25 Non-Negotiables for Longevity that Scientists Agree On

these are my 25 easiest non-negotiables for longevity and just overall health now the interesting thing is is there's going to be a fair bit of fat loss stuff sprinkled into this as well why well not just because everyone wants to be lean and this and that no because when you look at the literature and some of the top longevity experts in the world that I've interviewed on this channel they all mention that having lower body fat not low low body fat but low body fat is going to be a huge instrumental piece in a longer

healthier life the inflammation things like that all stems a lot of times from excess adapost tissue so let's go ahead and jump right into my 25 non-negotiables now a lot of these things are going to be focused on the positive I don't want to sit here and give you 25 rules I don't want to make this negative there are some rules in here and things to limit but more it's things to do number one and I mentioned this first and I know it's not the most exciting but I want to get it out there because

everyone should hear it and skip it if you need to whatever you do it needs to be sustainable it needs to have your mental health in mind and relationships are the most important I really think that that is the foundation if your mental health and your relationships are not in place none of the other stuff that I talk about can really make as big of a difference it can make a difference absolutely but it can make significantly more of a difference if you have the the foundation of mental health set in place so for longevity

and health that is absolutely number one now we get into the more tactical stuff number two prioritize always prioritize non-exercise activity thermogenesis over anything else what does that mean it means if you could just move a bunch throughout the day or have one hour of a dedicated workout and then be sedentary the rest of the day Bar None pick be being active all day your non-exercise activity thermogenesis Burns significantly more calories than your workouts do you can burn close to a thousand depending on the person much more in the way of non-exercise activity thermogenesis most

people in their 1hour workouts are burning between 200 and maybe 800 but it all depends on the person you can definitely go up from there but a hard workout is very rarely burning more than a th000 calories in an hour and there's this thing called the constrained energy model which demonstrates that when you do exercise a lot in the morning or or just in general in a Consolidated block your body sort of downregulates your activity a little bit subconsciously throughout the rest of the day so you end up burning less calories less fidgeting less moving

around it just happens without you even knowing it because we do try to find this homeostasis so it's better to just use your workouts to get a good stimulus push the intensity but then let most of the work come from your non-exercise size activity thermogenesis and it comes right back to that first thing I mentioned which was sustainability it allows it to be sustainable you're not destroying yourself number three nutrient quality first calories second and I am going to get destroyed for saying this but it needs context we should always always have calories in mind

calories matter calories are the mathematical way that we can look at hey you're eating too little or eating too much 100% understand that but if nutrient quality is there then satiety is there and you are less likely to overeat period if your body is getting what it needs and you focus on that and you don't eat the hyper palatable garbage you will not overeat it's going to be significantly harder and there is data to back that up when people or animals eat refined processed stuff add litim they will eat more when you do that in

a whole food fashion it's very hard to really overeat so focus on nutrient quality and let calories come second I do feel that when we have too much emphasis on calories it messes with our heads because then you're fighting as Dr Ben bman mentioned you're fighting against hunger which is a war that you will never ever win that is your biological system that is so much more deeply powerful than your willpower you're not going to win that one number four be cognizant but not obsessed with insulin this goes in line with that other thing that

I mentioned see how come we can't have a discussion where the calories people and the insulin people can like meet in the middle what I mean by that is sometimes like people say calories don't matter at all it's all insulin and other people say insulin doesn't matter it's all calories I think there's a thoughtful acknowledgement to both being cognizant of insulin is a very important thing if you are aware of how insulin being consistently High is detrimental to metabolic Health then you can know when to bring it down you can put carbohydrates a little bit

in the crosshairs and say hey okay I know that carbohydrates are something that I should probably have in a way that is not going to keep my insulin chronically spiked right you want to be able to control that and be cognizant of it but you certainly don't want to fear it insulin is not the problem it's not the enemy but it also is the enemy for a lot of people with metabolic issues and we need to be aware of that and unfortunately people with metabolic issues are a large percentage of the population insulin resistance is

the largest disease worldwide and as Dr Ben bman also put it when I interviewed him recently the United States is like 22nd in terms of insulin resistance in the world this is a global issue not just the us so we do have an issue with focusing too much on one thing and not focusing on the other number five minerals are the life force for us I don't take a lot of supplements and even when you see this channel like I mentioned things here and there but most of the stuff that sponsor on this channel usually

