The Downsides of Biohacking, Prioritizing Your Life, & The Truth About Endurance Exercise - With Ben Greenfield

Shawn Stevenson (0:00)

You are now listening to The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson.

Welcome to The Model Health Show. If you were to ask me, what person in the health and fitness space does the absolute most? Who pushes their body to the limit and lives to tell the story? Who's biohacking? Hacking the hack. Who's self-quantification and managing and measuring all these different metrics are their North Star for how they live their life?

I would say that that person is Ben Greenfield. Now, what I just described, is that somebody that most people would want to aspire towards living a lifestyle like that? For most people, not so much. But for many of us, we're going to see that as a source of inspiration, as a guiding light for us to see what's possible. And that's what Ben is focused on with truly challenging his body and his mind in ways that are astronomical. And now here's the big question. Is that approach truly sustainable? Is it something that we all can model and find great benefit? Well, I'm here to tell you, absolutely we could take pieces and parts to create our own model of health and fitness. But we have the man here himself today, the one and only Ben Greenfield, to share his recent revelations about health and fitness and how those extremes actually caused damage that he would have never thought to be possible.

Now, at first glance, you might think that this is from the physical domain. Sure, he's broken his body down and repaired it a thousand times over. But it's the emotional and the spiritual repair that you're going to hear about.

When we are doing these things, in the name of finding that ultimate health and fitness, what's the cost? And so he's going to really open up today and share these incredible insights. And also, of course, he's a big time science guy. So we're going to hear some really incredible insights on biology and the impacts that those extremes can have on our cardiovascular health, for example. And also, please know that this is not any avocation away from challenging our bodies and to be great and to compete.

It's actually the opposite. This is an avocation for us to do this with much more intention and purpose so that we feel that sense of fulfillment at the end of the day as well. And so without further ado, let's dive in with our special guest and topic of the day. Ben Greenfield is a health consultant, speaker, coach, and New York Times bestselling author of 13 books, including Boundless and Beyond Training. Ben was named one of the world's top 100 most influential people in health and fitness, and has competed in some of the biggest triathlons, Ironmans, and elite endurance events. After years of competing and biohacking, Ben has shifted how he defines health and discipline. After years of competing and biohacking, Ben has shifted how he defines health and discipline. And these insights on balance are going to be a game changer in your life.

Let's dive in this conversation with the one and only Ben Greenfield. Icon alert, the one and only Ben Greenfield is here with us.

Ben Greenfield (3:45)

Icon, isn't that the little thing that appears in your browser tab?

Shawn Stevenson (3:49)

Sometimes, but sometimes it's a person.

You know, you are one of those people, man. And you are one of the most...

Ben Greenfield (3:56)

By the way, thank you for not calling me an emoji.

Shawn Stevenson (4:01)

Never mind, I'll save that for later. But you are one of the most running-est, most endurance training human beings that I've ever met by far.

Ben Greenfield (4:10)

Yeah, I got a little carried away.

Shawn Stevenson (4:11)

And I want to ask you about the other side of the equation. Because we aspire towards, you know, this kind of cardio-driven movement for heart health, right? Great heart health, cardiovascular health. But is there a point at which those benefits can reverse and we can actually see some of the things that happen with people who do none of it?

Ben Greenfield (4:36)

Yeah. And not just that, but also gym culture, self-optimization culture, looks maxing culture. Like beyond what I'll share with you about cardio, you could take just about anything that we are doing in the body-brain optimization sector, which is a lot of like the world that you and me live in. And you can find a lot of people who are sad and sick and unfulfilled and have, you know, torn relationships and broken families. Because of what we kind of like consider to be laudable in society, but that is very easy to take too far if you have any element of desire to control, any element of like a dopaminergic response to the forward motion that you get from running or the rush that you get from lifting. I mean, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes in our industry that now we're seeing taken to the extremes, like people breaking bones and smashing jaws and taking testosterone when they're 14 All of these things kind of trickle down from that. In the case of cardio, to directly answer your question, yeah, there's certainly a law of diminishing returns. I mean, I was Ironman triathlon for 15 years. I did literally thousands and thousands of additional miles of adventure racing and obstacle course racing, and open water swim racing and cycling and marathoning.