The ONE Longevity Secret Primal and Blue Zones AGREE On with Mark Sisson

Summary

The Dan Buettner Podcast

Episode: The ONE Longevity Secret Primal and Blue Zones AGREE On with Mark Sisson
Date: November 13, 2025
Host: Dan Buettner
Guest: Mark Sisson

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Episode Overview

Dan Buettner, explorer and creator of the “Blue Zones” concept, hosts Mark Sisson—founder of the Primal movement, author, entrepreneur, and celebrated 71-year-old fitness role model. Together, they explore the core principles that unite ancestral (“Primal”) health practices and the Blue Zones research on longevity. The conversation traces Mark’s career, core beliefs, actionable tips, and evolving understanding about food, exercise, metabolic health, flexibility, and how ordinary people can adapt proven longevity secrets. The tone is candid, friendly, and refrains from overzealous dogma, seeking common ground and practical advice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Finding Common Ground: Beans vs. Beef, Labels, and Life Philosophy

• [00:23–02:18]
  • Dan frames Mark as a “contradiction”—a beef-eater, ex-marathoner, and supplement company founder who now praises simplicity, walking, and avoids supplements.
  • Despite differences (beans vs. beef), Mark and Dan find “99%” of their longevity and lifestyle recommendations overlap.
  • Quote:
    • Dan: “Whether you’re Republican or Democrat, vegan or carnivore, we tend to put labels on people and don’t see past them.” [01:43]
    • Mark: “Life isn’t about what you eat 100%. It’s part of what you eat, and also how you live your life… sleep, sun, time in nature, community—those are the things that make a complete life.” [02:18]

2. Mark Sisson’s Personal and Professional Backstory

• [03:04–09:20]
  • Mark’s upbringing in Maine, embracing running to compete and survive social hardships.
  • His pivot from marathon training and high-carb diets (“carbo-loading era”) to biology, and from physical success to inward health collapse in his 20s (IBS, arthritis, bad skin).
  • He discovers the importance of “hidden genetic switches,” moving from focusing solely on fitness/performance to prioritizing health and longevity.
  • Mark introduces “The Primal Blueprint”—10 rules rooted in evolutionary biology (move often at low levels, lift heavy, sprint occasionally, avoid toxins, get enough sleep, etc.).
  • Launching the influential Mark’s Daily Apple blog and Primal Kitchen food brand.
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “What are these hidden genetic switches that we all have that we can turn on or off? … My mission became to uncover these hidden genetic switches and write about it in a way that made sense to people.” [06:31]

3. Entrepreneurial Setbacks and Lessons Learned

• [13:40–22:48]
  • Mark shares early career lows (losing everything investing in real estate, painting houses to survive, supplement company struggles, losing $1.5 million on a failed TV show).
  • Importance of resilience, “failing fast,” learning from setbacks, and pivoting to what works—leading eventually to online success and industry-wide influence.
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “No, I’ve had so many… Little things that sort of affect us internally.” [15:25]
    • “Perseverance and willingness to pivot in the face of change—that’s what I tell every young person who’s looking for the best business advice.” [23:03]

4. Evolutions in Exercise—Marathons to Walking

• [24:31–35:10]
  • Mark’s new book, “Born to Walk,” critiques America’s “running boom,” arguing that daily, low-level movement matches evolutionary expectations and supports long-term health better than chronic running.
  • Why Walking is Key:
    • Most runners operate at too high a heart rate—burning carbohydrates (glycogen) rather than fat.
    • High-intensity, chronic cardio is “catabolic” (breaks down muscle) and can sabotage health.
    • Slow, steady walking is “anabolic” (builds resilience) and more sustainable.
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “We were born to walk and garden and putter… We’re born to sprint [occasionally]—but we’re not born to run 7-minute miles for an hour a day.” [25:32]
    • “If your goal is to be fit, healthy, energetic… running is a bad choice for most people.” [25:58]

5. The Science of Fat Burning, Metabolic Flexibility & Diet

• [28:12–36:04]
  • Mark explains “zone 2” training—most fat is burned at moderate heart rates (~180 minus your age).
  • Over-exercising at high intensities mostly burns sugar, not fat, and prompts overeating.
  • “You cannot exercise away a bad diet.” Walking supports fat burning, but “80% of body composition comes from diet.”
  • Metabolic Flexibility:
    • Ability to easily switch between burning sugars and fat for fuel.
    • Achieved through low-carb diets, fasting, and fewer but higher-quality meals.
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “You cannot exercise away a bad diet… Diet becomes the keystone access to all these other levels of health and fitness.” [44:32]
    • “The reason people get shredded… they’re burning off their stored body fat.” [33:34]

6. Mark’s Minimum Effective Dose Approach to Exercise

• [36:15–41:00]
  • Mark’s protocol focuses on efficiency:
    • 2 weight training sessions a week (up to 1 hour, intense but not excessive)
    • 1 sprint workout (10–30 seconds all-out, rest 3x work, once per week)
    • Lots of walking, every day
    • Optional: One hard “race” style workout per week
  • More is not better—focus on consistency, balancing stress and recovery, allowing slow but permanent transformation.
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “My minimum effective dose of exercise would be two weight workouts a week… and one sprint workout a week. The rest of the time? Lots of walking.” [37:25, 38:57]

7. Parallels with Blue Zones—Movement, Natural Living, and Simplicity

• [41:00–43:00]
  • Buettner points out: Blue Zones centenarians rarely exercise intentionally—but naturally accumulate high step counts, garden, lift, squat, and move in daily life.
  • Sisson agrees: Gym workouts in America recreate natural “ancestral” movements (“lift heavy things”), but the underlying genetic expectation remains the same.
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “Move around a lot at a low level of activity… That would be the ideal scenario, and that’s what they do [in Blue Zones].” [41:57]

8. Tough Realities: How to Inspire Overworked, Overweight Americans

• [43:10–44:32]
  • Both hosts acknowledge most Americans are tired, stressed, sedentary, with limited time and resources.
  • Mark says he offers up “possibilities” but can’t force people—education and inspiration are key, but changing diet is the absolute starting point.
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “If you can’t get the diet right, you’re pretty much doomed. So diet becomes the keystone access…” [44:34]

9. Top Dietary Hack & The Power of Metabolic Flexibility

• [48:10–52:30]
  • Dan (asks): “What’s the #1 dietary hack for the average overweight American?”
    • Mark: “Get rid of sugar.” [48:25]
  • Mark describes “sugar burners”—those stuck in blood sugar swings and stuck with cravings, contrasted with “metabolic flexibility” (burning fat when food isn’t present, less intense hunger).
  • Tip: To become metabolically flexible, start by cutting carbs/sugar, consider intermittent fasting, endure some discomfort (“low-carb flu”) for a few days/weeks as your body adapts.
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “You can’t exercise away a bad diet… It’s not going to be painful, it’s just going to be uncomfortable [when starting].” [52:41]

10. Nuance on Carbs: Not All Carbs Are Created Equal

• [53:47–55:51]
  • Both warn against demonizing “carbohydrates” as a category. Sugar and ultra-refined starches are the real danger; beans, tubers, and fibrous vegetables are healthy, slow-burning carbs.
  • Keto can be adapted for plant-based approaches, but requires careful management.
  • Quote:
    • Dan: “I think the word carbohydrate is the worst word in the nutritional dictionary…” [53:47]
    • Mark: “Carbs in broccoli or vegetables are what I call free carbs.” [54:31]

11. Supplements: From Seller to Skeptic

• [56:00–57:49]
  • Mark has mostly abandoned supplements, now seeking “minimum effective dose.”
  • Takes only Vitamin D, collagen, and (as an experiment/fun) creatine.
  • Warns that mega-dosing and excessive “biohacking” can disrupt the body’s balance.
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “I don’t take supplements anymore… if you add one more thing, you might be throwing something off.” [57:50]

12. Wine, Ritual, and Joy

• [59:07–61:43]
  • Mark drinks 2 glasses of wine each night and feels it enhances his quality of life and stress management, contradicting the “longevity bros” who eschew alcohol.
  • Ritual and enjoyment sometimes outweigh strict dogma.
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “Everything I do is to enjoy my life, Dan. I don't do this just to live longer. I live my life every day almost as if it's my last. And I just love wine.” [59:26]

13. Minimalist Footwear: Paluva

• [61:43–65:20]
  • Mark discusses creating Paluva, a minimalist “toe shoe” designed with his son, the result of his lifelong preference for going barefoot and frustration with the shoe industry.
  • Shoes should be wide, flat, flexible; walking in them restores feet to natural function.
  • Tip: Don’t run in minimalist shoes until feet have adapted.