is food right minerals are important okay magnesium sodium pottassium trace minerals if you're going to take supplements a lot of times I would recommend minerals here's the bottom line we don't need to add vitamins in through through vitamins we may very well need to do that with minerals though because our nutrition our diets are slowly becoming more deficient in minerals so put the focus on minerals put the focus on magnesium that is the life force for us and that is also the life force for hydration which is a huge part of feeling good for a

long time number six protein first prioritize protein period it doesn't matter if you're in a caloric deficit or not I want you to prioritize the protein especially if you're in a caloric deficit we are now learning from the top longevity research that one of the worst things you can do is sacrifice protein and ultimately waste muscle okay we do not want to run into a situation where you get sick and CIA kicks in and you start wasting put on as much lean mass and have that protein high as early in life as you can and

sustain it number seven prioritize glp1 okay that sounds cheesy Thomas I'm not saying prioritize peptides prioritize OIC or wovi I'm talking about prioritizing things that stimulate glp1 activation in the body glp1 is going to keep you satiated that's why they made a drug out of it but stimulating it from a natural source or stimulating it through your diet is not even on the same chart as taking a pharmaceutical not even close but research reers have clearly harnessed that mechanism because it is powerful for appetite suppression so how do you increase glp1 increase your fiber increase

your monounsaturated fat your good quality saturated fat decrease your polyunsaturated fat the only amounts of polyunsaturated fat you should be getting in are like little bits from nuts little bits from fish things like that those don't need to be a staple in your diet also things like allulose these are particular like I said very unique sweetener that stimulates gp1 these things are good so focus on fiber focus on protein focus on the monounsaturated fats do research on which foods stimulate glp1 it makes a big difference in your appetite number eight I know it's contrarian and

cool to say that vegetables are bad but deep leafy greens are good they just are things like broccoli yes there may be some oxalate and broccoli sure but the sulfurane is one of the most powerful compounds that we can consume in today B diet so deep deep green broccoli deep leafy greens yes you should limit things like spinach because of the oxalates I agree but there are other leafy greens there's arugula there's low oxalate greens just because some greens have high oxalate which we'll talk about later doesn't mean all greens are bad I am still

in the camp that greens are probably good in fact I eat a lot of them and I do think there could number nine focus on your calories over the week not over the day if you are going to spend time fixating on calories it's better to say hey what does my weak look like because you could have a day where you consume 1,000 calories a day where you consume 3,000 and that's fine but as long as the end of the week you're in that slight deficit ever so slight deficit you're going to be okay and

if you focus on it like that you give yourself miniature bulks and cuts throughout the week that are actually quite good for your body composition and they keep your metabolism up and down up and down and keep you in a state where you're probably at a high metabolic rate number 10 Again people might not like this one but it's legit occasional longer fasts when people look and they cite the evidence against intermittent fasting saying it's no different than caloric restriction they're typically looking at short-term fasts they almost always are those studies are always looking at

12 14 maybe 16 hour fasts comparing them to caloric restriction and in that particular short window short case yeah they are kind of the same but once you start pushing fasts for 24 plus hours there are huge metabolic effects there are huge caloric restriction effects there are significant longevity effects at least that we've seen in rodents that are hard to replicate in humans because there's not a lot of studies that are looking at these longer term fasts because a lot of things even consider them unethical in study situations so you have to rely on like

food logs and things like that when people aren't really fasting so yeah we do look at some of the radent model research we do look at some of the mechanistic stuff but longer fast 24 36 hours occasionally once every couple months are probably a really good thing for most people even if it just gives people a dang break from food number 11 become fat adapted more than not what does that mean that means we want the primary fuel source for your body not the dietary source to be fat what does that mean it means the

more that we can allow our body to become more conditioned to being okay with using fat the better most people are heavy carb oxidizers that means that the staple of their diet is carbohydrates their staple fuel source is carbohydrates so the body upregulates the enzymes and the actions to ultimately process carbohydrates well simply by law of compensation you start to lose the ability to process fats better I'm not saying few carbohydrates I eat 1 to 200 grams of carbohydrates most days but I do make sure that my body is fat adapted where most of the

time I am keeping it in a lower carbohydrate state or most of the time I am training in a fasted State what I'm doing is I'm conditioning my body to be able to use fuel reserves if you do not occasionally teach your body to use fuel reserves how is it ever going to know how to do it efficiently because then when you do go without food your body is SC sing looking for carbohydrates that you're not giving it but if you can train your body that hey by occasionally like keeping carbs out of breakfast or

