--:-- Ryan Hanley: Testosterone is a symptom of the problem. Clomid, by the way, what it does is it stops this process called aromatization. What is aromatization? It's when testosterone gets converted into estrogen. Guess where that happens? In your fat cells. In fact, women need that because women who compete in bodybuilding and natural bodybuilding without drugs, when they get super lean, their estrogen levels drop. The number one thing that's causing issues with testosterone is excess body fat, especially visceral body fat. Guys are so quick to go out and take TRT. If you want to do things the right way, you have to fix the root cause. You have to lose the excess body fat.
--:-- All right, Ted, dude, so excited to have you on the show. These are some of my favorite shows because I would consider myself a fitness hobbyist. I would never present myself as someone who knows what they're talking about, but I love to try all kinds of different exercises and routines. I got a cold plunge. I got a sauna. What's fun is I like the testing part because you find out what works and what doesn't, but I technically don't know anything. So I love when I get people like yourself on here that I can just pepper with questions. I know the audience loves it too. So thank you so much for your time, my friend.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Yeah, happy to be here. I appreciate how you're starting out because I deal with a lot of people who believe they know a lot. In many cases, they do. But the way I define how good you are at health and fitness is the real-world results. Just like you would say to someone giving business advice, "Here's what you need to do with your business, run these ads," and you say, "Okay, man, you must have a killer business," and they say, "Actually, we're struggling." It's like, okay, I don't think I'm going to listen to you then.
--:-- I think that's really important. There are people who get results but don't even know how they're getting them. Low-carb diet people or carnivore diet people say, "Carnivore diet changed my life." No, you finally got into a calorie deficit. You lost the weight. Your inflammation came down because visceral fat secretes inflammatory chemicals, makes you feel horrible, increases oxidation and stress in your body. You lost that visceral fat and now you're feeling better, but you could have even done a vegan diet. We can get into all that. You just let me know where you want to start.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm going to use this as a personal fitness consulting hour. I'm just going to pepper you now.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Go for it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I know the audience loves this particular topic. Our audience is a tremendous group. It tends to be men and women who are driven and ambitious. If you listen to all the crazy stuff on the show and the people I bring on and you stick around, then this is where your head is at. I know fitness is a big part for a lot of people. I did a poll about six months ago and got some feedback on the audience. A lot of our listeners tend to be in that 35 to 50 range. We skew more towards men, but we have a lot of females as well. People are across the spectrum in their health journey. I didn't get detailed in the question. It was more like, "Where would you classify yourself in your health journey right now?" It's a very broad spectrum. So don't feel like you're being too simple or too complex. There are people across the board with interest in these topics.
--:-- I really want to focus on the transition in health from 30s to 40s and use that as the construct. One, that's what I just went through. I'm 44 years old. Two, a lot of the people I interact with, peers, even some of the founders I coach, they're either coming up to that transition, which tends to be a moment, or they've made the transition into their 40s and now they're going, "Hey, I would like to be fit as long as I can into this second half of my life." So I'd like to use that as our construct because I know your recommendations for a 22-year-old would be different than for a 50-year-old.
--:-- First and foremost, you have this quote that I think is fantastic and sets the table for our conversation today: "Success means nothing if you're exhausted." I love this because it's right to the point. If you're waking up every day feeling like crap, or you don't have energy, or you're not excited about who you see in the mirror, that sets the tone for the rest of your day. I'd like you to talk a little bit about your own health journey, where you've come from, and why you've made this your career. Then I want to get into some very specific things.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Health and fitness saved my life. Everyone thinks when they meet me, "You must have played sports in high school, must have been a jock." But I wasn't. I was a weed-smoking, skateboarding, rock t-shirt wearing kind of guy. When I turned 19, I had screwed around in high school, didn't do well. Got into college, started really getting into physiology. I wanted to study neuroscience. I was super fascinated by it.
--:-- Then my nine-year-old brother was kidnapped and murdered. It was big news in Miami. Anyone living in Miami during that time knows my brother's name, Jimmy Rice. Don't look up the story. It's really bad. It was a very high-profile case. They ended up catching the guy who did it. How that plays into why I chose health and fitness is because during that time, I thought my life was over. My parents were focused on getting laws passed and doing great stuff for missing children in the United States. They met with two presidents. But I was falling apart mentally, emotionally, and physically. I dropped out of school. I didn't know what to do with my life.
--:-- I ended up finding my way into the gym again. Although I was the skateboarding party guy, I had lifted weights and done martial arts. I wasn't completely just a skinny, very active kid. I happened to party, and that was my thing. I found my way back into the gym, and that was my path to healing. That was my path to getting back to a place where there was a light at the end of the tunnel after this terrible, tragic story that devastated my family and put me in a dark place that took years to come out of. Health and fitness was the thing.
--:-- I want to make it relevant to everyone listening because that's a really hard story. Hopefully nothing remotely similar will ever happen to you. But we all go through hard things. Best case scenario, you had the best childhood in the world, and you're going to watch your parents get old and die. A lot of the people in the demographic you mentioned, that's who I work with. My clients — people love to say, "My metabolism is slow." No, you are a caretaker for your dad who has cancer for the second time and your mom who has signs of Alzheimer's. These things that happen in our social life take a toll on our time and stress levels. A lot of people in their 40s end up having kids that require a lot of money and attention, and then have parents that require a lot of attention and sometimes money too. That's what a lot of people's experience in their 40s is.
--:-- Health and fitness helped me pull out of that bad place. I help people who find themselves in a place where, in a way, it's the best time of their life. They're in their forties, more successful than ever, more confident in who they are. And they look in the mirror and don't recognize the person looking back. They wonder, "Will I ever be able to get that back?" A lot of people don't believe they can, but I'm here to tell you it's possible and easier than you think.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I appreciate you sharing that story with us. While most people can't relate to the depth and public nature of that tragedy, I appreciate you sharing it to give us context. We all have things. One thing I would caution you on is don't compare your thing to someone else's thing. Your thing doesn't need to be as perceptually big or disastrous for it to have a similar impact on you, your body, your mental state, your depression. For you, it could be getting fired from a job, a girlfriend or wife leaving you, a business partner doing something. There are plenty of things that can put us down this spiral. Don't feel like your thing isn't as important. We all have things, and we have to pull ourselves out.
