many calories I'm probably consuming in a day, but I just realized that I've tried that before, I failed every single time, why do the same thing over and keep failing? So I cut that out, but I did focus on the other two.

Chris Kiefer (24:04.366)

Hmm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (24:32.416)

So I've changed my macros and this is, I can't say a general approach, everyone's different. You have to do your own research that's right for you. We'll talk about like tools to get there. But for me, the macros, I perform better on a higher fat, lower carbohydrate diet, not keto. I'm not an all keto. I've tried little snippets of it. I struggle, I still really enjoy carbohydrates. And frankly, I think for most people, it's still very quite good, good proper complex carbs in your body. But I do have, I put a higher concentration of fat in my diet and obviously protein.

And, you know, you've, again, you've probably heard the story, but if you think of carbohydrates being the kindling on a fire, fat is the log on the fire. It just takes longer to burn in your body and thereby you don't get glycemic spikes, your insulin's not producing, you know, so all these things are, help stabilize your insulin levels in your glycemic index so you don't get these cravings and these, these kind of ups and down crashes. So we spend a lot of time trying to identify.

macros. My wife's are a bit different than mine but we're fairly aligned so we can eat the same meal. I just may have a higher degree of protein than her or whatever it might be, but you have to really spend time thinking what's the right macros for you. Again, take the average North American. It's very heavy in carbohydrates, especially a lot of processed carbohydrates and processed proteins, which unfortunately just they don't serve your body well. Just a fact.

That was number two and the number three is intermittent fasting or the time restriction. And I actually found this one pretty easy. It took about three to six months. My wife and I have been doing this for a better part of five years now probably. And I was so used to a big breakfast that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And it's not true. The first meal of the day is the most important of the day. So I think that's the same thing. But I think there's an assumption that you have to eat food the moment you wake up out of bed.

because that's what's been programmed by food companies and our parents and other people, because that's all they knew, and it's no one's fault, it's just what it was. And food companies want you to eat more food so they can sell more food. So you can't. Yeah, exactly. And after that, especially a nice high carbohydrate meal first thing in the morning, you'll be totally screwed for the day and you're gonna want more carbs all day long and eat more. So that's, it's an unfortunate scenario, but so for me, I had some friends doing it and they were telling me about it and I was a little bit uncertain.

Chris Kiefer (26:32.37)

Yeah, you got to eat as soon as you wake up because you're going to have to eat again two hours later and an hour after that. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (26:44.258)

Yes.

STEPHEN PETASKY (26:50.92)

I can say for me personally and my wife, it's like been a complete game changer. And we, I don't, remember breakfast just comes later in the day now. I just, the first meal is delayed. I think that, I think people generalize it that and it actually looks bad. It's like, oh, you're skipping breakfast. No, actually sometimes I have an omelet at 1130 in the morning. I just have my first meal and I love breakfast foods. I love avocado toast and I love omelets and those things. I just have it later in the day as my first one.

Chris Kiefer (26:56.031)

So you skip breakfast now.

Chris Kiefer (27:00.588)

Okay.

STEPHEN PETASKY (27:19.624)

And usually like I now I'm my body's used to it. It's you know, they call it metabolic flexibility Very much a Shawn Stevenson and Andrew Huberman term But I can eat breakfast and but I don't eat it like at the body's not craving it when I get out It took a long time for the body to be nourished enough to be trained for that now I actually can't even think about food in the morning like I literally almost it's almost like a repulsing to think about eating food and I'm not saying that's right or wrong. But for my wife and I or works out quite well. That's how it works and

Chris Kiefer (27:46.766)

That works.

STEPHEN PETASKY (27:48.78)

We consume then a lot of calories between whenever that first meal is until dinner time. And for me, people ask how many hours, sometimes it's 11, sometimes it's two. I don't know, it's kind of how I feel for the day. I don't have a structure around it. I just know I'm done eating by about 7 p.m. Because if I eat post that, that's when it's gonna mess up my sleep. When I start is when I feel hungry. And now if I was training or trying to add muscle, or you have to change the diet to reflect body composition goals, or I'm training for a marathon, you have to do it differently. I'm just saying.

through the lens, I'm a entrepreneur, I'm busy, everything else, even the time savings on preparing breakfast and the food costs, I feel like I'm ahead so much, both energy and everything else, but I've chosen of those three tools in the toolbox on restricting to choose those two and not worry about calories. And then I just eat as much hungry as I am between whatever my first meal is until dinner time and I never feel guilty about it. I'll eat whatever I want. Obviously I have food choices that I like and respond well to me.

Chris Kiefer (28:30.594)

Mm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (28:47.948)

but I never count to calorie. So that's what's worked well for me.

Chris Kiefer (28:50.158)

But you are approaching it when you say eat anything you want. You are like reducing the processed carbs for sure. You ever are there like certain processed carbs that you are like, yeah, I still have this on a regular basis.