14. Actionable Longevity Secrets: Mark’s Top Three

• [65:20–67:29]
  • Mark’s “Big Three” for ordinary people:
    1. Clean up your diet (eat natural foods, avoid sugar and processed foods)
    2. Walk as much as possible—short walks throughout the day (“better to take five 10-minute walks than one 50-minute walk”)
    3. Optimize sleep—same bedtime and wake time, ideally wake up without an alarm, get 7–9 hours
  • Quote:
    • Mark: “Those are the three things: sleep, walking, and food… the lowest hanging fruit of all.” [67:01]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Dan: “Whether you’re Republican or Democrat… we tend to put these labels on people and don’t see past the label.” [01:43]
• Mark: “Life isn’t about what you eat 100%. It’s about part of what you eat, and it’s about how you live your life… sleep, sun, time in nature.” [02:18]
• Mark: “My mission became to uncover these hidden genetic switches that we have and then write about it in a way that people understood…” [06:31]
• Mark: “You cannot exercise away a bad diet.” [44:32]
• Mark: “The minimum effective dose of exercise would be two weight workouts a week… and one sprint workout a week. The rest of the time? Lots of walking.” [37:25, 38:57]
• Mark: “Everything I do is to enjoy my life, Dan. I don’t do this just to live longer. I live my life every day almost as if it’s my last. And I just love wine.” [59:26]
• Mark: “Those are the three things: sleep, walking, and food… the lowest hanging fruit of all.” [67:01]

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Practical Takeaways

• Diet: Avoid sugar and processed foods, emphasize real food (plants, beans, beef—whatever your ancestry or preference).
• Exercise: Walking is superior to running for most; mix in strength and occasional sprints.
• Routine: Sleep, community, nature, and joy matter—a lot.
• Supplements/Biohacks: Less is more.
• Footwear: Walking in minimalist shoes can reset natural movement patterns.
• Mindset: Be willing to pivot, persist, and embrace simple joys (like wine).

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How to Find Mark Sisson

• Book: Born to Walk (Amazon and major retailers)
• Shoes: Paluva [paluva.com]
• Social: Instagram @marksissonprimal

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Bottom Line:
Despite divergent brand names—Primal vs. Blue Zones—their longevity advice converges: Stay active naturally, eat real food, sleep well, enjoy life, and keep it simple.

Transcript

[Mark Sisson]

Lemonade. What are these hidden genetic switches that we all have that we can turn on or off? Let's see if I can increase the amount of fat I burn off my body. See if I can increase the amount of muscle I put on my body. Your goal is to be fit, healthy, look good. Naked running is a bad choice.

[Dan Buettner]

I'm overweight, I don't have much time, I don't have money. What would you say is the number one dietary hack? I'm going to introduce you to the most fit 71 year old you'll ever meet. This guy has enormous biceps, washboard abs. He's in great shape and he's full of contradictions. This guy was a champion marathon runner who now thinks the best physical activity is walking. He had a huge supplement marketing company. Now he doesn't believe in taking supplements. He's going to offer us three of the easiest tips. No matter if you live in Miami beach or the middle of Iowa, that are easy to put to work, not only to live longer, but also look really good into your 70s. I have to say this, this represents kind of a culmination because you and I ran into each other several years ago and I think we regarded each other with. With suspicion. I like to think of myself as kind of the king of beans, the big bean promoter.

[Mark Sisson]

Yes.

[Dan Buettner]

And you're a big fan of beef.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah. Beans and beans. So we, Dan, we said this early on, we only by two letters.

[Dan Buettner]

That's right.

[Mark Sisson]

The E, F in beef and the A, N and b.

[Dan Buettner]

Otherwise we're 99. But I think it's a great sort.

[Mark Sisson]

Of.

[Dan Buettner]

Lesson in life that so often, you know, whether you're Republican or Democrat or, Or a vegan versus a carnivore, we, we tend to put these labels on people and we don't see past the label.

[Mark Sisson]

Right, right.

[Dan Buettner]

And I, I think we're both kind of reticent to, you know, we kind of knew each other, but then last year we ended up in Italy for a week.

[Mark Sisson]

Great time.

[Dan Buettner]

Yes. I, I felt like we became really great friends. And when we had some time to unpack our philosophies and our, you know, professional careers of research, 99% of it matched up. And.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah, no, I mean, look, life isn't about what you eat 100%. It's about part of what you eat, and it's about how you live your life. It's how much sun exposure you get, how much time you spend out in nature, how much sleep you get, how much you're willing to play community, all of these things that you talk about and you've talked about for decades in the blue zones, I agree with 100%. And I think those are the things that make. In addition to longevity, there's the things that make a complete life.

[Dan Buettner]

I agree. And Mark started the primal kitchen. He's got a line of shoes now right now. Paluvas a marathoner, a coach for many years. I met him in Miami here, where he's. You don't mind me saying, your age.

[Mark Sisson]

That's fine.

[Dan Buettner]

71 years old. He's the most ripped guy in the gym. Everybody aspires to the condition of Mark Sisson. And we've taken a slightly different path to health and longevity. And I believe we've both arrived. We're going to promise to give you actionable tips on how you can hit 71 and be ripped and full of energy. But I want to start Mark with. Give us a little bit of your background. Can you, in sort of a Reader's Digest version, can you tell us about your past and how you've gotten to a healthy age? 71. And by the way, he's exceedingly successful in life and, and I know his. His family, his wife and, and business and. And how. How did you get to where you are today?

[Mark Sisson]

Well, you know, as. It's a. It's a circuitous path. There's a lot of pivots. I grew up in a small fishing village in Maine, so I'm a, you know, original sort of New England Puritan work ethic background. I was a small kid, so I didn't play football, basketball, baseball, or even hockey, which was the big sport in Maine. I gravitated toward running. I lived like two miles from the school that I went to. And it was easier for me to jog to school than it was to take the bus and sit on the bus. And I usually beat the bus both ways in any event, so that became my means of transportation.

[Dan Buettner]

It goes both ways, right?

[Mark Sisson]

Yes, exactly. In the snow with a mouthful of porcupine quills. But, you know, so I was well trained in terms of endurance as a teenager. And while I didn't play these other sports and I was somewhat bullied, that was what you did in rural towns when we were growing up. There were bullies and there were, you know, all of the other sort of things that we've kind of cast aside as politically incorrect. But when spring track rolled around as a freshman in high school and I went out for the track team and I found myself winning the mile and the two mile in almost every meet, I got some cred, I got some street cred. And that kind of elevated not just me in the face of my peers, but also gave me a sense of, okay, this is, I'm good at it, I could get better at it. So through my school years and I went off to a prep school later on and then to college and I was on the cross country team, I was on the track team. I did very well. Well enough that when I graduated college instead of going to medical school, I thought I'd train for a couple years to try and compete in the US Olympic trials for the marathon. So I did that. It was a amazing learning experience. I was one of the fittest people. Fit being described as looking fit on the outside and being able to perform well, but I was one of the fittest people around, but I was falling apart on the inside. And this is really the story that takes its first major pivot. I was consuming a very high carbohydrate based diet. And by, by carbs, I meant anything, any kind of carbs. So bread, pasta, cereal, beer. This was the days of carbo loading. And, and as a runner, you loaded carbo loading.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah. In the 80s and 90s they told us to carbo load and run marathons 100%.