--:-- That's what we're here to talk about today: how do we optimize our physical health? I've been saying for a long time on the show that your health is a competitive advantage. When you're thinking about competitive advantages in business, your health is a competitive advantage. I mean this sincerely.
--:-- My story with health is I was a college athlete, athlete in high school, always saw myself as this athletic guy. Then into my late 20s, early 30s, I had kids, got married, worked a lot — all the things you just said. In 2017, I was hosting a conference. The final session of a two-day conference was a fireside chat with our last speaker to close out the day. I'm standing behind the curtain, two or three minutes from going on, and I collapse. I pass out. My physical health — drinking too much, not sleeping, eating crap — I paid zero attention to any of it because I was so focused on work. The speaker had to go out on his own. I walked out, sat in the chair after pulling myself back together, and basically said, "Hey, Michael wants to get after it. We're here to see you anyway. Go do your thing." I sat in the chair worried about passing out again while he went and did it. Thank God, no one even knew.
--:-- I realized I had hit this low. If I couldn't at 36 years old make it through a two-day conference without passing out, that's bad. That's when I started my journey. When I started to lose weight, all of a sudden I could create more. I could be better for my team members. I could give more attention to my kids at night because I wasn't exhausted by the day. All these amazing things started happening.
--:-- So someone comes to you in the situation I was in. They want to get better. You're not convincing them they need to get better. They've come to you and said, "I'm in this place. I'm 20, 25, 40 pounds overweight from where I want to be. I don't have energy." How do you start digging in with them? I know a lot of people get stuck on where to start because it feels like such a big thing. Do I start running? Do I start lifting? Do I take testosterone? Where do I get started on this journey of turning my health around so I can make it a competitive advantage in business?
--:-- Ted Ryce: The real answer is hire an expert like me. They'll be able to guide you through the process in a way that doesn't lead to losing the weight and gaining it back, or overdoing it. I know that's going to come across self-serving, but that is the truth. If you want the fastest path to regaining your health and getting into shape where you can be in the best shape of your life in your forties, fifties, even sixties — provided you weren't an elite athlete in your twenties, of course.
--:-- Let's get into the steps separate from that. How do you grow your business the fastest if you're not already a business wizard? You hire someone to help you. You hire a mentor. You want to get good at golf? You hire someone. You want to get good at tennis? You hire someone. I got my black belt in jiu-jitsu a lot faster than I planned. I was planning on spending a year in Brazil to make it happen. I thought it would take nine months. I got it in less than six months because I hired the best person I could to train with and help me level up. I was already good. A lot of people say, "I know what I'm doing." Eh.
--:-- If you're not sold on working with someone yet, totally cool. Here's what I want you to focus on. You think you're knowledgeable about health, fitness, and diet. In a trivia sense, you can talk about ergothioneine in shiitake and king oyster mushrooms and sulforaphane in broccoli sprouts. Fantastic. What results can you get for yourself in health and fitness? What are your numbers?
--:-- That's what I start clients off with. Go get a DEXA scan to see your body fat percentage, your muscle mass, and specifically your visceral fat. Not all DEXA scans do that, so make sure you go to one that tests visceral fat. If you have that, you're not that healthy. A big mistake people make is they tell stories about what they're doing instead of about the results. It's like someone in business saying, "We're running ads. I just hired a rock star. Our business is crushing it." How much money are you making this year compared to last year? If it's not different, then you're just talk.
--:-- I remember a very obese guy telling me, "I drink green juice, I'm eating acai, I'm doing cardio, I'm lifting weights." I'm thinking, you're out of shape. I don't need anything else. What you're saying is completely irrelevant.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: [Episode continues with ad break]
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--:-- [Discussion resumes]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I went through this journey too. I had the same thing. I got out of shape in my mid-thirties and changed things around after that. Start with data. Go get your blood work. I've worked with so many high performers who haven't been to the doctor and gotten blood work in a while. If you're in your 40s, you don't have time to mess around. I had one client who went and got a calcium score. It was elevated. Calcium score is how much hard plaque is in your arteries. It should be zero at his age, but it was quite high. Get the data. Get a DEXA scan. If you have heart disease risks in your family, get a calcium score. I had a CT angiogram. I don't even have heart disease in my family. Luckily it came out fine. Go get your colonoscopy because people are getting colon cancer earlier than before.
--:-- Can I ask you one question? I have one of those Withings scales, the ones that do a body scan. How accurate are those types of at-home scales?
--:-- Ted Ryce: They're typically not right. You want to go to an InBody at the very least, which is bioelectrical impedance. A DEXA scan is best. A DEXA scan does come with a little bit of radiation, but it's very low. Dental x-rays and flying in an airplane also have radiation. A little bit of radiation never hurt anybody. Radiation dosages aren't something I read a lot about, but having a DEXA scan will help you a lot.