STEPHEN PETASKY (28:57.39)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (29:05.22)

So good point. So on the, maybe one really important tool, maybe the single biggest thing when you, if we are like kind of accelerate to the end of like, okay, I've done these basic foundations, then the best thing you can get is data. So any, so, you know, Oura Rain gives you some data on your sleep from a food perspective, I encourage everyone in this one, that no one can have it. I don't think there's any downside to do a food panel and a proper food panel where you actually know, see what your food sensitivities are. I didn't do one until a year and a half ago, my whole life. And I regret that.

I wish I could go back time and do it much earlier. There was certain foods on there on that food panel that I was eating consistently that my body actually was not responding well to. So I thought I was doing my body a justice.

Chris Kiefer (29:44.27)

because it's a healthy thing that everyone says to eat. Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (29:46.888)

Exactly and it very well could be a healthy thing for other people's bodies But my particular my system was not responding to that particular food and I'll give an example avocado. Like I love avocado I've reintroduced it back to my body and now it's actually fine But for whatever reason it triggered through the food panel a high degree of sensitivity to and I was like bomber I love avocado, but I took it out amongst another 10 or 15 things that I thought were healthy again They may be healthy at a macro. This is the key thing. They want to distinguish

They could be healthy from a macro level, like they solve that, but your body does not respond to it. That's why everyone is very individualist in this regard. So I can't give advice aside from get your own personal data, but I can tell you the impact, and this wasn't median. My wife and I did this and we both extracted a number of things, and some things were different than the others. So on my salad goes something different than goes on her salad sometimes for toppers because certain cheeses she didn't respond well to and I did or whatever it might be. And...

immediate energy impact, like immediate. And I was like, oh my God, I've been doing this thinking I'm doing the right thing without the right data. Like you don't make business decisions without data, you know, but we're here making our body decisions with no data. So the food panels are so easy to get. Try to get one where they actually take like a real vial of blood, not just like the pinprick. They just give more accurate results and you're gonna have to pay a little bit more, but you'll get a better sense. And do another one after, like three, six months after.

really should do it in theory regularly every three to six months that for all your blood panels, we'll talk about others later. But that's the baseline for anyone. And immediately you get such a phenomenal impact on how you feel your mood, your glycemic index. And yes, to your point, there really isn't something that's processed as good for you. It's, it's unfortunately, just the way that it is. It just isn't now I still eat some things that are processed. I like certain some Ukrainian like sausages and certain things, but I I've

I highly limit them in my diet now because even though it may taste good for a moment, I know how my body feels after and I don't feel good and as we mentioned, energy is my goal so I try to not put things in my body that are going to hurt the energy levels I guess.

Chris Kiefer (31:58.606)

Hmm. Yeah, I'm just soaking it up. So where's the next, there's a couple things that, one thing that's on top of mine, if you wanna come back to this later we can, but I'm curious just timing wise, and this is just like, if you were to map out your perfect day, when are you going to bed, how many hours are you like, quote unquote, in your bed sleeping, varying levels of sleep, the rhythm there, but when's the, do you have an alarm? What time is that?

STEPHEN PETASKY (32:01.555)

Hehehehe

STEPHEN PETASKY (32:14.498)

Yep.

Chris Kiefer (32:26.302)

when you said 11 to two is breakfast-ish, now you don't need after seven. But we'll fill in the gaps there.

STEPHEN PETASKY (32:33.236)

Yeah, sure. So my perfect day, the time in the mornings changed a bit. I used to be a 4 a.m., 5 a.m. club guy for many, many years. And a lot of it was just out of necessity for the nature of the chaos of trying to be a dad and business and everything else. And that extra hour helps. I still am a 5 a.m., 5 30 to 6 15, pretty much like clockwork. The weekends might be like 20 minutes later, but I'm generally a late 5 a.m. guy now. Exercise in the morning.

I'll talk about exercise next in some detail as I just tell you what's worked for me and what's helped change a lot of things in our life in a positive way. You know, a little family time, you see the kids off school work and I like stacking my work up and that's a different conversation, maybe another podcast, but how I choose to stack my work up, high energy things first when you're highly productive, your energy levels are rocking, you can do a lot of significant problem solving and then I get hungry at some point and usually all these workouts now are almost exclusively fasted.

if because the workouts I do require a certain amount of calorie intake, but it's, I can get through fast at workouts. If I'm going for like a long bike or something, I'm going to need fuel and I won't have enough to get through. But for my 30 to 60 minute workouts, I do, um, I don't need to eat beforehand anymore and that's what works well.

Chris Kiefer (33:47.991)

And just again, because I just like having an idea of this. So you're getting up the latest 6.15 and I assume you're not setting an alarm. You just know, or do you have like a last minute alarm at seven, it's like you better get up by seven, but you generally know you're gonna wake up in this window.