[Mark Sisson]

So turns out I got, I, I got sick, I got injured from all the training, from the overtraining, which ultimately prompted this book, but also from the diet. And I took a step backwards and I kind of reviewed my life in terms of what I was seeking as a long range plan. And it was, I wanted to be fit and lean and healthy and happy and productive. I wanted all these things that people want and I didn't want to grind myself down into the ground by overtraining and by, you know, eating food that was not necessarily serving me. But in those days I had irritable bowel syndrome. That was running my life. I had arthritis in my feet. I'm 20, in my mid-20s and I've got all this stuff. I had GERD, had bad skin. You know, all of the hallmarks of a diet that is not working for someone. But again, because I was looking at how can I improve my performance as an athlete, I was overlooking what can I do to enhance my health at the same time. So that divergence. Once I retired from competition as a result of being injured and sick, I drew upon my background. I have a. I specialized in biology at Williams College and especially in evolutionary biology. Modern genetic science was starting to come on the scene. We started to look at everything that happened in the lab. All of the studies and research that was being done started to now focus on what is happening at the level of gene expression in these different studies that they were doing and that hadn't really been identified as such prior to maybe 20 years ago. So in putting all these things together, my life became more about, okay, what, what are these hidden genetic switches that we all have that we can turn on or off? We can turn them on or suppress them based on lifestyle, based on what we eat, based on how much we move and how we move and how often we move, and based on how much sun exposure we get at what time of day, how much sleep do we get, Stress, stress, play, community. All. All of these things have an effect at the level of gene expression. We call it epigenetics. But my mission became to uncover these hidden genetic switches that we have and then write about it in a way that people understood, okay, if I know how my body works this way, and I'm willing to do the experiment of one, whatever Marx says, I'm gonna try that for a while and see if I can increase the amount of fat I burn off my body, see if I can increase the amount of muscle I put on my body, see if I can enhance my immune system through these behavioral changes. Which again, became. That became a template for what I called the primal blueprint. Right. These 10 primal blueprint laws move around a lot at a low level of activity. Lift heavy things, sprint once in a while, eat lots of plants and animals, get plenty of sleep, avoid toxic things. I mean, it was a pretty. Some of it's pretty straightforward.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah, but people need to. Intuitive.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah, right, exactly. So that's kind of how I got to where I am. My life has been defined almost as an educator, either writing books. I've written 12 books now. Or doing seminars or podcasts. I started a blog in 2006. It became the most watched and looked at blog in the world in its early days. We had three and a half million views daily. Apple. Mark's Daily. Apple, yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

Mark Staley, Apple.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

And then the hugely successful Primal Kitchen. And that, as I understand, you know, you weren't always sort of successful in the. In the physical realm and big in the physical fitness world, But Primal Kitchen sort of catapulted you into a whole new level of success.

[Mark Sisson]

Yes. So when, going back 30 years ago, even more now, as I was looking to enhance performance as an athlete, I looked into supplementation. And it seemed at the time that there were these antioxidants that you could take that would enhance your. Your recovery from hard work. I thought that sounded like a good idea. The research was kind of looking in that direction. And so I started a supplement company. And that supplement company, which I called Primal Nutrition, fed my family for two decades and very well. Thank you. But at one point, I had my supplement company, I was writing books, I had a blog that was posting every day, most often about food, most often about natural food and getting rid of the junk in your diet. And I had an aha moment. When people clean up their diet, when they get rid of the sugars and the sweetened beverages and the pies and the cakes and the candies and the cookies and the industrial seed oils, refined flowers, they come down to a pretty short list of foods that you would call real and natural, which is great. Those are amazing foods. And I 100% behind all of that. But what makes the difference is what you put on these foods, what makes it palatable for the masses to be able to engage in this way of eating.

[Dan Buettner]

I couldn't agree more.

[Mark Sisson]

You know, and you've written about it yourself, and you've written cookbooks, and so, you know you have a thousand ways to cook beans, right? It's not just beans. Boil them and eat them. No. So the aha moment for me was there were so many condiments, sauces and dressings and toppings that people put on their food to make them taste that much better, but they're told to use them sparingly because they contain sugar or bad fats or artificial colorings or whatever. It is like Newman's Own, but like my childhood hero, Paul Newman, Extra virgin olive oil dressing. And you pick it up, and extra virgin olive oil is the third oil.

[Dan Buettner]

Oh, my God.

[Mark Sisson]

Behind canola and soybean oil. And I'm like, come on, man.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mark Sisson]

So the moment for me was when I realized nobody was making a demonstrably better sauce or condiment or dressing that you could put on food with reckless abandon. You could put as much as you want on your food, and it would not only not impart some negative aspect to it, it would enhance the healthfulness of the food in addition to enhancing the flavor of the food. And so that was what really started me off with Primal Kitchen. I'm like, there's a whole white space here of products that has not existed. It's going to cost more money, but, you know, good ingredients cost.

[Dan Buettner]

Speaking of white space, when I think of Primal Kitchen, I think of your mayonnaise. And then you also have your Caesars. What makes Primal Kitchen healthier than, you know, the, the more run of the mill mayonnaise.

[Mark Sisson]

So we base it on avocado oil. So for the last 10 or 15 years.

[Dan Buettner]

So instead of seed oil, it's.

[Mark Sisson]

We don't use seed oils, we use avocado oil. It's our primary source of healthy fats. And almost everything that we do. The timing of it was also critical because I think if I'd launched that company five years earlier, there was not enough public awareness of seed oils and how they might be detrimental to health. There was not that awareness of healthy fats. And the fact that extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil and now algae oil are some of the healthiest oils you can consume, healthiest fats you can consume. And consuming them actually benefits your health rather than having a neutral sort of inflammation. Yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

What I love about it is you're not only helping people to get healthier, it's better for you. But you've also become exceedingly successful with it. And I think you sold it to Kraft.

[Mark Sisson]

Yes, yes.

[Dan Buettner]

But you're still kind of the face of the product. I got here a little bit after you to Miami beach and, you know, you were kind of the alpha male here. You know, you're ripped, you look good on a stand up paddle surfboard. People know you, you're generous and you kind of exude success, both outwardly and also the way you interact with people.

[Mark Sisson]

Thank you.

[Dan Buettner]

But I wonder if you've had hard times in your life. I wonder if there's one point in your life, a low point, maybe the lowest point that you've had and what you learned for it. Or is your life been roses the whole time?

[Mark Sisson]

No, Dan, no. I look back and I've had some.

[Dan Buettner]

And you get extra credit for being vulnerable, by the way, which I know is probably not natural.

[Mark Sisson]

It's all good. It's all good. No. I remember in my early 20s, I thought I was going to be a real estate investor. And I took all the money I had and invested in a. In a property in North Adams, Massachusetts, and was going to fix it up and rent it out to college students. We had a bad winter. The pipes burst in the, in the house one night and flooded the whole house. I lost my shirt on that. I had no prospects for anything beyond that. I was, I was painting houses to support myself. So I was a house painter for almost 15 years.

[Dan Buettner]

Did you have family then?

[Mark Sisson]

So, no, I did not. But I was a house painter. I put myself through college Painting houses. And it was so lucrative for me that when I didn't go to medical school and was training for marathons, I did that as a means of supporting myself and allowing myself to fly around the world and run in these races. And it became a relatively lucrative form of income for me. But, you know, I wasn't going to get rich on that. And so my first major investment in real estate was so horrific I didn't buy another house until I was 52 years old. So, you know, these little things that sort of affect us internally.

[Dan Buettner]

Was this a financial disaster or was it, did it bleed over into your personal life? Did you actually have a hardship?

[Mark Sisson]

I don't know.

[Dan Buettner]

You had to cut back on flying?

[Mark Sisson]

No, no, no, no. I mean, I was living in a $50 a month shotgun shack in Williamstown while I was doing this. I had no money. I put pretty much everything I had, which wasn't a lot, but everything had into this building. So just one example of like, oh, that was one of, I don't know, 30 or 40 setbacks I've had. No, I've had so many. I mean, when I started my vitamin company, I was on do you know Doug Kaufman? Know the cause. Anyway, it's a TV show that's been around for a long time. It's a health talk TV show. I would go on his show and I would talk about my supplements and people would buy my supplements. It was amazing. So I grew my company on the strength of this, these appearances that I made on this talk show. Well, that model dried up in 2004 with the advent of the Internet and then 300 cable channels and dish. So when that model dried up, I went from making a lot of money to making no money back. And now again, I have no money, right? I've got a family and wife and two kids and no money. So I started a TV show of my own called Responsible Health. And I produced 52 half hour episodes of an in studio talk show on health. And it was a great show.

[Dan Buettner]

The precursor to podcasts.