--:-- One of those scales would be good for trends if you're in the process — seeing weight come down, fat percentage come down, visceral fat come down, muscle mass going up as a percentage. Seeing the trends might help. But ultimately, if you want to know where you're at, you need to go to a facility and get a DEXA scan and an InBody scan for real accurate numbers. The DEXA scan is the gold standard. The Withings scale trends similarly to DEXA scans or bioelectrical impedance, but it's more of a better guess. Even the DEXA scan has a margin of error, but it's quite low.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I have a Whoop. I'm not wearing it right now because I go through cycles with it. I don't love having it on my wrist, but I love the data. And the scale. So guys, when I say a Withings scale — there are other brands — it's the scales you step on, pull the little bar up, hold it, and it sends electricity through your body to figure out different things. I've found it good for trends. But right now it says my body fat is 7.7%. That's not accurate. I know I've brought my body fat percentage down, but to think I'm 8% body fat is crazy. That's not the truth.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Here's how you know how lean you are. It's not the muscle striations. It's the veins, the vascularity. If you have veins popping, you would have veins popping out on your chest and your abs at that level of body fat. I would see veins on your neck right now, which I don't. That's not my goal either.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That was kind of like when I saw that. I've been on a mission the last three or four months to get myself back to where I want to be. I let myself go, but whatever, it doesn't matter. I've always felt like this scale is good for direction and trending, not for quoting 8% body fat. That would be insane.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Another thing about low body fat — some guys have a misconception. Bodybuilders or Men's Health cover models, when they diet down, their sex drive is low, their energy is low. They might be 7% body fat, but they're feeling horrible. They look amazing, but a lot of guys can't maintain super low body fat because of the hunger, lethargy, and low libido. You drop your testosterone levels into the double digits. If you're measuring nanograms per deciliter, which is the metric in the United States, low is 300 or 280 depending on the lab. I've seen natural bodybuilders with double digits when they get to contest. It comes back, but if they're taking testosterone, their testosterone stays at the level they're injecting. For natural guys not taking TRT — which I'm not a fan of, by the way — it's going to tank.
--:-- Keep that in mind. What you think might be your ideal based on social media, with all the steroid use, women with BBLs and liposuction, guys getting liposuction on their abs too like Drake — I don't have anything against people doing any of this stuff. But if you look at Drake's photos, if he had this crease in his abdominal area and his arms, you couldn't see any veins. If he were that lean, you would see bicep and forearm veins popping. He didn't have that. People use software as well. It's just crazy times we're living in.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love that you brought that up because this is what happens to a lot of people. My fight is against dad bod. I don't want to be dad bod. Not even so much because I care about the look. I don't like the way I feel when I put on weight. But it's more the discipline of it. When we start putting on the keg belly and start accepting our back pain and knee pain, to me that feels like giving up. You've just acquiesced to life. I refuse to go quietly into the night. I'm going to fight this thing kicking and screaming as much as I can — being diligent, focusing on fitness, focusing on what I eat, focusing on mental health. I'm not just going to ride out what the universe decides to throw me from a mental and physical health perspective. I'm going to fight it.
--:-- That really came from January before last. I live in upstate New York. We get 66 days of sun. In January and February, you're drinking vitamin D and doing everything you possibly can to not get the winter blues. No matter what you do, you have this dip in energy because you don't see the sun. I'm very used to it. But in January of 2024, I ran into a brick wall. Couldn't get out of bed, no energy, brain fog, no libido, the whole thing. I knew something was different. I don't have a great GP. Hopefully she doesn't listen to the show, but she's not awesome. I don't trust her. She constantly wants to put me on drugs.
--:-- I've traditionally had very high cholesterol. Since I was a kid, I've had cholesterol over 200. In the last 10 years, I've seen it go from 200 up to 275, over-indexed on the LDL. I go to my GP and she says, "Your cholesterol is high. I'll write you a prescription for Lipitor." I said, "I don't want to go on Lipitor." I don't like taking things I feel are unnecessary, and I know there are side effects to Lipitor. I had done enough research to know that amount of cholesterol, if my plaque is zero, is essentially not an issue. I came back to her and said, "Can you write me a ticket to get a plaque scan? If my calcium is zero and my plaque is zero, I don't need to go on Lipitor." She agreed. I went and it was zero.
--:-- Ted Ryce: You got a CT angiogram?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I got the whole thing. Injected with contrast. Came back zero, which is great.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Where I'm going with this is I ended up getting one of the services Huberman talks about for men's hormonal testing. An at-home blood test. It comes in the mail, you take the blood, mail it out, and they send you your results. I did it twice. The first time, my total testosterone was 77. The second time, it was 84. I'm in the sixth or seventh percentile of men for testosterone. That's not free testosterone — that's all testosterone in my body. My free testosterone was like five.
--:-- I ended up getting a prescription for enclomiphene. It's a steroid that naturally activates your body's testosterone production. It's not TRT. You take it sublingual. After about three months, it had an amazing effect. My testosterone came back up. But this sent me down the journey we're talking about today. I thought, "My God, I've been relatively healthy since 2017, varying degrees, but for the most part on the healthier side for men my age. And my testosterone just dropped off the map for two months." That put me down this path of, "I'm going to fight this thing. Within reason, I'm not going to fly to some shady country and get injected with experimental chemicals, but as much as I can, I'm going to do the things necessary to create healthy longevity in my life."
--:-- That's how we got to wanting to talk to professionals like yourself who know so much about this stuff. If I wasn't a research OCD psychopath — which makes me good at certain aspects of my job — willing to invest hours and hours into reading and listening to different people, comparing notes, trying to figure out what could work for me, and then finding the professionals who could help, I have no idea where I'd be. I'd probably still be sitting here with super low testosterone, feeling like shit, just thinking this is what my life is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So going back to your point of working with an expert, I know guys that when someone like Ted comes on a show and it's what he does and you hear that, you're like, "Oh, that's because..." No, what Ted said was, "Call me." He said, "Find somebody that you can work with who can be your guide because I'm telling you, unless you are a complete psychopath, this is very hard to do yourself. And it will take much longer and you will make a lot of mistakes."
--:-- So I just wanted to double down on that point. I found a local hormone optimization specialist who I work with here in my local area. And she has completely changed the game for me. But it wasn't until I found her. I was doing all kinds of different things until I found her. So I just wanted to push into that. I do think it's very important that if this is important to you, that you find somebody like yourself to work with.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Yeah, definitely. And just so you're taking Clomid, is that correct? Because you said Clomidine?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I can tell you exactly what it is. But I'll talk in the Clomiphene, right?
--:-- Ted Ryce: Yeah, and Clomiphene. Yep. And yeah. Yes. What that does is it stops... Again, I'm not an expert in this area, but what it does is it stops. So here's what happens. Because we can talk about testosterone because testosterone is a downstream effect. What I mean by that is you might say, "Man, my problem, I don't have any money. I don't have any money. That is my problem." It's like, "No, no, no. Or do you have a job? Is your business?" That's a symptom of your problem. So testosterone is a symptom of the problem.