STEPHEN PETASKY (34:00.27)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (34:05.26)

So, yeah, cause that's a fun one. So, sleep smarter is a great thing, talking about the concept of trying to get up on your own circadian rhythm and not letting an alarm do the work. So yes, we do set a last minute alarm, but if I get up at any time naturally within 30 to 45 minutes before that alarm, even preferably an hour if I can, but sometimes I might want to sneak a few more minutes in, I will just get up. So let's say 6.15 is the last minute alarm, but 5.15 I wake up because I got to use the bathroom.

I'm like, okay, because if you got up naturally, it means you've naturally came out of your circadian rhythm and you're in the light sleep. And the worst thing that could happen is you go halfway through a cycle and then you're woken up out of a deep sleep.

Chris Kiefer (34:37.794)

you're not gonna get another whole cycle in the next 40 minutes yet.

STEPHEN PETASKY (34:46.72)

And that's why it's like, why the heck did I sleep for nine hours? And I'm so freaking exhausted. Breaking a deep sleep cycle is that really hard in your body. It takes a long time for it to react. So if you can actually get up naturally. Now it's not a perfect science and timing. And often, sometimes we do get up with the alarm and I'm probably in a deep sleep and I know exactly as I know how the body feels now, I'm like, Oh, I was definitely in a deep sleep because I do not feel right now, but for the most part you try to get, if you can, you know, if you wake up naturally within an hour of your alarm, it's.

might be beneficial to you just to stay awake and start your day because you're letting your body do the work, not an alarm go eh, eh. And that's the whole, camera was it Jay Shady I think, they call him MSDs, micro stress doses. So your first micro stress dose of the day is MSD. Eh, eh, eh. And then after that it's like kids get out of bed. MSD number two. And then number three is you look at your email and you see an email from last night that you didn't want to see. MSD number.

Chris Kiefer (35:28.59)

They're alarms.

STEPHEN PETASKY (35:44.264)

And your cortisol levels are like literally, this is measured, this doesn't make believe, it's measured, are through the roof before seven o'clock in the morning, you're already hyper-stressed. Anything you can do, anytime you can pull an MSD out of your system, as a K and alarm, you've got your lunches made the night before so the kids are organized, you don't look at your email until you get to the office or whatever it may be, little hacks along the way to really regulate your body early in the day so you don't waste that great sleep.

And so anyway, a little digress there, but that's one little more hack because we can start talking our way through it all.

Chris Kiefer (36:15.938)

Hmm. So then we got a wake up five, 36, 15, a lot, a workout for 30 ish minutes. It sounded like in that.

STEPHEN PETASKY (36:23.052)

Yeah, and then four, five, four days a week, just to be specific, four days a week, I have the workouts, it's for me, and we'll talk about exercise, do Pilates a couple of days a week, and then lifting a couple of days a week, and then weekend is a little bit more of a dealer's choice based on how I'm feeling. I'll talk about why Pilates, people laugh at it, but I think it's the hardest fricking exercise if you do it right, anything out there, for core stability and all the muscles that you never really touch when you're doing other type of workouts. And get up, and then yeah, get the day rolling. One day a week, I have a,

Chris Kiefer (36:43.822)

Mm-hmm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (36:52.864)

I don't have a workout in the morning. So we just get off to the office and then work all day till whatever between five and seven. Just depends on when the day kind of wraps up. Home, dinner, great healthy dinner, do what you can. I usually bring some snacks in the office or have a good healthy lunch or whatever. Whatever I'm feeling called to that day. And then yeah, wine down time. I really, I used to get on email again a lot at night and I find that my productivity is so low at night now.

the closer I get to bedtime, it's actually just less productive. I may as well just get a better sleep or get up an hour earlier. And so I used to though log back on at nine, clip off emails, but then again, go back to the foundation of sleep, it triggers cortisol and it triggers issues. So sometimes you have to do it. It's part of the nature of being a business person in your life that you have to get stuff done, you gotta get it done. And then trying to be in bed by 9.30, 10, and then sleeping between, you know, 10, 10.30, somewhere in there. That's kind of about it.

Chris Kiefer (37:23.95)

And yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (37:49.324)

Do over it again rinse and repeat.

Chris Kiefer (37:49.394)

Yeah, awesome. So then on to exercise. Is that a good topic next?

STEPHEN PETASKY (37:56.012)

That's, I think that's the last big one, you know, without, I mean, there's lots of, you know, other ones we'll kind of discuss as well that are maybe smaller, just like plant some seeds. But exercise was a big shift for me as well, is I did a lot of HIIT training, high intensity interval training, and for the acronym, and I loved it. I personally still do love like a great sweat, but I honestly.

very rarely sweat in workouts anymore and that's actually not necessarily a good thing. It's good to be out of breath. It's good for longevity to be out of breath and there's lots of good attributes that come from a HIIT class or a SPING class. But what I was finding for myself personally, I was so hungry after the HIIT class that I would consume more calories than I had just burned. And I didn't have, because as I mentioned before, I didn't have a regulation, like a good regulation on counting calories and how much I need to offset. So I might burn 600 calories but then I have a thousand calorie breakfast. I'm actually...

and that deficit calorie wise. And I might feel good because I had this big lift, but now I'm so hungry, I consumed so many calories. My digestive system now has chewing up all the energy, digesting all that food. So for me, I was like a big Orange Theory fan. I still am, you know, after F45 and Orange Theory, I think they're great, great concepts and a great team energy. I just don't do them as much anymore because for my personal, this is my personal, I'm not advocating against it at all, but I was so ravenous that...