[Mark Sisson]

Yes. And it was exactly. And it was a great show. And I bought time on Travel Channel. And I say I had no money. I had a million and a half dollars at the time in the bank. And I lost it all. I lost it all producing the show. Producing and airing the show because it was supposed to be self liquidating, right? I was my own advertiser. So on the commercial breaks, Thanksgiving has.

[Dan Buettner]

Always been one of my favorite holidays. Not for the food though. I'll never pass up those sweet Potatoes. But for what it represents. Gratitude. In the blue zones, I've seen that gratitude isn't just a once a year thing. It's a daily practice time with family. Good food, laughter and belonging. These are the ingredients that keep people happiest and healthiest well into their later years. Which is why every November, I head to my lake home up in Wisconsin. My family gathers around the table, we cook together, play cards and tell stories. At some point, someone always raises the glass and says what they're thankful for. In fact, I make them do that. It's simple, but it's the kind of moment that literally adds years to your life. I love that my space can offer these moments of gratitude to other families whenever I'm not using it. While I'm off traveling or filming, I host my home on Airbnb. I actually love knowing that other families can experience the same warmth, the same gratitude, and do it all under the same roof. Hosting fits naturally into my life. It keeps my home alive, and it helps spread a little of the good energy forward. Have you ever considered doing the same? You know, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how [e-mail] host you know, I've spent my life exploring the world. Not chasing adrenaline, but meaning. From the blue zones of Costa Rica to the highlands of Sardinia, I've learned that adventure isn't about going further, it's about going deeper. That's why the Defender caught my attention. It's not just built for the toughest roads. It's designed for people with a purpose. A vehicle capable of great things, like the people who drive it. When I'm planning a new expedition or just heading up to my lake place, I want something that feels as durable and capable as the journeys themselves. The Defender, whether the 2 door 90, the 110 or the 8 seat 130, gives you the confidence to explore wherever your path leads. Because adventure isn't just about conquering the landscape. It's about connecting with it. Explore the defender.

[Mark Sisson]

@Land roverusa.com I'd be selling my products.

[Dan Buettner]

And what did you learn, Mark? What? What did these setbacks and these hardships. What lessons? Because I find that, you know, I look at you as sort of a charmed guy. You know, you're super healthy for your age and you. You live a great lifestyle and you have a wonderful family and. But I find that the, the genealogy of almost every blessing, if you go back far enough, it starts with some disaster, it starts with some catastrophe. And I'm wondering what that was for.

[Mark Sisson]

You, it's not a single catastrophe. It's not a single one. I knew my, I would say that when I had my first job. I had a wife and two kids and I had a job for five years. It's the only time I've ever had a job. The rest of my life I've been an entrepreneur. And I hated the job so much that I quit and started my own vitamin company. So now this was before the TV show. This was, I'm 43 years old, I've got a wife and two kids, no source of income, and I'm starting a vitamin company. And so that was a lot of stress for me. You know, I was, I controlled it because I knew I was, I was confident enough of my, my ability. So I had arranged some consulting gigs, right. So I was able to make money consulting with other supplement companies because I knew the business very well as I grew my company. But there's an example of I wanted to make a company make. I wanted to make supplements for athletes that athletes could take to enhance their, their recovery. I couldn't sell anything to athletes, so I had to pivot. And I started selling to the anti aging market, to little old ladies who were reading Life Extension magazine and then saying, oh, yeah, I want to take alpha lipoic acid. I want to take resveratrol, CoQ10, NAC, ECGC. I want to take all of these amazingly wonderful nutrients that I'm reading about in these magazines. I put them all together. So the pivot of starting a company and then not doing well, selling to the market that I thought I was going to be marketing to, but being able to understand that what I had was a good product, I just hadn't found the right customer yet. And then getting on the TV show that addressed that customer, but then having that fail and starting my own TV show and having that fail. And that's when I started Mark's Daily Apple. So in 2006, after a year of grinding this out, and I was, I was just miserable all the time. I was, I couldn't sleep. I was, you know, I, again, I'd lost a lot of money that, that I should not have. Well, in retrospect, I'm glad I did it, but I'm glad I did everything in retrospect, Dan.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah, right. Because it brought you.

[Mark Sisson]

Because it brought me here.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah.

[Mark Sisson]

So when that didn't work, I'm like, okay, let's re regroup. I'm good at producing content. I'm great at producing content. And this Internet thing is kind of cool. And this blogging thing sounds like it might be promising. So the failure of the TV show led me to start Mark's Daily Apple, which became the most successful blog of its kind in the world for a couple of years. And the reason it was no longer successful or not the most is because it begat thousands of other similar blogs that addressed this ancestral health question that I was sort of addressing and attacking from all angles every day.

[Dan Buettner]

So if I had to sum it up, it's a certain nimbleness, a certain not necessarily willingness but to fail, but being able to fail and quickly learn and look at the next wave and to persevere.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah, I mean that's, that's what I tell every young person who's looking for the best sort of, you know, business advice.

[Dan Buettner]

That's where marathons. I've run one marathon. I know how damn hard it is.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah, you can easily drop out at 20 miles, but from 20 miles on, it's like one step at a time.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah.

[Mark Sisson]

You got six more miles to go one step at a time and hang in there. And then the people who drop out of marathons always regret it. Right? Like, damn, I should have hung in there. I could have hung in there. But. And the people who hang in there and finish, even if they don't, you know, get their, the time that they were shooting for, they're glad they finished. And I think that's true with a lot of, with business that I see a lot of people fail in business. Well, two things. One is they don't have a good idea to start with. So it's really important that you have a good idea to start with. You know, think, think that idea through all the way and make sure that this has the potential to be something that people want that you're good at doing and providing there's something unique about your service or product that you're selling. When those boxes have been checked off, it really comes down to how much you persevere and how much you are willing to pivot in the face of slight headwinds or changes or shifts in the marketplace or all of these different variables that, that enter into everyone's business plan. You don't plan. And by the way, you know, a lot of these you don't plan for in your business plan you, but you have to address them later on, be ready for it. Yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

You know, I, I've noticed that along with the industry, you have evolved in what you believe leads to long term health. I mean, you were a champion marathon runner. But now you have this new great book out called Born to Walk.

[Mark Sisson]

Yes.

[Dan Buettner]

And I've seen you on other broadcasts explaining why running might not be that good for you after all.

[Mark Sisson]

It's interesting, the first 80 or 100 pages of this book go into the running boom and how it was wholly inappropriate, it turns out, for almost all people to engage in this, in this activity, marathon, all of this stuff. Calling upon evolutionary biology. We are born to walk. And you'll agree we're born to walk and garden and putter and move around a lot at a low level of aerobic output. So we're born to walk and we're born to sprint. We're born to sprint once in a while because we had to for our lives.

[Dan Buettner]

Animals chase us, but we were not.

[Mark Sisson]

Born to run seven or eight minute miles for an hour a day for years and years. We're not born to run metronomically that way. It's antithetical to health. If your goal is to be fit, healthy, energetic, look good naked and all the things that people say they want, running is a bad choice for most people.

[Dan Buettner]

That's so ironic because I'm sitting across from a champion runner, champion marathoner who saved up. You'd be better off walking.

[Mark Sisson]

I was one of the people who was probably okay running, but one of the few, I mean when I was a runner in the 60s and 70s. Dig this. The only people who ran were runners.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Sisson]

Hence my point.

[Dan Buettner]

Jim Fix.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah, you, you, you didn't pick up running unless you were a skinny, pre selected, high pain tolerance person. You didn't, you chose running away from.

[Dan Buettner]

The cops like my friends.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah, but it was, but it, it, it was. Again, it made no sense as a, for a, a large person to go run, especially given the shoes that they had in those days. They were thin, minimalist shoes. I ran the first three years in, in Converse. Yeah. And, and Chuck Taylor's and then they invented this thick cushioned running shoe. Now the irony here is the original invention of the Nike, the original thick cushion running shoe was because the great runners in this country, many of whom were coached by Phil's partner Bill Bowerman, wanted a thicker shoe so they could put in more miles with good form. Again, this is all about runners initially saying, I just want a thick shoe. I have great running form. But these thin, thin shoes, you know, I'm limited to 50 or 60 miles a week of training.