keeping carbs out of dinner or training in a fasted State you condition your body to become what is legitimately called fat adapted and it's a very real thing which brings me into number 12 dairy fat is a health food people sit there and they demonize things like red meat because of the saturated fat content and things like that whereas most of the literature now is suggesting that the red meat isn't the problem usually it's processed meat and stuff like that dairy fat there's a lot of evidence to support that the c-15 fats the saturated fatty

acid chains the conjugated linolic acid in dairy fat is not only cardioprotective but also good for fat loss that doesn't mean go guzzle heavy cream it doesn't mean go like cheers the glass of half and half and cheese what it means is use it almost as a supplement treat it that way oh I need to get some good quality d dairy fat rather than going for some trans fat garbage or fast food get some good quality dairy fat have some good aged cheese like peino Romano peino Romano is a cheese that the sardinians have been

eating for hundreds of years and they have some of the best longevity in the world and their biomarkers suggest they have the right phospholipid Bayers and just the lipids in general that are coming from their diet with minimal cardiovascular disease risk hm I put a link down below for a 30% off discount link for Thrive Market which is an online grocery store it has all the different things that I'm talking about like you can get Dairy snacks you could literally get like cheese crisps you can get all kinds of things right they are a quote

unquote better for you option online grocery store so you can do all your grocery shopping online plus when you're using that link down below that's saving you 30% off your entire first grocery order so everything you load up in your car 30% off plus a free $6 gift but the thing is is it makes it easy you're not going to the grocery store and trying to find things having to spend 2 hours you can search you can search by diet type you could search by type of food by Dairy you could search by sugar-free it

really makes doing the more complicated type of healthy shopping really easy and it makes it much more affordable and makes it accessible and I know that people are not always keen on online shopping for groceries but I suggest you try it because it is a GameChanger and especially with that 30% off discount link so that link is in the top line of the description right underneath this video number 13 is something that's non dietary it is what is called Mogi it is a Japanese tradition to do something hard something mentally and or physically challenging every

year as a way to almost purify your mind body and spirit now I don't know a ton about Japanese tradition I'm not going to pretend that I do but I know a little bit about Mogi based on guests that I've interviewed and based on books that I've read and based on how I live my life what that means is at least once a year do something that is extremely challenging and it doesn't mean like hey I'm going to like um you know do one hard workout it means do something big you want to climb a

mountain climb a mountain you want to meditate for two days do something almost on the verge of extreme for you right that could be relative right but the idea is by doing something challenging you are cleansing your mind body and spirit so in ancient samur tradition it came from sitting under a waterfall where you were allowing the water to essentially cleanse you basically like a reset like hitting that reset button on your life and it makes a very big difference for Mission and purpose which is a huge reason people suffer with mental health issues is

lacking that challenge or mental fulfillment number 14 is of course prioritizing sleep but the other side of this and this is something that people don't talk about is not obsessing over sleep as someone that has struggled with sleep for the last like seven years I will tell you the biggest improvements that I have made to my sleep have come from when I stop obsessing over it I simply prioritize it and it is a fundamental rule in my life that I go to bed at this roughly the same time and I follow the basic sleep hygiene

and I don't get obsessive and weird when you get obsessive and weird your sleep gets obsessive and weird we are designed to be able to sleep we are humans we can sleep all we need to do is give ourselves the basic parameters of going to bed at roughly the same time not eating a few hours before bed and having proper wind down period but most importantly create sleep pressure you need to build up that adenosine and build up that pressure so your body actually wants to sleep if you're sitting down all day staring at a

computer screen and then you wonder why you can't sleep what the heck you're literally not creating any sleep pressure get up and move your body is only going to want to be triggered to have this recharge mode if you're actually pressuring it a little bit number 15 is one I talk about all the time and it definitely is important for fat loss and that's g-lux it is much better to eat more and move more than it is to ultimately eat less and subsequently move less and even if you starve yourself and you try to move

more your caloric output's not going to be as good because your metabolic rates lower you want more energy moving through a system sounds crazy but you want to eat more and move more so that your net deficit is the same but it's coming much more at a higher level more energy moving through a system keeps your metabolism burning strong number 16 be cognizant of oxalates they are a real thing our body will create oxalates but we cannot clear them does that mean you need to be afraid of almonds and be afraid of spinach heck no

consume them but don't go insane on it because they don't really leave your body oxalates can build up in the kidneys they absolutely do and I had Dr Jacob taus on here talking he's a kidney scientist oxalates are a very real issue very real thing okay they don't clear and they do build up they build up in your blood and in your joints and eventually can cause problems so be cognizant of high oxalate foods and just reduce them and replace them with other things replace spinach with arugula etc etc number 17 don't fear caffeine now