I found like I was getting a net negative at the end of the day. So I still think HIIT and I still do some HIIT during the week. I used to do it a bit differently. So I shifted that and my wife did as well. She picked up Pilates. I focused more on lifting weights. It's universal that every maintaining solid muscle mass is good. And I'd say even more beneficial for women than men for lots of other osteoporosis and other reasons. They're super important for women, especially going to perimenopausal, menopausal times. You need muscle on your frame for.

bone health, density, everything. But the other good thing for everyone is the more muscle in your body, the more calories you burn, because they just, they take more calories to maintain muscle mass. So I'm not a, you've sent me, I'm not like a big buff dude, but I'm, you know, I'm leaner now than I was in the past, and I've worked hard to get there, but I don't actually don't have to work for it anymore, which is maybe the singular best thing. And I say I work hard, I do these thousand things, but I don't do...

STEPHEN PETASKY (40:12.736)

None of them takes a massive amount of energy or effort because they're built into the program. So I feel like for the first time in my life the last probably year and a half, two years, it doesn't take a lot of energy to maintain where I've gotten to. And that for me, that's probably the biggest mental relief I could probably ever say to anyone. I never think about it anymore. I don't like, I don't know, I don't.

Chris Kiefer (40:16.868)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (40:34.55)

you feel like you're coasting. I don't know if that's the right word you would use, but it's like, I made it, okay, now we just keep it going. And then you can allocate your focus and energy elsewhere.

STEPHEN PETASKY (40:38.2)

That's a good way to put it.

That's good.

STEPHEN PETASKY (40:45.444)

Correct. Right now, again, if I were saying I'm going to go train for a big race, I'd have to change what I'm doing. If I wanted to put on some muscle, I'd have to lift four times a week, not two times a week. So there's things that would change. But for where I want to be in my life right now, I literally couldn't be happier. And I know there'll be different seasons of life where I'm going to want to change a bit of it, but I now know what I need to do to maintain. And coasting feels good because it's maximum impact for the least amount of effort because I have so many other energy draws in my life that

Chris Kiefer (41:11.146)

Yes. I feel like that's the thing that any entrepreneur, I mean anyone would agree with, is like, everything you're saying, I'm like, yes, when I, like, I would like to look good, but energy is so much more important to me, like if I can just feel good. First of all, I feel like, just, if you feel good, your face looks good. Like you can tell when someone doesn't look good, just their face, you know?

STEPHEN PETASKY (41:14.149)

I need to dedicate that energy.

STEPHEN PETASKY (41:37.17)

That's so true.

Chris Kiefer (41:40.19)

And then it's like, so that's, I love that that's the first domino. But then I also agree that like, I'm not trying to win, you know, any race or triathlon, I'm just trying to be healthy and feel good and go play with my kids and ride a bike once in a while. I'm not trying to run an iron man or like, I just want to have my body to be an optimal condition to do the stuff that I love to do. And it seems like that's the, that's kind of the recipe that you've put together.

STEPHEN PETASKY (42:09.724)

It is and if I could give any message to the group, it doesn't matter where you are, I think this is the most important thing. My peak, I know this is me, isn't a significant weight loss compared to other people have gone through, but I've lost 30 pounds from the peak to now and it's been a complete change, but the only way I lost it was when I stopped worrying about losing weight. I think that's the most important, the minute I stopped worrying about losing weight, I started losing weight, if that makes sense, because we took this other approach.

Chris Kiefer (42:31.694)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (42:37.121)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (42:39.636)

Doesn't matter where you are on your health journey, these foundations around sleep, diet and exercise, sure, those all sound right. Of course they do, but just these little minor moving the needles will move the needle in a very big way over an extended period of time. So I think if people think of their time on earth, whether they got five years or 50 years left, it doesn't matter. Feeling good is just feeling good. Like everyone wants to get up feeling better than they are. You know, and feeling they're having high energy.

There's no one says, I wish I felt slower and downer in Los Angeles, not a single human being. So why not do the things that are proven to improve energy and then use the energy for what's important to you. Some people may be hanging with their friends. Some people may be playing volleyball. Some of them may be playing with your kids. But abundance of energy is never a bad thing and you'll generally will make better choices around your diet and around exercise and moving your body than you would if you were low energy.