[Dan Buettner]

We're going to, I want to get to the shoes, especially Paluva, because I think it's a fantastic Product. But before we do, I'd like to, I'd like to unpack. Born to walk. And you sort of understand how the metabolism works and how the body works. Why is it better for us to walk than it is to run?

[Mark Sisson]

Well, most people who run. And again now I'm just, I gotta finish the little bit of thread there I had. Okay, so when the event, when these guys invent these thick running shoes, now anybody can get put up, put on a pair of running shoes and with bad form, with heel striking and bad form, be excused and get through a three mile run or a five mile run or a seven mile run. So now people are running inappropriately. And the number one thing that, that happens is when you start to become a runner, you think, okay, I gotta struggle and suffer and sweat. So now you go out for three mile run or your five mile run or your six mile run. Most people are running at a heart rate that is too high to be burning fat. So they're burning mostly glycogen and as such.

[Dan Buettner]

Okay, wait a minute. So you, you don't burn fat when you're exerting yourself at high levels?

[Mark Sisson]

Correct?

[Dan Buettner]

Is that right? Huh?

[Mark Sisson]

Absolutely. Yeah. So this, this is, this is the essence of, of everything.

[Dan Buettner]

I don't think people understand. I think the news flash, you've heard.

[Mark Sisson]

About all the zones. Zone one, zone two, zone, zone three. Okay, so most people now, Peter Attia and you know, Huberman and Galpin, they're all talking about train, do 80% of your training, 85% of your training at zone two or less. Zone two or less means a heart rate that's 180 minus your age. So for somebody like me, it's 71, 180 minus my age is 109 beats a minute. I should not be training at a heart rate higher than 109. Now I'll give myself 10 beats a minute because of my, my fitness level and say I should not be doing any more than I should be doing 85% of my training at 120 beats a minute or less on my heart. Now, I could run at 155, three days a week, five days a week. But what's happening is I'm not burning fat. So if your goal is to burn fat, if your goal is to go out there and develop an aerobic base, build a cap, what they call capillary perfusion, blood supply through your muscles, increase the amount of mitochondria, what we call mitochondrial biogenesis, which is the place where fat burns. You do this low level Activity. So most people who engage in a running program to lose weight, they. First of all, they have bad form. So that we'll talk a little bit about the effect of that. But most importantly, they're running at a heart rate that's too high for them to be burning fat.

[Dan Buettner]

Wait a minute. I think the common and obviously Arrhenius knowledge was that if I'm running hard, I'm expending more calories, and I have to get those calories.

[Mark Sisson]

So here's what happens. You are expending more calories. I'm talking about burning more fat because you're mostly burning carbohydrate calories. You're mostly burning the glycogen, which is the carbs that are stored in your muscles. And as soon as you get. As soon as you get most of the liver, glycogen goes for the brain. Okay, okay. But muscle glycogen is what you're using when you're running hard for long distances or even moderately for heart distance, especially if you're not fat adapted and fat trained. So now you're out there and you're running at a heart rate that's maybe 20 beats higher than your optimal fat burning zone, and you're burning more calories, but you're burning. Most of those calories are coming from glycogen. And the effect of that is your brain. At the end of a race, a run, a training run, goes, wow, we burned a lot of glycogen. We didn't burn any fat. We burned a lot of glycogen. And if we want to do this tomorrow, we have to go eat a lot of calories. And so there's this unconscious compensation that happens with almost everybody who runs in that regard.

[Dan Buettner]

And this is fascinating.

[Mark Sisson]

Oh, yeah. So they tend to overeat. So you see people who've been. I see people, because I made a lifetime study of this, who are 20 pounds overweight or 25 pounds or 30 pounds overweight, who've been running for 10 or 15 years and still have the same 20 or 25 pounds to lose. And what's happened is not only have they not lost the weight, they've shifted their body composition because running is catabolic. Running tears muscle tissue down. Now, running at zone 2 or less is not catabolic. It's burning.

[Dan Buettner]

What does catabolic mean for those of us who don't?

[Mark Sisson]

It's breaking your body down. Okay, so catabolism is breaking it down. Anabolic is building it up. You know about anabolic Steroids and building muscles and stuff like that. So running is catabolic. And any amount of running in that high heart rate zone, what we call the no man's land of training or the, the black hole of training, where you're just practicing hurting but you do not get any better.

[Dan Buettner]

No, it's.

[Mark Sisson]

And most people come home from their run and they slouch over on the couch and oh my God, that was valuable. I'm sweated, I'm tired, I can't even get up now. And it must have been a great workout. No, it was a. Your body saw it as a life threatening event, produced a lot of cortisol. Cortisol is a fat storage hormone. Your brain is going, we're going to have to eat more food to replenish the glycogen that we lost. The body does not think that way. The brain does not think that way. When you're just burning fat. When you're burning fat, the brain and the body go. We have 300 miles worth of energy stores on even a skinny person like me to be able to walk, walk, walk, walk, walk even jog slowly and not tap into those glycogen stores and not incur this hunger thing. So one of the many benefits of walking is that you burn fat. It's anabolic, it's not catabolic. And so it's building you up, it's strengthening your gait and the muscles in your feet. It's having all of these positive benefits. Look, we're born to walk. That's the title of the book. Our bodies expect us to walk. Our genes expect us to be moving. We're bipedal. We're one of the few bipedal animals on the planet. Like, how do we not fall over every five minutes? We're, we're only on two, you know, on two feet.

[Dan Buettner]

That's. Let's bring this home for people though. Let's say I'm a 40 year old housewife from Iowa, my name's Judy, I'm 20 pounds overweight and I'd like to lose some of this fat. How much should I walk?

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah, you, so you won't lose the fat walking. Okay, that's the bad news. The good news is you lose fat. 80% of your body composition happens as a result of how you eat. You have to develop metabolic flexibility. So my first seven books were on metabolic flexibility on how to develop disability.

[Dan Buettner]

The Primal Blueprint.

[Mark Sisson]

Well, the Primal Blueprint, the Keto Reset Diet. Two meals a day, Keto for life. I've just written about this ideal state of being where we are able to access our own stored body fat in the absence of a meal or in the absence of. Of calories coming in from outside. The reason people get shredded and lose all this body fat is they've. They're burning off their stored body fat. If you don't burn off your stored body fat, all you do is tend to accumulate.

[Dan Buettner]

Are you telling me you cannot do that by walking?

[Mark Sisson]

No, you can't. No, you've. You. I mean, you. It's not a good choice. Again, if you don't, you cannot exercise away a bad diet. I know you've heard this, Dan. You cannot exercise away a bad diet. Now, in your blue zones, those people are eating minimal amounts of food, right? So they are burning their stored body fat all the time. It's not even the mix of food. It's not even the beans or the beef or the whatever. It's the fact that their calorie intake is very low and they're outside and they're moving around a lot. But it isn't the amount of calories you burn when you're walking. In fact, I tell people, don't, don't track calories when you're walking. It's irrelevant. You want the movement, you just want to be able to move. Now, yes, you'll be burning some body fat. Yes, you'll be building an aerobic base. And depending on how fast you walk, you might even improve your VO2 max a little bit.

[Dan Buettner]

You were saying that running is catabolic and it does not burn fat, it burns glycogen. The implication being that walking does burn fat.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah. And it does. But not just.

[Dan Buettner]

Not a lot.

[Mark Sisson]

No. So if you look at the graph, if you look at a substrate utilization graph during exercise, as your speed increases, you're burning, you're burning fat, then you're burning a little bit more fat, then you're burning a little bit more fat. But there's a point at which the calories are still not that significant that you're going to use that as your sole means of. In other words, you can't say, okay, if there's 3,500 calories per gram of my own body fat, If I walk five miles a day at 100 calories a mile and I walk seven days a week, I'll burn off a pound in a week. It really doesn't work that way. Again, 80% of your body composition, some would say 90% of your body composition happens as how. In terms of how you configure your diet to encourage your body to extract energy from its own stored body fat.

[Dan Buettner]

Let's just put beef and beans aside for a minute. But what's your prescription for people who want to look like you do at 71?

[Mark Sisson]

Well, I mean, I would, it's a.

[Dan Buettner]

It'S a lot or kind of like you. Maybe not to the extreme.