--:-- Clomid, by the way, what it does, to my recollection, is it stops this process called aromatization. What is aromatization? It's when testosterone gets converted into estrogen. Guess where that happens? In your fat cells. In fact, women need that because women who compete in natural bodybuilding without drugs, when they get super lean, their estrogen levels drop.
--:-- So the number one thing that's causing issues with testosterone, according to the best literature that we have, is excess body fat, especially visceral body fat. Guys are so quick to go out and take TRT or some other type of medication. And look, everyone, I've put things in my body—MDMA, alcohol. Alcohol is one of the worst things you can do, but I'm not judging. But if you want to do things the right way, you've got to fix the root cause. And the root cause is this: you have to lose the excess body fat.
--:-- Another thing about that is we know that there's what's called a personal fat threshold. For example, Chinese people get diabetes at a lower BMI. So at a lower weight—BMI is just a measurement of your height and your weight—they get higher rates of obesity at a lower BMI than Americans do. Why is that? Some people have a genetic predisposition to having diabetes or insulin resistance at lower levels of body fat.
--:-- Just like I had a CT angiogram too. My calcium score is zero. I had what's called zero stenosis in my arteries. So there's no signs of any type of issues with my heart, with my arteries. I'm 48 years old. But I had a precancerous polyp removed from my colon back in 2021 and I have to get colonoscopies quite frequently. Why? Because I had a genetic predisposition to it.
--:-- So you can't compare yourself to people. That's why going back to the second thing I said first: hire an expert to help you. But the second was get the data. You don't want to tell yourself a story about how you're doing. Go get a DEXA scan. Go get your blood work. Go get a VO2 max test because that measures cardiorespiratory fitness—how fit you are cardiovascularly. A lot of people aren't very fit cardiovascularly, especially if you're fat. If you've got excess body fat, if you've got a big belly, you may be going out and pushing yourself. And it feels like you're pushing yourself. But the issue is you're already out of shape. Your body is under stress already. Oxidative stress is higher. If you're too overweight, you're going to have some sleep apnea, so your sleep isn't going to be good. You're going to already have issues.
--:-- And as we get older, to your point earlier, age is not just a number. It's a good thing to say that, and you should say that if you're currently saying that. But the reality is this: even if you're doing everything perfect—this person doesn't exist, but let's just imagine there's a lean, fit person who's been fit their whole life, like Olympic level cyclists with VO2 max—and they've been doing the same thing, they've never changed. The only thing that's changed is their age. Their VO2 max is going to come down.
--:-- We're super focused on building muscle and strength, which is the foundation in my opinion. But VO2 max is something where you can get your strength. You can be strong and have muscle in your 70s, 50s, 60s, 70s, not a problem. But your VO2 max is like... you have an opportunity. The younger you are, the more you can invest in it to build it up. And then the less the decline. Every year that goes by, you're missing out on that if you're not doing dedicated cardiovascular training.
--:-- Our levels of what's called low-grade chronic inflammation—scientists call it inflammaging—go up even if you're doing everything right. And if you're not doing everything right, which is like 99.9% of us, unless you're part of the Shimane tribe in Bolivia living off the land, hunting your food—none of us listening to this are—you're not as healthy as you think. Modern life is what it is. That's why we have to work so hard to stay healthy, because we're really working against the amazing and fun life that we've created, but it's a bit far away from what our biology is designed for.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Okay. So good news with the enclomiphene. I used it for about a year and then my doctor and I cycled off of it once we felt we had everything stabilized. So it was more of a "get yourself fixed and then all the things that you said." It was funny. She said, "In order to get you back to operational speed, we're going to use this tool for a period of time. And in the meantime, what I need you to do is get your shit together."
--:-- Because in the end of 2023, I was selling a company. There was a lot of stress. I was exiting. There's all this stuff going on. So 2023, I'd put on about 10 or 15 pounds from where I'd like to be, which is pretty much where I am today. And some of that... I'm just as susceptible as anybody else to the "Oh, I'll just have one drink tonight because I earned it, because I worked so hard today." That kind of stuff adds up.
--:-- I have a bunch of questions on some individual things I'm going to save for the end. Maybe we'll do like a rapid fire section. But there are two additional topics that I want to touch on that I know a lot of people are thinking about and hearing about. Let's start with the big one: GLP-1s.
--:-- As I shared with you in the pre-show, I don't know that I've ever shared this on the show, but I take Tirzepatide, Mounjaro, which is a second generation GLP-1. I take a micro dose of it. I take 1.0 something milliliters or milligrams or whatever the metric is. I take it once a week.
--:-- I'll give you what I have seen as the result. The reason that I wanted to take it, and I did months and months of research on this, it wasn't about fat loss. I was already on that journey and kind of knew how to do it. The things that I was most interested in were: one, reducing food noise. With the micro dose, all my food noise is gone. I still like to eat protein. I still hit my calorie numbers. It's not like I'm just not hungry, but I don't think about food all day. I don't get cravings. I'm just like, "Oh, I'm hungry. I'm going to go eat eggs."
--:-- Inflammation, which also comes with reduction of fat, but there's some anti-inflammation properties. And the other one was I wanted to completely cut sugar—any processed sugar outside of fruits—out of my diet. With the micro dose, I have zero desire for sugar.
--:-- My mom went pre-diabetic about six months ago. There was a little bit of nervousness in me that there might be a hereditary component. I was like, "I'm not a big sugar guy to begin with." So I have really enjoyed it. I've had no stomach issues. I feel like I wake up with energy. No food noise. The inflammation stuff has been great. In general, it's been a very positive experience. But again, I'm taking less than what is normally a micro dose for most people if they're going to do it.