Chris Kiefer (43:34.978)

I'm curious, I don't know if there's any, we'll ask you first before I ask my question, is there any other kind of like key topics that are, we touched on the sleep, the schedule in the day, your diet, and then exercise. Those obviously are the ones that everyone would think about. Any other nuggets there?

STEPHEN PETASKY (43:44.897)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (43:50.929)

Yeah. I'd say a few small ones that come to mind at ROM were both energy and longevity. So there's, again, I think of the podcast I listened to, Andrew Huberman, so good. It takes a lot to listen to his podcast. You know, do you follow him at all? Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (44:06.546)

Yeah, I do. I love, I love the dopamine one. I like recommended so many times I've just like dopamine stacking and it's good to just remove yourself intentionally from dopamine and struggle through like take, get that struggle of like a dopamine free workout or a day or whatever. But yeah, I've listened to many of them. I'm right now I'm listening to one on water intake from him.

STEPHEN PETASKY (44:12.037)

It's so, so... It didn't...

STEPHEN PETASKY (44:19.203)

Yep.

STEPHEN PETASKY (44:26.701)

That's what

STEPHEN PETASKY (44:30.721)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (44:32.886)

But yeah, I think the way, I love how he breaks it down. And again, it's like, it's a lot of the same stuff that you're saying right now. It's like, some people, I've had some friends be like, oh, that's not true for everybody. It's like, I know, but it's like, I didn't know any of this before, and 70% of it is true for me. So I'm gonna take that, you know?

STEPHEN PETASKY (44:45.713)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (44:51.924)

It's a great point. The dopamine is a great one because he talks about your dopamine is like a pool, a swimming pool. He breaks into an analogy that the more you're doing dopamine hits through whatever activities, dopamine being a pleasure hormone, as I'm eating high glycemic foods or I'm doing things generally often vices, but you can get it from a great workout or sex or whatever things that ultimately release. His idea is that...

Chris Kiefer (45:17.516)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (45:19.352)

the more aggressively emptying of the pool of dopamine, the harder it is to refill. And so the idea of what he said, and that I've articulated correctly from what it was, is you wanna level it out because you don't want the pool to get too shallow, and they'll actually make bigger hits with less effort. And that just brings you more pleasure, like that reward hormone, that really feeling good hormone. This is where it gets into like the minutia stuff, but for the Huberman Lab, which is the tough thing for most people, they're three to four hour fricking long podcasts. The water one, it took me like,

three trips across mountains to listen to the whole thing. You have to rewind and listen to parts again. That's five hours of dedication to learn about, what'd you learn? I mean, for me, the water at the end was just about distilled versus RO and some of the benefits. Things you probably would assume, but you actually understand the true mechanics and biology around it. I actually now have a better understanding of water and I can now talk about it a little bit differently and I do things differently. And the impacts are small, but end of the day, it's a...

Chris Kiefer (45:54.848)

Oh yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (46:17.952)

I think the biggest thing on that, salt water, using some form like, we're a lot of sodium deficient as well, so like having some salt in your water, especially in between glycemic meals or high glycemic meals or alcohol. That was a couple like the tidbits. I mean, I'll just talk about alcohol really quickly so a lot of people, you know, say, oh, you, I don't know, you don't need anything unhealthy. I'm like, I got plenty of unhealthy stuff. Like I just know how my body reacts to certain things. Like I, for example, I used to love, and who doesn't love pizza, and chicken wings. Those are my...

you know, like I think probably most people, they dig them. But I actually can't eat pizza anymore. I don't mean it in a way that like, it might actually, when I see it in front of me, it doesn't create the same immediate dopamine response. Like I need to put this in my mouth because I know how my body reacts to it. If I do it myself or homemade or certain, under certain things, it's fine. But it's actually nice. Instead of me feeling like I have to take the energy to restrict myself from eating something like that, I actually, the body just doesn't want it anymore.

But chicken wings, I still dig. I'll never, if there's a chicken wings on the menu, I'll put them down. My body rack's fine to them. I know they're not healthy for me, but screw it. You gotta have some stuff you enjoy and it's not a whole life of restriction. So, and as far as alcohol goes, people ask all the time, for me again, I used to drink just Canadian guy rye whiskey. It was kind of the thing. And I had a bit of like a lull after every time I had a drink and I didn't know why. And it's one more thing that popped up in my food panel.

of something that didn't respond well, but tequila has always responded well to me. So I'm pretty much as a tequila drinker now. I'll have the other odd thing from time to time. You know, tequila they say is maybe the healthy alcohol. I mean, there's no real healthy alcohol, but if you're going to drink, I'd suggest try it, you know, in a cocktail fashion that works for you. We used to think of tequila.