[Mark Sisson]

I mean, I get it. Look, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna acknowledge that some amount of my body composition is genetically, you know, endowed. So I can't, I can't disregard that in the overall context of things. But you know, I've developed this metabolic flexibility to the extent that for instance, I eat in a compressed eating window. So I wake up in the morning, I have a cup of coffee. I don't eat until maybe 1 o' clock or 1.

[Dan Buettner]

Put anything in your coffee.

[Mark Sisson]

Little bit of cream, but that's about it. So there's a couple of calories in there, but there's no substantial food at that time of day. I work out fasted in the morning and I work out fasted according to a specific protocol that I use which acknowledges that my diet is accounting for 85% of my body composition. And all I have to do is what I call the minimum effective dose of exercise. So I don't exercise that much, Dan. Like my minimum effective dose of exercise would be two weight workouts a week in the gym. Intense, sure. Intense, but not overly intense.

[Dan Buettner]

An hour?

[Mark Sisson]

No, no, no. Up to an hour.

[Dan Buettner]

Okay. Twice a week.

[Mark Sisson]

Twice a week. Doable.

[Dan Buettner]

Everybody can do that.

[Mark Sisson]

One sprint workout a week. Now sprinting isn't necessarily running. I mean, I just did my first sprint workout two days ago after a two year layoff because I had hip issues and got a hip replacement.

[Dan Buettner]

Tell me what a sprint, tell me what a 71 year old sprint workout.

[Mark Sisson]

So, yeah, so the day that day it was on the treadmill. It's my first running sprints. But sprints can be anything. Sprint in my, in my worldview, sprinting is anything. Any activity that takes between 10 and, and 30 seconds could be up to a minute if you're really well trained. But 10 or 30 seconds where you're going all out as hard as you can and then you rest for at least three times. What the work is that a heart risk for people? I mean, you work up to it, you know, so you start with, you start with a. Well, not if you're, if you're 70 and you want to look at me at 71 and then you're starting from zero. Yeah, there's probably a heart risk, but, but, but as you work your way into this, it's a 10 minute warmup and then a work set of. In my case the other day was 30 seconds hard on a treadmill. Running, sprinting up a hill on a treadmill, hopping off, resting for a minute, 30, getting back on for 30 seconds hard. I did eight of those. Doesn't take much time.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah.

[Mark Sisson]

Leaves you 20 minutes. What I would say truly knackered, but not beat up. Like it's something that you can walk away from and the rest of the day is, is you're energized and you only do it once a week. So this is the thing. Back to what is the minimum effective dose of exercise? It's a lot, a lot, a lot of walking.

[Dan Buettner]

What's the other four days?

[Mark Sisson]

Lots of walking. So on, on days that I'm not lifting, I'm walking twice as much. I walked, you know, two hours yesterday. I walked half an hour in the morning and then an hour and a half with a couple of influencer bros, friends of mine on the beach. We had a great, we had a philosophical talk about God and aliens and everything else. It was, it was amazing. But so, so that was, that was a day off. So in on my strategy, I lift twice a week. So I want four days in between hard lifting sessions because I need to recover the muscles. If you do it well, if you do it right, the muscles need to recover. So my strategy is walk as much as you can every day, including hard days that you're in the gym training, and then on days that you're not training hard, walk more because it all adds up to a stronger, more balanced person and physique. So lift twice a week, sprint once a week. And then in my case, because I used to be an athlete, I still sort of feel like I am. So you know that once a week, Peter and I, our friend Peter Fioretti, we go out and do a hard ride on the hot sand in Miami. And we did one a couple of days ago. And every.

[Dan Buettner]

It's wicked workout.

[Mark Sisson]

It's a wicked workout. And what I'm doing on that day is that's my race. So I'm training as if I'm getting ready for a race once a week. Now in the old days, I would have done that hard sand workout every day, sometimes twice a day, and I would not have, I would not have benefited. It would not have served me well. So now going out once a week and putting all the component parts the Time I spent walking and building an aerobic base. The time I spent in the gym lifting weights and making my legs and my arms stronger. The time I spent sprinting and boosting my VO2 max. Now I get to put it all together in this one hard bike ride that Peter and I do. That's been my kind of go to training and racing strategy. I don't race in formal races anymore. I don't. My ego is too fragile for that.

[Dan Buettner]

Let me ask you to critique. So, you know, I found these blue zones where middle aged mortality is about half that of what it is here in the United States. I mean, in other words, people live about 10 years longer at age 60 than we do in the United States. None of them go to the gym.

[Mark Sisson]

Yes.

[Dan Buettner]

There's no, Nobody runs a marathon. That would be silly. Yeah, but you look at their physical activity patterns. They're taking probably 10 to 12,000 steps a day without thinking about it. Because they live in places where every time they go to work or friends. Yeah. They walk.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

They have a garden. So they're getting range of motion. They do some lifting.

[Mark Sisson]

No, they're doing squats.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah.

[Mark Sisson]

No, they're lifting stones. Yeah. Hoeing all of that stuff. All like that would be the ideal scenario. And that would create an occasional goat.

[Dan Buettner]

Escapes and they got a, you gotta.

[Mark Sisson]

Lug that thing back or whatever. Sprint after your goat.

[Dan Buettner]

How, how, how different is that?

[Mark Sisson]

The same? Yeah, it's the same. So going back to the primal blueprint, which is move around a lot at a low level of activity, like literally one of the first laws. And that's what they do. They're moving, they're doing the 10 or 12,000 steps. They're puttering in the garden. Lift heavy things. Okay. We have to go to the gym because we don't have a goat to haul back. Or we don't have big stones that we're kind of getting rid of, or we're not building a stone fence, or we're not, you know, sawing logs, or we're not chopping wood. So that's what we do in the gym. We're emulating, we're recreating this expectation, this experiential expectation that our genetic recipe has of us that forged through two and a half, some say 3 million years of human evolution. And here we are today with the same gene set that we had 100,000 years ago. We just, we're just not doing all the things. So we, so we recreate it in, in the context of a gym, but it's all the same stuff.

[Dan Buettner]

You probably know these statistics, but 75% of Americans don't even get 20 minutes of physical activity a day.

[Mark Sisson]

And I almost don't believe that, Dan. I mean, I mean, I'm not gonna doubt you, but it's such a. I'll.

[Dan Buettner]

Show you the reference.

[Mark Sisson]

It's such a horrible thought.

[Dan Buettner]

It's America.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

You know, and here's the problem. You know, we live in the southern tip of south beach and the people we're surrounded with are probably two standard deviations from the norm. And you just took a walk with the influencer bros. And we tend to think that's what the rest of the world is. But I spend most of my time working in middle America where people wake up tired, they hold together breakfast for their kids, they're in pain, they drive 45 minutes to work, they're at a job. Most Americans don't like their job. 70% of them don't. They come home tired, they get dinner together for their kids, and then the average American watches four and a half hours of tv. That's just not the way that, you know, it's good in concept and it's right in concept. But how do you actually get people to do it?

[Mark Sisson]

Well, I've spent my entire career offering up possibilities but never pushing people to do it. What I'm saying is I have a way. I have a way that if you do it right, will improve your body composition, decrease your risk for almost all diseases, have you more energetic, keep you out of pain, make you a better parent to your kids or a spouse or whatever it is you're looking for. I have a way to do this, and it's all based on research, but I cannot force people to do this.

[Dan Buettner]

You can educate them and inspire.

[Mark Sisson]

I grieve for those people in the middle part, the flyover states, and wherever it is where they can't see the value of taking one first step. To your point, however, if you can't get the diet right, you're pretty much doomed. So let's just say your diet is Wonder Bread and Velveeta and nachos and Coke. No amount of walking, no amount of exercise is going to fix that. So diet becomes the sort of keystone access to all of these other levels of health and fitness that are available to everybody with the right inputs.