--:-- We started talking in the green room and you started giving me your response. I was like, "No, no, no, no. I want to get into it in the show." So talk to us about GLP-1s. You're not going to hurt my feelings. Share your honest opinions on how people should be thinking about these, positive use cases, places where you'd be careful, et cetera.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Yeah. I'm a little bit more biased against using testosterone because guys are like, "No, I couldn't lose the fat. And then I started taking TRT." It's like, "No, you're eating too many calories. You think you're training properly, but you're actually not." Then you take testosterone, you build muscle. We've done studies where one group goes into the gym and starts lifting weights. The other group sits on the couch and injects testosterone. The people who sat on the couch and took testosterone gained muscle. The more muscle you have, the easier it is to lose fat because your body mass goes up.
--:-- By the way, what do you think is the number one thing that determines how many calories you burn per day?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Could you walk? How much you weigh?
--:-- Ted Ryce: A 300-pound person requires way more calories to maintain. It's like people saying, "Let's forgive the debt of the college students." It's like, "Well, someone has to pay for that." You cannot move to a desert island, starving, eating bugs, climbing trees for coconuts, cracking them open, barely getting by, and maintain a 300-pound body if you're 5'9" or 5'11". It's not going to happen. You simply don't have the energy to do it.
--:-- This might sound controversial, but it's not. There's a lot of metabolic ward data showing this is the case. Anyway, I know I went off on a tangent, but I wanted to be clear about that before moving on to GLP-1s.
--:-- I work with clients who take GLP-1s. I'm not as against them. The reason is I think taking TRT because you think you need it is a total cop-out unless you've had a traumatic brain injury or a testicular injury and you actually need it. There are so many doctors who will prescribe it like, "Come on in, let's do some TRT."
--:-- When it comes to GLP-1s, here's what changes my mind about it. We know that to some extent, obesity is heritable. A really good person on this is Stephan Guyenet. He was on the Joe Rogan show and he's written a book. I've had him on my show a bunch of times. When I first had him on, he's a neurobiologist that studies obesity. I was like, "What the hell does neuroscience have to do with obesity?" But the biggest breakthroughs in obesity, including GLP-1s, have come from neuroscience. In fact, what do GLP-1s do? They affect the reward part of your brain to quiet it down so that you're not like, "Oh man, I'm feeling a little stressed. Let me go get some M&Ms."
--:-- We know that there's obesity, and this is something I changed my mind on as I've matured and educated myself. There's a reason that I work with clients who are extremely successful, deca-millionaires, and they're 260 pounds at 5'11". And it's not because they're lazy or lack work ethic. And then I work with guys who don't struggle as much. Something's going on here. Some people just have... this is all a brain issue.
--:-- If it helps, here's my thoughts on it. If you do the right thing, because you don't want it to be a cop-out. I've talked to people who wanted to work with me and they're like, "But I'm taking a GLP-1." It's like, "Well, 25% of what you lost is muscle because you aren't doing the right things. You don't know how much protein you're eating. You're not lifting weights. I'm glad that you feel better and that's great, but I'm striving for X. I help people who want to achieve excellence here."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, that's the Ozempic face that people talk about. When you do none of the work, when you continue to eat the same macro percentages which normally are over-indexed towards carbs instead of protein, and you're not lifting weights, and you're just taking the GLP-1s, that's when you get that gray, sunken face look that you've seen in a lot of celebrities.
--:-- This was one of the biggest things when I was doing my own research. I'm trying to get as close to my body weight, which is 195 pounds, in protein. If I can be within 70% of that, I'm happy. Some days you go a little bigger, whatever. That has been a big part of not having any structural changes. All I really did was ramp up the protein and keep the carbs enough so I had energy. That way you don't get that Ozempic face.
--:-- If you Google Ozempic face, you'll see some pretty gnarly looking things.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Yeah, there's a ton. What you see is your skin starts to turn a little gray because they're not eating enough protein, they're not eating enough food in general, and they get this skinny fat, sunken face look. All that's happening is they're not doing anything to improve their body structure. They're literally just eating less calories because the GLP-1 is not giving them that indication. It's really wild.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So don't get Ozempic face. Keep going.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Don't get it. Yeah. Starting off with lower dosages, I think, is key. I've worked with several clients on GLP-1 agonists. One of them still struggles. So it's not a one-size-fits-all. It doesn't work the same for everyone. And it's something that you have to commit to long term. The research shows that when people stop taking it, they gain the weight back. I don't know about microdoses and what we know about that, but the food noise comes back. Depending on who you are and how much food noise you have to deal with, maybe it makes sense to take a microdose for a long time.
--:-- I've created a framework. I call it the Metabolic Reset Sequence. There are ways that you can manage your hunger and cravings without that. Again, depending on who you are and how much you struggle, you still might have to use it. I'm not against using GLP-1 agonists, but again, in the context of doing the right things.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yes. And I'll say this too. If you're someone who's like, "I'm never going to do the right thing. I'm going to drink alcohol. I'm going to eat what I want. I'm not going to exercise, but give me a shot. I'll take a shot." It's like, okay, then do that. It's better than losing your life to being overweight.
--:-- Ted Ryce: I agree with you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And just so everyone knows, part of my protocol has been that I have made necessary physical activity and diet changes and structures and discipline to go along with it. It's not like this was just, "Oh, I'm overweight. I want to lose weight." This was like, "Look, I'm trying to optimize myself. I know the places that I'm weak. I know the places that I need help with and the things that I want to keep out of my body."
--:-- I'm interested in your take on this if you feel differently. But to me, sugar is the fucking devil.
--:-- Ted Ryce: No, disagree.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay. Yeah. No, I'm into that. So go.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Sugar is found in fruit. It's not structurally... there's different types of sugar: fructose, sucrose, galactose, lactose. But it's not really sugar. Going back to this brain thing, because nobody is overeating oranges. There might be someone who's doing that, but that's a different problem.
--:-- What we're really talking about is the thing that hijacks people's brain. When you think about sugar, tell me a food that you know is high sugar. What do you think of?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think of candies, baked goods, cupcakes, treats, ice cream.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Candy for sure. Jelly beans are like 100% sugar. Most people, though, if they're eating ice cream or cookies, if you look at the fat content, the calories coming from fat are much higher or they're equal to sugar.
--:-- I was low carb, staunch low carb for 10 years, until I got fat in my mid-thirties. I was like, "I'm doing everything right. Why did this happen to me?" I was so frustrated. Now I get into arguments with the low carb community all the time because of this.