Chris Kiefer (48:01.294)

Do you try and do cocktails like lower sugar, like tequila and, yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (48:05.02)

Like lower none. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That the least amount of sugar you can. I certainly love a margarita, like a, like a skinny Marg, like a no, no simple syrup Marg. Probably my favorite. You do get some, obviously either a triple sack or Grand Marnier, which has have higher concentration of like the sugar content. But you know, I love a margarita. So like I'm not going to not have it just because and my body feels fine having it. So it's good. But I'm not going to have the typical margarita you get at the bar where they pour seven grams of sugar in it.

and I just don't feel good. So you start to know what works.

Chris Kiefer (48:37.41)

Do you also, like when you have alcohol, are you, I'm sure that it's like you're doing it, like how many times a month?

STEPHEN PETASKY (48:45.496)

So I'll drink every week, but usually the weekends, like a Friday, Saturday, and sometimes there's a glass of wine on one night to maybe a cocktail of a melt with friends the other night. If I'm on holidays, I'll drink every day, like I don't have a problem with it. I've never, it's a unique thing, you can ask my wife to validate it. I've never, I never get drunk ever. And it's not, I just, maybe it goes back to the things I hate feeling shitty the next day. I can remember being drunk like, I don't know, drunk's a bad word to use, but like three or four times in the last 15 years, to the point where I was like, uncomfortable.

Chris Kiefer (49:06.03)

Mm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (49:14.656)

You know what that brings in your life. But I drink regularly, to be honest. I love having a cocktail. I do like...

Chris Kiefer (49:21.314)

And I was gonna say timeline wise, are you like, ooh, I try not to drink after nine or something? Or are you just like, this is gonna mess with my sleep and I'm just taking the hit on this day? Or do you, you know what I mean?

STEPHEN PETASKY (49:31.221)

You know what? Yeah. Sometimes with a cost benefit analysis, I'm out with my buds, my wife for a nice meal out, like the time I'm having in that social environment is more important than potentially losing an extra couple hours of high quality sleep. So you got to let loose from time to time. It's kind of the 80-20 rule. I just do it 80% of the time and 20% you can be a little more free with it. It's also good to have cheat days and eating outside things. It's good to reset your metabolism, like that metabolic flexibility.

White rice, chicken and salad or brown rice, chicken and salad every day. You have no metabolic or reduces your metabolic flexibility. So when you do have chicken wings, you may react more like visceral to it, you know, so you, you actually want to introduce these things in your life. Again, alcohol is everyone has their own relationship with alcohol. So I get, I just know mine. I enjoy the social aspect. I enjoy an upper like that comes from a tequila for me. That's more like an upper. I feel good and I feel a little more energetic. Um, I do limit how much I have, but I, if I'm having a good time,

Keep going. You know, I don't stop at nine o'clock just because the intermittent fasting says they should. It's to each their own on that, but that's how we do it.

Chris Kiefer (50:36.65)

Yeah, last couple of questions I have is, is there any like, I don't know, I'm sure you've talked to a lot of people about this, just like the myths that you feel are out there. Like I used to think blank and man, it is like, I now know that, you know what I'm saying, is there any of those that come top of mind that you're like really in tune with?

STEPHEN PETASKY (51:01.428)

I would say I used to in a previous life with our family business being the grocery business. So we ran grocery stores, owned and operated. And so I had for, you know, and that was my parents whole career. So for the majority of my life from a child to 2011, we were in that business. And unfortunately, just the, to understand the food business.

There's almost, I don't know how to put this, there's almost nothing healthy in a box, put it that way. Everything that goes into a box has been created by a scientist, and I'm generalizing, so I wanna make sure someone is getting angry about this, but every cereal box, they've been designed to make it so hyper palatable, and your brain triggers you to want more over and over and over. And that's the food company's job, to sell more of their stuff. And so I never quite realized, and I'm not, this isn't a conspiracy thing, this is just a fact, like they want,

Chris Kiefer (51:37.483)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (51:55.646)

Yeah, it's just like you're trying to make profits.

STEPHEN PETASKY (51:58.36)

Doritos had the thing, I bet you can't just eat just one chip, like they didn't do that, they do it because there's so much bad stuff in that chip that your brain triggers so much dopamine that you cannot resist having another one and eventually you eat the whole bag. Then you feel shame and you feel bad and everything else. The myths around that you can eat healthy in the traditional sense out of a box is just a myth, it just can't. You have to eat healthy, whole, clean, and then when you start working your way down, I've worked my way from.

less out of a box to more from the produce section. And then from the produce section to the organic section and the meat section to an organic meat farmer where it's all like grass-fed. You can keep moving your way down the line, but don't try to jump all the way from, I don't know, processed beef to like, well, if you can, good for you, to grass-fed local farmer down the street that you know how that animal is raised. If you can, good for you. It took me many years. Now we have a butcher in the places we live. We know where the meat comes from. And all these are just little adjustments along the way,

It's really hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle by eating stuff that's in a box just the way it is. I generalize cereals and all these things. I mean, sure, rice is in a box, so again, rice is rice.