[Dan Buettner]

You know, the best trip I took in recent memory was a divine trip. I gathered up 10 of my best friends and we took a trip to the Blue Zone with Duvine. They took of, of everything and As a cyclist who likes to have a bike that's working, who likes to eat good meals, and who likes to know what I'm seeing as I go, I could not have asked for a better experience than with d'. Vine. And not only that, it turns out that cycling is one of the best activities for longevity. It's one of the top three. Why? It's easy on the joints. You get regular, low intensity physical activity. It's not boring. It requires some balance, something you can do for the long run, you know? D Vine believes cycling is for everyone. So they design trips for all levels of experience. And they'll take you anywhere from easygoing bike paths and how into epic climbs in France. Plus they offer E bikes to make the trip accessible to everybody. And this and the support van is always with you for not only emergency repairs or water or snacks or to carry your extra gear. So whether you're a seasoned cyclist or a total beginner, if you're ready to give it a try, our listeners get $150 off per person. When you book your first Divine tour, head to divine.com livebetterlonger to book now.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

Well, hi everybody, it's Julia Louis Dreyfus from the Wiser Than Me podcast. And I'm not gonna talk about food waste time. I'm going to talk about food resources. All that uneaten food rotting in the landfill. It could be enriching our soil or feeding our chickens because it's still food. And the easiest and frankly, way coolest way to put all its nutrients to work is with the mill food recycler. It looks like an art house garbage can. You can just toss your scraps in it like a garbage can. But it is definitely not a garbage can. I mean, it's true, I'm pretty obsessed with this thing. I even invested in this thing. But I'm not alone. Any mill owner just might corner you at a party and rhapsodize about how it's completely odorless and it's fully automated and how you can keep filling it for weeks. But the clincher is that you can depend on it for years. Mill is a serious machine. Think about a dishwasher, not a toaster. It's built by hand in North America and it's engineered by the guy who did your iPhone. But you have to kind of live with mill to understand all the love. That's why they offer a risk free trial. Go to mill.com wiser for an exclusive offer.

[Dan Buettner]

What would you say is the number one dietary hack if, if I, I'm, I'm live in Iowa and I'm, I'm overweight and I don't want to be overweight. I, I, I don't have much time, I don't have money, but I'll do one thing. What, what, what would it be?

[Mark Sisson]

Get rid of sugar.

[Dan Buettner]

Get rid of sugar?

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

When do you get all your calories in?

[Mark Sisson]

So, 1:30. I have lunch, small lunch, dinner. I have a big piece of steak, as you know, and so it's a.

[Dan Buettner]

Bean steak, ladies and gentlemen.

[Mark Sisson]

Some amount of vegetables, a glass or two of wine, and that's it. So what's ironic here is that because I become metabolically flexible, I derive a lot of my own energy from my own stored body fat. I'm also metabolically efficient and so I don't.

[Dan Buettner]

How does one become metabolically flexible?

[Mark Sisson]

You have to cut carbs. You have to give your body a reason to start tapping into its own fat stores. So if you never give your body a reason to tap into its own fat stores, the body holds onto fat, it hoards it, it saves it because it thinks, oh my God, this is great, because one day there's going to be a famine and we're going to have all the fuel we need. Well, that famine never comes for most people. And so people in this country are what I call sugar burners, which is again why you want to get rid of the sugar. So sugar burners go, maybe have minimum three meals a day, sometimes five, you know, breakfast a snack, lunch a snack, dinner a bedtime snack. And in many cases, these are people who experience low blood sugar because much of their diet is carbohydrate based. When you eat carbs, you know, the body does run on glucose and the brain does run on glucose. It is a legitimate fuel. But too much glucose, as you know, in the bloodstream is diabetes. Right? So now you've, you've had this meal, your blood sugar rises, you're energetic because, oh, I had something to drink and I'm good. And then too much, your body secretes too much insulin. It over compensates and sucks all this stuff and usually deposits it in the fat cells. And now your blood sugar drops. Now you're below the normal teaspoon in an entire body of blood. So now you get hungry again. It's 10 o', clock, time for a donut.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah.

[Mark Sisson]

And this swing happens all day long and exhausts you and exhausts you. And meanwhile, you're continuously building upon your fat storage and you're never drawing it down. You're never taking it out, you're never burning it for energy. Another irony of ironies is every time you eat something like that, every time your insulin is high, it locks the fat in the fat cells. Fat can't come out of storage unless insulin is low. So the way around this is to either start fasting for longer periods of time or to eat a very low carb diet. So I wrote a book called the Keto Reset Diet, and it uses a ketogenic diet not as a lifestyle, but as three to six weeks of resetting your metabolism so you become metabolically flexible by withholding carbohydrates. The body goes, oh, I guess there's not going to be much glucose for my brain. So I'm going to start burning my stored body fat. I'm going to take my fat out of storage. My abdomen, my thighs, my hips, my butt, wherever it is, I'm going to combust it for energy to move throughout the day, muscular energy, and then I'm going to send some of it to liver to turn into ketones. So my brain can run on ketones. And it turns out the brain runs better on ketones than it does on glucose. So you can go. When you become metabolically flexible, you can skip not just one meal or two meals, or you can not eat for three days. Tap into your stored body fat, function as if you're entirely like, never missed a meal, because you didn't really. Because the 500 calories that you would have had on this plate of food now becomes the 500 calories that comes off your body. The brain is happy because the brain loves ketones. And if your liver becomes good at making ketones, liver makes way more ketones than are necessary to fuel a brain throughout the day. So you've got all these different substrates that you can access without ever having to think about, oh, I'm hangry. I have to eat. Oh, geez. It's the most freeing place a person could be. And with that, you trend toward your ideal body composition. And one of the things that happens, one of the first things that happens is the disappearance of hunger, appetite, and cravings because you're no longer tethered to a mealtime.

[Dan Buettner]

It's on yo, yo.

[Mark Sisson]

Correct.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah, I think, I mean, one of the things I'm learning here, and I think it's great, this idea of metabolic flexibility, you have to, at some point endure a little bit of hunger.

[Mark Sisson]

Bingo. You got to do the work. You have to be willing for a couple of days to endure some discomfort. You're not going to die. It's not going to be painful, it's just going to be uncomfortable. They talk about what they call the low carb flu, which is a couple of days where you feel kind of like as your body is kind of getting used to the fact that there's not going to be carbohydrate at every meal. There's not even going to be a lot of meals. And that's the time it takes for all of these signals for the genes to upregulate, build the enzymes that take fat out of storage, build the capacity, the capillary capacity in the muscles, increase the amount of mitochondria and increase the efficiency of the mitochondria you already have. It's a incredibly efficient, effective system that's available to just about everybody.

[Dan Buettner]

And it's free.

[Mark Sisson]

And it's free. Yeah. Now, you know, if you're a morbidly obese 50 year old who has never done anything like this before, it's going to take time. You can't turn this around in six weeks.

[Dan Buettner]

No, no. You know, before we completely throw carbohydrates under the bus. I think the word carbohydrate is the worst word in the nutritional dictionary because, and this is a little bit from a blue zone point of view, but I 100% agree with you. Probably the most toxic food in our food environment is sugar and ultra refined carbs in donuts and cookies, on the other hand, tubers and beans and nuts, those are carbohydrates too, by the way, and they're complex carbohydrates. And I would argue that they're the healthiest. And I would also argue you could achieve this keto state eating a plant based diet A little bit harder, but no, it's harder.

[Mark Sisson]

You have to now watch your timing more than the macros. But it's totally available with that sort of diet. And to your point, when we talk about carbs, there are different types of carbs of sugar. Yeah, avoid the sugar, the refined starches and things like that. But the carbs that are in broccoli or Brussels sprouts or any green leafy vegetables or anything, bell peppers, those are what I call free carbs. They're locked in a fibrous matrix so they don't dump into the bloodstream quickly, they sort of leach slowly into the bloodstream, which is exactly what you want from a carb source. So look, all these foods exist on a spectrum. Some nuts are like macadamia nut is the greatest nut ever invented. Peanuts probably not serving people as much as they might think. Oils, soybean oil, Horrible. Hyaluronic sunflower oil. Pretty darn good. Even though it's a seed oil. And then olive oil and extra virgin olive oil and avocado oil. Really good. So it's not like it's just black or white. There's some of these exist on a. On a spectrum such that you choose to eat them knowing that, you know, it's worth the gustatory experience right now to have this, because the cost is not that bad. Yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

So one of the things we observe in blues is they're. They're making it to 100 sharp. A fraction of the rate of obesity, fraction rate of type 2 diabetes. Nobody takes supplements.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

And I'm just wondering what. I know you had a big supplement company. What. What supplements do you think really work for people?

[Mark Sisson]

So I don't take supplements anymore. And I was. I made. I made a career out of it again.