I say this because caffeine really the studies demonstrate hey people that consume caffeine have less Frailty because they're more active I would rather you be active but consume caffeine from natural sources then you're getting it in its full spectrum full Matrix form green tea with protective antioxidants coffee with protective antioxidants green tea with a little bit more naturally occurring theine right so you've got these things that are going to allow you to buffer versus having an energy that's pure like synthetic caffeine number 18 do fasted workouts I will die on this hill that a fasted

workout is beneficial you are in a nutrient deprived state so of course the stimulus when you train is going to be harder your body is going to adapt faster and harder and I know from a weight loss perspective people say well it's equal if you eat before or not in the short term I'm sure that's true but long term the metabolic changes that you make training fasted over weeks over months over years over decades oh that adds up trust me it definitely adds up and it shows in your performance and shows your ability to be

fat adapted under the most extreme situations without going to Exquisite detail I will simply explain that when your body is efficient at training in a deprived depleted State you are more resilient and resiliency seems to be quite key when you look at animal model and some human model research at least for longevity number 19 treat sunlight like a vitamin period enjoy sunlight don't overdo it you wouldn't overtake vitamin D would you you wouldn't overtake vitamin C would you okay so you're not going to go out in the sun and bake and just be an idiot

but you are going to go out and you say hey I haven't gotten enough today I need to go soak up some sun or I need to get a little more tomorrow because I didn't get enough yesterday if you treat it like that it all falls into place we need to stop the overg glorification of sun and stop the demonization of the sun it is what it is and we will have periods of it and we will not number 20 win in doubt eggs eggs have almost every everything you need you could probably survive on

eggs so win in doubt get the eggs win in doubt a hardboiled egg that is a cardinal rule for me and it's a non-negotiable at least seven eggs a week try to get three to five per day but if I'm not hitting seven per week something needs to change in my diet I consider them delicious nutritious and a life force number 21 limit refined oils wow I sound like a real serious Zealot don't I limit adulterated chemically produced deodorized refined oils come on why is this an argument why is this something that people have to

fight about online this is a chemically adjusted altered oil why on Earth would that be okay in high amounts sure a little bit here and there it's going to happen but why would we have that almost as a staple it's not a polyunsaturated fat anymore it's a peroxidized fat that is garbage it's peroxidized it's oxidized it is rancid we don't need that oil prioritize monounsaturated fats prioritize Whole Food polyunsaturated fats maybe some nuts maybe some seeds maybe some fish but we do not need refined oils number 22 is another negative Nelly one and that's avoid

High caloric combinations of fats and carbs together a we're dealing with a glycan issue if they're consumed in high amounts but B that is the standard American diet and that is exactly what's wrong with the United States is high carbohydrate mixed with high saturated fat in one sitting literally in a clinical setting literally how they induce insulin resistance is by adding a high amount of saturated fat and literally how they can induce inflammation is introducing highs saturated fat and high sugar we know so much that it is a concept and a way to actually induce

inflammation and problems do not combine High caloric fats and carbs together that does not exist in nature it does not belong in your body together number 23 your total volume load with your workouts is what matters when you're trying to build muscle or you're trying to burn fat it's not about finding just the proper amount if you were to train in a 20 rep range and you were to do a relatively lightweight because you were pushing 20 reps all that matters is that you do enough volume so that your total amount of weight pushed is

the same as if you were lifting heavy weight times reps okay your load times your reps times your sets what is your total volume if I pushed 100 lb for 10 reps that's 1,000 lb and if I did 10 sets of that that's 10,000 lb what is the total amount of pounds moved that's all you need to pay attention to number 24 eat a big breakfast or a big lunch some people aren't breakfast people but a lot of literature shows big breakfast smaller lunch smaller dinner is the best way for longevity and for sustainability and

for fat loss but I'm inclined to think that maybe a big lunch is better maybe a small breakfast or no breakfast at all followed by a big lunch followed by a smaller dinner last but certainly not least number 25 I believe and it's a non-negotiable for me unless the literature came back so strong which it seems to be going the other way from that meat is a multivitamin red meat is a multivitamin it has so many many vitamins and minerals that we seek out from a plethora dozens of other foods that we can get in

one simple serving one or two servings doesn't mean you need to be a total Meathead and eat six ribe eyes per day and a brisket for dinner and then have bone broth and stew meat for dessert no one's saying that but a moderate amount of red meat is nutritious as always keep it locked in here on my channel I'll see you tomorrow