Chris Kiefer (53:05.086)

Yeah, I don't know if you would agree with this, but I love, my wife pointed this out that as far as like the conspiracy aspect that some people are like, oh, food companies are just trying to make you sick so that the medical companies can sell you drugs. And it's like, my view on it is, well, and this, Natalie brought this up, that like a hundred years ago, or like not too long ago, we had real problems with just like people not having enough accessible food and food was expiring. And like, so.

STEPHEN PETASKY (53:32.032)

Yeah. Yep.

Chris Kiefer (53:33.614)

food companies innovated and they were put in motion to how do we make things last longer? How do we ship them farther? How do we make sure people have enough calories so they're not starving? And it's like you just then it's capitalism at its finest and it's like, hey, we did this. Now we do this. And it's just like, boom, you got to keep growing and beating last quarter's projections and all this stuff. And it's like, it just is the it's very frustrating to me. I'm going through like stuff like.

STEPHEN PETASKY (53:43.62)

Mm-hmm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (53:48.512)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (53:55.46)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (54:02.83)

It's all out of whack with my thyroid right now that I just found out about like three months ago. Low testosterone. They think I have Hashimoto's. And so now I'm like, damn, like now I have to go and now I'm going super aggressively in a similar way to what you're talking about, which is why this is very relevant to me. But I've like in the last two weeks, I'm like angry about the food industry. It's like, can we have, and that's not just like.

STEPHEN PETASKY (54:05.024)

Mmm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (54:11.329)

Oh wow.

Chris Kiefer (54:31.61)

It's just like restaurants and everything. It just seems like it's much more difficult. Like your option is like a steakhouse or like a, even like salad bars, you know? They're all getting food from Cisco. It's just frustrating to me that there's not more options that are aligned with let's get people to live long, healthy lives. And the challenge is that it's just the incentive structure.

STEPHEN PETASKY (54:43.231)

I'm okay. Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (54:54.541)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (54:58.018)

for that whole thing is out of alignment. The food company's trying to sell more food. And so anyways, I don't know if you have any thoughts about that, but that's like my.

STEPHEN PETASKY (55:04.544)

You know what, I disagree with it and I, and people know I kind of like, I don't see Switzerland, I never like get into the conspiracy around the politics, big pharma. I have my personal opinions as different things. At the end of the day, I just feel like if people can be informed or what they're actually consuming, what it actually is, like if there's more than two ingredients in a box and you can't pronounce three quarters of them, like a basic rule, it's probably not good for you. And they're just finally, the good thing is, I'll bet, so that's like the general approach is like.

If you know what you put in your body, you understand what it does to your body, have your own data about your own thing, then I don't get angry at the world because we can be frustrated all day long about everything. So it's understanding your own stuff. When it comes down to from the, I was gonna say the measuring the data. So I wanna just talk about that really quickly. Knowing more about your own body. You talk about your thyroid and these things. Most people don't really know what's going on with their body. And again, I'm not angry at doctors for it, how it works with healthcare in Canada.

Chris Kiefer (55:40.736)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (56:01.828)

They only have a limited amount of time to properly evaluate you. And so they can't really give you the level of detail you notice. If you really wanna know what's going on in your body, you have to take different panels. And there's really four primary panels that you can take. And this is where you're going down the rabbit hole, but people wanna make a big impact. Unless you have a data line to go off. So we talked food panel, you know, very easy. These things come back to you with like red, green, yellow. Take red out, limit the yellow, eat as much green as you want. It's pretty simple. You can also do a hormone panel, which we'll come back to.

gut health panel and then micronutrient panel. I think a really easy one is micronutrients and that's things like magnesium and selenium and magnesium and all these different elements or minerals and micronutrients that go to your body, which unfortunately, particularly here, not necessarily as much in other parts of the world like Mediterranean, where they still have old grains and old things, but a lot of the micronutrients are stripped out of our foods. Again, like you said, the incentives aren't aligned. I don't think they're out to get us. They're just out to sell more. So as a result,

Chris Kiefer (56:58.538)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (57:01.464)

how can I grow up faster, package it quicker, and make it last longer on the shelf and make it, you want it quicker. Like those are all things that are not aligned with necessarily what our health goals are. So I get these four things. You get a panel. The biggest thing you need someone to decipher for you. You can do, everything's for free online, but if you have your own doctor that has the time, it's gonna cost you more money and more time, but to actually help you understand what that means to you with those and those panels, you can actually make some really significant improvements in your life.

And that's hard, it takes effort and not a lot of people necessarily wanna put the effort in on all those things. But if you just start with the baseline of energy, work your way through, that's the 1%. That's how you really biohack and really adjust things. And there's lots of neat things out there. It's just, most of the two, people keep thinking about having to take like, I'm not saying supplements, but all these like really crazy biohacking things. Most of it's just behavior changes with things that are already accessible to you already. That you'll make 95% of the impact in your life by things that you're.