--:-- Sugar being the devil: if you have metabolic dysfunction, meaning if you're pre-diabetic or diabetic, the more sugar you have, the more it's going to disrupt your blood sugar for sure. However, what even causes diabetes?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't know the answer. I know it has something to do with insulin resistance, our inability to create insulin.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Right. And what causes that is fat deposits in your pancreas, which is what secretes insulin. You cannot cure diabetes by going low carb. You cure diabetes by losing fat. The medical community uses "remission" or whatever. They don't say "cure." Can you cure diabetes? That's for a medical doctor to really explain the nuance there.
--:-- But I'll tell you this: I've worked with diabetics and people with pre-diabetic blood sugar levels. The way you drop it is by two ways. Number one, build more muscle because your muscles are a sink for glucose. You store carbohydrate in your muscles. It's called glycogen. For some people, sugar is a performance-enhancing food or drug, whatever you want to call it. But if you're sitting around jacking up your blood sugar levels because you're munching on gummy bears, yeah, it's probably going to mess you up more if you keep that up and you're not doing any type of exercise. And in general, you have high levels of body fat for sure. But eating sugars is like throwing gasoline on the fire. What's causing the fire? It is the fact that you have too much body fat and specifically fat in your organs, the visceral fat.
--:-- One of the biggest issues is liver fat. People have non-alcoholic fatty liver. It's being diagnosed at higher and higher rates. These aren't people who are drinking a lot. Why is that happening? It's because fat deposits start to get into the liver and start disrupting its function.
--:-- Really, the answer is not about going back to data. I eat sugar. Let's go beyond just using macronutrients or a subtype of macronutrient. What is the root problem? If you're not under 20% body fat, you've got work to do. If you've got a belly, you've got work to do. If you don't lift weights at all, you've got work to do. If you have high hemoglobin A1c, which is a measure of elevated blood sugar over several months, you've got work to do. You have high fasting insulin, high fasting glucose, high C-peptide. The answer is not in the food to eat. It's in your blood work. It's in your body fat percentage.
--:-- If that's a helpful heuristic for you to not eat sugar, I'm not saying to you or to anyone listening, "No, you gotta eat sugar." That's not true. It's definitely not helping you. But I want to make sure that we're clear. If your business is having a problem, you don't say, "Well, we need to hire more sales guys." You want to be sure: is it because we don't have enough sales guys to handle the volume, or do the guys just need better training? You want to get to the root cause.
--:-- Here's something else. Saturated fat never gets talked about because saturated fat was demonized in the eighties unfairly. And now it shifted to sugar, which is now being demonized unfairly, and carbohydrates generally, and sugar specifically, without the conversation with all the nuance. Nutrition is very nuanced.
--:-- For example, there are studies showing that if you wanted to increase the liver fat in someone, we know that saturated fat and having a higher percentage of calories coming from saturated fat increases liver fat faster than sugar does. Nobody talks about it. Why? It's not popular to talk about. It comes from research. Research is boring. Scientists don't explain it well.
--:-- I'm not saying saturated fat is bad either, because again, it's how much are you eating and who's eating it? If I eat saturated fat, guess what? I can see my abs. I've got veins on my shoulder. I'm lean. It's not going to be a big deal versus someone who's out of shape. These are the things that people are missing.
--:-- You'll see a lot of people in the keto and carnivore community. I have this one screenshot from someone. Now, we have studies proving this, but it's always fun to share the anecdotes. I take screenshots from these groups. There was a guy doing keto. He was in a carnivore group on Facebook. He lost a bunch of weight, like 40 pounds. He switched to carnivore to get even leaner because that's got to be the answer. And he gained 20 pounds back. He was dumbfounded. Why? People are doing mental gymnastics in those groups. It's completely insane what you read in there.
--:-- The answer is this: if you go from doing keto—which I don't like it, but at least you're getting veggies and filling yourself up with more than just meat—to carnivore... Most carnivore people, they show it off in their pictures. They're cooking ribeye and butter, eating bacon, eating cheeseburgers covered in cheese. If you overdo your calories, and especially if a lot of them are from fat, it's easy to overdo your calories from fat. In fact, the biggest change in the American diet is that more calories are coming from fat than before. In the form of vegetable oils usually, because there's been an increase in junk food. People are eating more food, eating more junk food, eating bigger size portions. But yeah, it's a more nuanced conversation.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Ted, do you have a few more minutes? I know we're over our time.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Yeah, let's do it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay, so I want to hit you with a little rapid fire section. Maybe spend two or three minutes on each one. I think we could probably do entire episodes on each one of these things. I'm going to jump around a little bit.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Can I say one more thing before we go on?
--:-- Ted Ryce: I know I said something controversial. So here's what I want you to do. If you're like, "Nah, this guy's full of it. He doesn't know what he's talking about. There's an influencer on TikTok that says something different." Here's what I want you to do. There's something called the potato hack. I don't endorse these, but just as an experiment for a few days. You eat nothing but potatoes. People demonize carbs and say they make you fat. Potatoes actually score very high on satiety. In other words, it's hard to eat a lot of them unless they're doctored up with cheese and sour cream. Do the potato hack. Eat boiled potatoes. You will lose weight because you're not going to want to eat a bunch of potatoes. You just naturally start bringing your calories low. Do it for three days and you'll lose fat.
--:-- If you want to test the sugar thing, do a juice cleanse. It's not really a cleanse. You're just losing body fat and drinking nothing but juice, which is sugar. I don't love fruit juice generally, except maybe pomegranate juice—story for another time. You will lose weight in three days of doing that. Now you'll gain it back as soon as you go back to your old diet. But you can prove to yourself that sugar does not cause you to gain weight. It can cause you to lose it and improve your... I wouldn't recommend going and having your blood done before and after, but you could do it. Because of the low calories, you're having something in the neighborhood of 1,000 or 1,200 calories per day in juice. It's really hard to drink that much juice.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Sorry, this is what I'm struggling with. I don't mean to interrupt you. My children convinced me to get a kitten and the kitten won't leave me alone. I apologize for the one at home.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Oh, good.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The last two minutes, he has been messing with me. I had to just get him out of the screen. I apologize, Ted.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Cats listen to no one. They march to their own beat.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm such a sucker to allow my children to talk me into getting this kitten. It's whatever. It's all good. I apologize.
