#164 Why Cycle Your Diet with Joel Greene

Joel Greene (0:00)

You know, you literally are looking at being 110 years old and looking like you're 60

So it's entirely doable now. We've turned the corner, and we have entered a new era where anyone that wants to can opt in to literally changing what we think is possible at any given age. And it is entirely possible now. Like, most people your age probably think, oh, well, you know, mid-50s, that's really old.

I'm here to tell you right now that it's your second 20s. If you take care of your machinery, the machinery in your body, it's literally like being in your 20s. There's nothing different in every way.

SPEAKER_2 (0:37)

Do you want to know what it is?

Siim Land (0:41)

Body, mind, empowerment.

SPEAKER_2 (0:43)

Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:49)

Everything the body needs.

SPEAKER_2 (0:50)

Control your mind.

Siim Land (0:54)

Welcome to the Body, Mind, Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host, Siim Land, and our guest today is Joel Greene. Joel is the founder of VEEP Nutrition Systems and a researcher who has pioneered many nutrition hacks.

Joel, welcome to the show.

Joel Greene (1:07)

Thank you. Thank you so much, Siim, for having me on. It's a great honor.

Siim Land (1:11)

I first heard about you for maybe a few weeks ago, and the ideas that you have are really cutting edge and really fascinating. So I'm expecting people to enjoy the conversation, but I think most of the people haven't heard about you specifically, but you have been around the area of nutrition and biohacking for decades. So maybe can you tell us a little bit about your story?

Joel Greene (1:36)

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll give you the semi-short version, which long story short, my journey started about 1970 as a kid. I would get up every morning at 5 AM and I'd go work out with Jacqueline.

And for whatever the reason, I just always had a big interest in health and everything to do with that. So like in fifth grade, during the summer, I would go run interval sprints just trying to get faster. And I was lucky to live right around a bunch of Olympic track and field athletes when I was a young kid. So Mack Wilkins, who was a silver medalist in the discus, and Bruce Jenner, the gold medal decathlete, and a bunch of others lived where I lived. And a lot of them trained at my local high school. So I would just ride my skateboard there when I was 12 years old and just clean and jerk for hours with these guys.

And I was always interested in that whole thing. So I was a competitive athlete in track and field. And in the mid 80s, that was really kind of the boom where what we call bodybuilding or fitness today began to mainstream.

And what you saw was a lot of fads sort of would take hold. So in the late 80s, MCTs kind of hit the market. And there was a company called Champion Nutrition that put on their label, they put we put MCTs and they're the fatless fat. And that was the era of no cow or no fat. Like everything you saw said no fat on it. People thought that was bad and you had to have no fat and everything. And so I just was blown away by this idea like, wow, that fat doesn't make you fat. So I started researching what I could back then in the magazines and learning. And right about 19 early 90s, the keto diet came out.

And Vince McMahon, the wrestler, the WWE, whatever, put a bunch of their bodybuilders on keto diets. And so the keto diet kind of took hold a little bit. And I started trying to learn about that and this whole idea that you could in the era of no fat, the idea that somehow fat could make you lean, it just seemed crazy to me. So I wanted to learn more about it. And then right about that time, a guy named Jeff Everson, who was really popular, he was Miss Olympia, Corey Everson's husband, popularized Metrex.

And he wrote this big long article where he said what he was doing. We didn't have a word for it then. It wasn't called Time Restricted Feeding, but he said what he was doing was eating one meal in the evening, one meal a day. And so I would just try anything. So I tried that. And if I was hungry, I would have a Metrex. And I got ripped. I got ripped to the bone for like five years. And everybody always wanted to know what I was doing. And I kind of became an advice giver. And it was great for a while. But what happened was right about year five, I started eating uncontrollably.