Chris Kiefer (57:54.687)

Mm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (57:57.988)

You're just tweaking what you're doing with what you have available. And then the last 5% or 1% is gonna come from like some highly advanced stuff, which we don't have time on this call for, but that's where it gets into, you wanna know what your thyroid, how you adjust naturally versus synthetically. Like there's all, my wife has a thyroid problem, she's talked about it in her podcast and how she's found a better tool for her that's more natural based than synthetic that's allowed her to feel better than she ever has.

Chris Kiefer (58:24.919)

Mmm.

STEPHEN PETASKY (58:25.268)

But it took our years and years and years to find that. And everyone has to be willing to put the effort in to find it. And if you do, man oh man, if you feel good, your health is better, man. Health is your wealth. There's no question.

Chris Kiefer (58:35.214)

It's worth it, yeah.

So I'm keeping it on time here. We'll do, we'll rip through these last two questions. Three book recommendations. You already gave us two. Is that, are those the two you want to go with or you got three other ones?

STEPHEN PETASKY (58:40.622)

Yes, sir.

Go.

STEPHEN PETASKY (58:50.976)

I will keep those two on there because I'm a Sean Stevenson fan. I like what he's done in those books. I'll go with, I'll do a business book just if we got off the health topic for a minute, Blue Ocean Strategy. Always a big fan of that book. And basically we've kind of almost modeled our business off of it, but the concept is there's blue oceans and red oceans and blue oceans are, you know, there's all this business out there and opportunity in red oceans where you're kind of, you're fighting. So I take the car industry is the best analogy.

Ford and Chevy and Toyota were all fighting at a red ocean, like a little better on price, a little better customer service, and then Tesla comes in and takes over effectively one whole piece of it and became the biggest car company in the world in a very short period of time, which no one saw because they found a different path into an existing business model. So I think it's a great block. I read it multiple times that my team likes it.

Chris Kiefer (59:39.694)

Is that Renee Malborn or something? And W. Chan Kim, it's two authors. Okay.

STEPHEN PETASKY (59:42.564)

I can't remember the, it's a, I think that's it. I think that's it, yeah. It's fine, I should know the authors better, but I talk about the book all the time, but I actually forgot the authors. Really not easy to remember. Yeah, yeah, so that's a good one if you like that. And Huberman, Andrew Huberman has a new book out. I haven't read it yet, but I'm just gonna assume it's good, but you gotta be down with the science because he's all about science.

Chris Kiefer (59:51.95)

It's an odd name. It's not an easy Steve Smith. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (01:00:07.187)

Awesome. And then favorite movie.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:00:10.317)

Whew.

I'd be honest, I love mindless action flicks. Often like, I've loved my kids, like Marvel movies, like Avatar. I wish I could give you more depth to the movie side, but I definitely dig those types of movies, or that's where sometimes a Netflix binge on something like that is kind of more my jam. So I'd say, I don't know.

Chris Kiefer (01:00:33.918)

Yeah, I mean the Marvel movies are just the, what is the, like the Iron Man, what do they call those? It's just the Marvel Universe movies. The Avengers, yeah, the Avengers series in Marvel, they're like, lately they've just been like, I mean it's worth the money, and the two hours of your time, because there's so much production that goes into those. It's just like, yeah, they're good.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:00:41.322)

Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:00:45.32)

I mean, yeah, there's like Marvel Avengers, you know. Yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:01:03.08)

Yeah, they're pretty good. So thank you. Thanks for asking. That's a fun, fun exercise.

Chris Kiefer (01:01:03.571)

Um.

Chris Kiefer (01:01:07.282)

So if someone wanted to get in touch with you, what is your preferred method of connecting with people?

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:01:14.132)

Yeah, so unfortunately I don't have a lot of good channels yet because Chris, you're inspiring me to think a little bit better about how I should be out there, but you can follow me on Steven Pataski on Instagram. There are not many posts. I'll be honest, but I do plan on accelerating that a bit over the coming months. And on YouTube, the company is the Luxus group. So L U X U S think of Lexus, but Luxus, that's a Latin word for luxury. And we didn't talk about that, but real estate developer. And we do.

luxury vacation properties around the world. And so go to the website and that's a good way to connect and follow our journey there. We have some really, really cool things happening. They're gonna make a big impact in the industry over the coming few years. And you follow the journey, I think you won't be disappointed if you like to travel. You don't like to travel, you probably don't wanna follow us, but you like to travel, then it'll be pretty cool to follow.

Chris Kiefer (01:02:03.518)

Awesome. Well, maybe you left a little cliffhanger there on the work strategy, but maybe at some point in the next month or two, we could do a round two on the how you stack your work day. Cause that would be, that's also interesting to me. But anyways, I appreciate your time, Steven is this was awesome. Thank you for being generous and giving back. And yeah.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:02:20.382)

Thanks.

STEPHEN PETASKY (01:02:26.737)

Thank you, Chris, that was awesome, man. I appreciate your time. It's an honor being on the show.