--:-- Ted Ryce: So anyway, you can try that experiment. That's what I suggest that you do. Try these experiments because, to be honest, people don't have the knowledge or experience to really even know. Maybe I come across as knowledgeable and confident in what I do, because I am, but you don't know me. I might be just another person. Test these things and you will see that you can improve metabolic health and lose weight doing things that you wouldn't think were even possible. Again, I don't condone those as ways of living, but just as an experiment.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. And I think what I love about that is exactly what you said: the experiment part. My fitness journey, being not an expert, just armchair hacking my own body, has just been experiments. Everything's been an experiment. Does lifting weights work? Does boxing? Does running? What is it? And then once you find the things that seem to work for you, what's the cadence? What's the rhythm? How often? I was seven days a week lifting weights for a while. I realized that was too much. Some of the stuff that I do too, just so everyone's clear and listeners know this about me, sometimes it's just mental health stuff.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So it's not even like I'm going to the gym to lift weights because I'm trying to get jacked or think that's even the right thing to do. Your body needs a chance to respond. Your muscles need a chance to regrow and all that. But it was more like mental. But I realized I wasn't at a certain point at a certain number of months of that. Right. I stopped feeling as good. I stopped getting gains. And I said, OK, I got to dial it back. And now like two heavy lifts, maybe three a week has become a good rhythm.
--:-- But you've said this over and over in different ways. And I think it's just a core point here: we have to be intentional with this stuff. There is absolute value in data and knowledge, your actual stats, as you've mentioned, working with someone who knows how to interpret those stats and apply them to you and your goals. If you think of these things as tests—like the potato hack or juice cleanse—all they're really doing is helping you get better in tune. They're all little tests that help you get in tune with what works and what doesn't, which then allows you to eventually come up with the routine that puts you in the best place.
--:-- Too often we get caught up on something like, "I'm going to do keto." Keto is hard as hell. It's very difficult, especially for the 35 to 50 range we're talking about, because you have kids, a spouse or partner, your job is probably the most stressful it has ever been. You're either growing it if you're an owner or founder, or you're trying to advance your career. You have all this reality that isn't just waking up every day and spending every minute thinking about your physical and mental health. So it's about finding that cadence.
--:-- To that extent, I wanted to hit you with three over-the-counter—now over-the-counter in most places—chemical compounds and their impact on our body. The first is nicotine. Tucker Carlson has Alps, Joe Rogan's putting in Zyns. Talk to me a little bit about nicotine. I just saw Dave Asprey on a buddy of mine's show, the Mick Unplugged show, and he was talking about five milligrams a day of nicotine being great for mental health and fighting off dementia. Where is nicotine use positive at all? Some people will tell you it's terrible, don't listen to anybody. Is there an amount or range that does have some positive benefits? Walk us through nicotine real quick.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Oh, that's a random one. I might smoke a cigar every once in a while, but I respond very poorly to nicotine. We know it's similar to caffeine in that it can enhance cognitive function, but it's more addictive. It can cause cardiovascular issues. The best thing you can do to improve cognitive function is to get lean and make sure your VO2 max is high—spend time doing cardio like zone two and HIIT training—lose fat, sleep well. Caffeine is a preferred option. I wouldn't mess around with nicotine, especially if you have a tendency towards addiction.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'll double down on that personally. I do use Tucker Carlson's Alp brand, mostly because they have a three milligram that works very well. I do one, maybe two a day. I do have an addictive personality. Because of my pretty hardcore hyperactivity, I found that one does help me focus a little. When I first started using these, the focus enhancements were very positive at a low dose. But if I kept dosing myself during the day, I felt awful in the evening. So I have to be very careful. One, two, three milligrams a day tops. If I go to a third or a fourth, I immediately—and if you're not hydrated enough—you can start to feel heart palpitations, lightheadedness. I would agree. Stay away from it, guys, if you can. If you do, go way lower than what they're selling. They're selling sixes, nines, 13s in stores. A 13-milligram pouch of Zyn is going to put you on your ass. There is no reason to have that much nicotine in your body, in my opinion.
--:-- The next one I want to talk about is weed. New York State, it's legal now. It's legal in a lot of places. It's become commonplace. You can smell it everywhere. It has become very normalized. What should you be thinking about with weed? Are there any positives to it outside of the recreational kind of take you away from yourself? Or is this just pure recreation? If you're going to use the substance, understand why you're using it. Don't try to convince yourself of anything else. Just understand there are negatives to it.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Yeah, look, that was my drug of choice. Every once in a while, I still might do it depending on the circumstances. But there's nothing healthy about weed. If you have cancer and it helps stimulate your appetite in that situation, do what you need to do. But if you're trying to optimize health and you have no major chronic illnesses, it's not going to help you. It messes with your brain chemistry and makes you more likely to have anxiety. The poison is in the dose. Aside from the cannabinoids, combustion—breathing in smoke or vapes—we're starting to learn that vapes are pretty bad for your lungs. Inhaling smoke is not good for you, no matter where the smoke is from.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In the second half of my adult life, I've tried to replace alcohol. I don't drink as much anymore, or substantially less. I liked weed for that reason at first, but I found that continued use over time, even once or twice a week, I lost my snappiness. I've always prided myself on being able to index things in my brain fairly quickly, and I felt like it throttled that ability. I've substantially downshifted on that in the last six months. If it doesn't have a positive impact and you're not just using it for recreational purposes—which is okay, no judgment—but the idea that you can smoke or take edibles every night before bed, you're just harming yourself. That's not a victimless crime, if your brain would be the victim.
--:-- Ted Ryce: We know it affects sleep architecture. I believe it suppresses REM sleep in particular. It's not good for you. Alcohol too, not good for you. Past two drinks a week, we know risks start happening. No amount of alcohol is good for you. Listen, I drink. I'm not saying that with any moral judgment. Just own your decisions. We all live and we die, and we have to decide what experiences we want along the way. I'm in Brazil right now. I drink wine here. I like caipirinhas, which are sugar with fruit and a liquor called cachaça. I don't like other types of drinks. I'll do it every once in a while. I just don't make any excuses about it or use a euphemism. It's not good for me. It can be fun. I think there is some benefit to that because health goes beyond just the physical. It has to do with social, psychological, and some would argue spiritual. There can be an argument made for it. But you shouldn't be doing anything every week, even drinking every week. If you're going through a period where you're going out with clients, okay, but you need to rein it in.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's definitely some mental catharsis in sitting around with your bros, having a couple cocktails and talking shit for a couple hours. There's 100% that.
--:-- Ted Ryce: I get high on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. That's what everybody says. I've been doing it for 20 years. The amount of complexity—it's not as crazy as squirrel suits, but it's super stimulating. You never get to the top. It's just spiraling levels of complexity and challenge for your brain. You make a lot of friends too. There's a great social aspect because it calms guys down. Everybody gets their butt kicked in there. Some people are really good. I trained with a four-time world champion. I don't think he gets his butt kicked very often.
--:-- But anyway, I believe modern life is just so easy. I know it's hard, it's stressful, it's weird. I'm going through running ads right now, trying to figure out the right combination to scale our business, and it's super frustrating. But on the other hand, life has never been easier. You're not suffering like the Shemani tribe in Bolivia. They're untouched by processed food. They're 70 years old with no cardiovascular disease, no plaque in their arteries. They have unheard of cardiovascular health. But they're dying from infectious diseases. We're living such a good life. It gets a little boring. Especially if we're high performers, we come home after a hard day solving problems and being creative. Then you're home watching TV, the series is boring, so you have some popcorn, a little wine, or a few caramels. We're suffering from life being too good. There's too much availability. There's not enough challenge to make resources scarce enough that we consider them. We just go to the store, buy another bag, and pop it in our face.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, I want to wrap up. I appreciate your time. This has been amazing. We've gone so many different directions and talked about so much stuff. I really appreciate your opinion. The last thing I want to ask you—I mentioned that I used to wear Whoop. I know there are Oura rings. I get a lot of questions from people. Do you think wearing these devices adds real value? I love the stats as a high-performance kind of crazy person, but I don't always know what to do with them. I go in cycles. I'll wear the Whoop for three months, figure out how to calibrate myself. I can tell you point blank: weed and alcohol absolutely impact your sleep. If you've ever worn a Whoop or an Oura ring, 100%, you can see the difference. The number one thing that helps me sleep is sex before bed. Good sex before bed. Really interesting. Or any type of vigorous exercise, depending on the mood.
--:-- But my question is: if I'm starting a journey, is it worth investing in an Oura Ring or a Whoop to help us stay on track, to have metrics, to watch trends? Are these devices worth the investment? Is the juice worth the squeeze?
--:-- Ted Ryce: I'm wearing an Oura ring right now. I got the Gen 4. For me, it's worth it. But here's the thing: I don't pay attention to most of what Oura talks about. The readiness score, I throw that out. They try to gamify it to make it more proprietary. Also, people's attention sucks, so they get bored with the same stats. I've been using an Oura ring since 2019, and you can tell Oura has evolved. I'm like, just tell me what I want to know. A lot of it doesn't replace solid testing like what I talked about earlier.
--:-- But what is solid about it is it can track your activity. I don't like the Whoop. Oura Ring has studies comparing it to polysomnography, the gold standard of measuring sleep architecture and sleep quality. Whoop doesn't, to my knowledge. Oura is the gold standard in that. It's still not as good as going and getting a sleep study if you need one, but it can help you change your behavior. I have fragmented sleep. I wake up. So it helps me dial in my bedtime. The things that matter are: what time are you going to bed? If you're going to bed at different times, even if you're sleeping eight hours, you'll feel the effects of circadian disruption. Your sleep efficiency—how long out of the time you're in bed were you actually asleep? How much movement? People write articles about optimizing REM sleep, but there are even arguments from sleep doctors about what phase starts when and how many phases. I don't think Oura is quite at that level. You have to know what to pay attention to.
--:-- Generally speaking, if you buy it and just mess around because you're not quite at the point where you want to hire someone, try it. People buy supplements and it motivates them even though they don't know their blood work. It's like a small win for their health. The big thing is: does it help you behaviorally? If it does, because you can quantify your steps or your sleep, I'd say it's worth it. But be intentional. I don't give a shit about your readiness score. I've had some of my best workouts with bad sleep and a bad readiness score. Or if you had sex right before bed and your heart rate is elevated, then you fall asleep, Oura will say your heart rate was elevated last night, but you actually slept well. It wasn't elevated because of mental stress; it was because you did a little exercise before bed. You have to have some knowledge to understand what to pay attention to. But if a little quantification and gamification can help you get more active, go for it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Ted, I appreciate it, man. This has been phenomenal. I appreciate you following around and going all different directions. This has really been a masterclass. I think we've given people some great things to dig into if they want to go deeper into your world, get to know you better, follow your work, and maybe ultimately work with you. Where's the best place for them to go?
--:-- Ted Ryce: You can find my podcast on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts: Legendary Life, Ted Ryce. My last name is spelled R-Y-C-E. If you want to learn more about the metabolic reset sequence that I do, you can watch a free masterclass I've put together. It's about 30 minutes long. Go to legendarylifepodcast.com/free.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Awesome. I'll have the links too. Whether you're watching on YouTube or listening, scroll down into the description or the show notes. Ted, I appreciate the hell out of you, man. I'd love to have you back sometime because I have a million more questions we didn't even get to.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Let's do it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Love it, dude. This has been fantastic. I appreciate all the extra time. I wish you nothing but the best.
--:-- Ted Ryce: Thanks, Ryan. Really appreciate it. It was my pleasure.