[Dan Buettner]

But we used to think they were good.

[Mark Sisson]

No, for sure. I mean, this is. We could have a whole discussion about biohacking and where that community has gone and what their real pursuit is and all the protocols. But at the end of the day, I'm looking for the minimum effective dose of anything. Most people look at food and go, what's the most amount of this meal I can eat and not get fat? What's the most amount of this buffet I can load on my plate and not feel like a glutton? What's the biggest piece of cheesecake I can have and not be uncomfortable tonight? Well, people think that way because our brains are sort of wired to eat. But if you did the reverse thought experiment, and you said, what's the least amount of food that I can eat, maintain muscle mass or build muscle mass. What's the least amount of food I can eat, have all the energy I want, never get sick, and most importantly, not be hungry, because hunger kills everything. And what I've discovered with metabolic flexibility is I need 30% fewer calories than I thought I needed as recently as 10 years ago to thrive. Now I'm not sacrificing anything. I never go hungry. I mean, I might say, oh, God, it's time to eat. I forgot to eat today. But I never make myself hungry. I never put a bite of food in my mouth that doesn't taste great. I never sacrifice. I don't overeat just because I know what's gonna happen. I'm like, I've developed a skill, an intuitive skill to push a plate of Food away and say, I'm no longer hungry for the next bite. Okay? So that's what I call the minimum effective dose of food. The minimum to stay lean and fit and strong, not get sick, have all the energy I want. Most importantly, not be hungry.

[Dan Buettner]

So we don't need supplements.

[Mark Sisson]

So now we talk about lots of walking, two exercise sessions a week, and sprinting. What's the minimum effective dose of supplements? And that's what I've tightened myself down to over the years. I don't need 2,000 milligrams of vitamin C a day. I don't need a multivitamin. I don't need Coq 10 because I don't take. So all of the things. And I think what happens is when you start taking scads of multivitamins, you throw off the balance. So many of these are, they interfere with the intricate workings of other systems. And so you don't know if you've added one more thing, you've added NAD into your program now, or, you know, methylene blue, whatever it is you're doing that you might be throwing something off. So my new approach is what's my minimum effective dose of supplements? And for me, because I'm out in the sun a lot and I don't convert to vitamin D as well as I would think, I mean, my genetic testing reveals that I take supplemental vitamin D, I take collagen because I don't get enough collagen in my regular meat that I eat. And I think collagen should be the fourth macronutrient. I think it stands alone as a nutrient. So I take collagen on occasion and I take creatine. And creatine is just something I, I have fun with. It's a muscle enhancing, sort of makes your workouts stronger. But those are the three things that I take. And I don't take really any other supplements.

[Dan Buettner]

You know, the Longevity bros right now are all down on, on, on wine, alcohol. And yet you don't get us started. So where, I mean, you're, you're a studied expert on health and yet you drink wine. How does, how does that score with the.

[Mark Sisson]

So I. Everything I do is contemplated to enjoy my life, Dan. I don't do this just to live longer. I live my life every day almost as if it's my last. And in terms of wine, I just love wine. And I found a wine we both know. Dry Farm Wines is a company that curates wines for its zero sugar content, lower alcohol, lower tannins, so you don't get the Any. Any sort of headache, although I've never gotten a headache. I mean, I drink two glasses of wine every night, have for probably 35 or 40 years.

[Dan Buettner]

Do you think it's a. Maybe a healthy for you in some way?

[Mark Sisson]

I do. I. I mean, it's a. It's a ritual. I mean, I think for me, it's part of dinner. Like, I think it enhances my digestion, so I would not drink water with a meal because I think it dilutes digestive juices. I. I drink wine. It's. It's got a lower pH. I like the fact that it takes a little bit of an edge off the day. I don't deal if I had to pick one part of my life that I've not been good at. It's stress management. So wine assists me with that. And, you know, we could. Again, we could do a whole section on the fact that the body makes ethanol. You know, the human body makes ethanol, and we burn ethanol. Ethanol, which is wine, which is the alcohol. And wine provides 7 calories per gram. So it is a fuel source. And, you know, I think famously, you know, that if you drink alcohol, that the body burns off the alcohol first. It preferentially burns off the alcohol because it's toxic. Well, glucose in excess in the bloodstream is toxic. And yet everybody's saying, oh, glucose is this amazing thing, and the body makes it, and the body burns it. I'm like, yeah, well, the body makes ethanol, and it burns ethanol as well. And I've read, I've done a number of recent research things on this, that the body can burn up to 30 to 40 grams of ethanol in a shorter period of time, which is about two glasses of wine. So I'm not testing the boundaries as much as I'm justifying the fact that here you are over here having an extra dessert, and too much glucose is gonna raise your blood sugar and Mess with your A1C and maybe clog your arteries up. And here I am drinking an appropriate amount of wine, so, you know, who's. Clearly, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

[Dan Buettner]

I love it. Well, you know, I'm a big fan. The blue zone approach to things is sort of change your ecosystem, change your environment, forget about it. And one of the things I've learned the hard way is footwear. And what you put on your feet can have profound impact on how well you walk, how much physical activity you get, how you feel. And you've come to some epiphanies that I've come To, but completely different path. But tell us about Paluva and.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah, so one of the issues I had as a runner was I didn't like the shoes. I didn't like them when they were too thin. I didn't like them when they were too thick. For the most part, I didn't like them because I'd rather go barefoot. I've always wanted to go barefoot. And as a kid, I grew up running around grassy fields barefoot. So about 2007, I became an early adopter of minimalist footwear. This is one that the concept of minimalist footwear started coming on the scene. Coincidentally, our friend Christopher McDougall wrote a book called Born to Run.

[Dan Buettner]

And in that minimalist, your toes are.

[Mark Sisson]

No. Well, minimalist basically describes a shoe that is wide, thin, okay? Flat and flexible. Wide enough to accommodate a full toe splay, thin enough to feel the ground underneath. Flat, which means it doesn't drop from the heel to the metatarsal and flexible. So it's able to accommodate and feel rocks and stones and things underneath. Now, there have been a number of minimal shoe companies. There was one that came on the scene that I was really excited about, a five toed shoe that I embraced wholeheartedly. And I wore a five toed shoe for 15 years. But, you know, it never really satisfied all of the requirements that I had. I wanted to be a little bit thicker so I could walk on concrete for 10 miles and not feel like I was going to get a bone bruise. I wanted them to look better. I wanted the uppers to be a little bit more substantial. So four years ago, my son and I decided, look, this is the time and the place to create the optimal shoe for everybody. A shoe that allows your foot to do what your foot wants to do. So we developed a shoe, a five toed shoe that looks. Can I show it to you?

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah.

[Mark Sisson]

Okay. So this is our trainer. This is the Paluva sport mesh trainer.

[Dan Buettner]

By the way, everybody's wearing them down here right now. They're de rigoire. They actually, actually look cool. Not like the old dorkmeister.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah, exactly. So this is, this is the sport trainer again. Five toe. Individual toe articulation. Flexible. It's thin enough. Even though it looks like sort of a regular shoe, it's 9 millimeters less than 1 centimeter from your heel to the ground so you can feel everything you walk on.

[Dan Buettner]

You know, I learned about this the hard way. Just to share my own story on this, I had something called a Morton's neuroma, the pinching of the nerves, because they collapsed, they got weak. You know, 50 years of living in a shoe and what I love about your shoe is it frees up the toes to move around and it disperses the burden. And I just think it's such a brilliant design and I'm a big fan of it because you put it on your feet and you forget about it.

[Mark Sisson]

Yes. This is the most comfortable shoe you'll ever wear. It's a glove for your feet. Oh, yeah. It has benefits as well. Right. It's going to improve the intrinsic muscles of your feet. So those muscles that are now been cramped and stuck together and wrapped up with an arch support for 30 or 40 or 50 years now we have no arch support. So your arch is going to have to work. That's a good thing. You want your arch to build itself back up your arch. That whole area of the foot, it's a muscle. Simple things like this. Don't run in these shoes.

[Dan Buettner]

Just thinking about it.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah. Don't run in these shoes. Walk in these shoes. And every step you take is going to relax, realign and strengthen your feet.

[Dan Buettner]

So in your 60 years plus of being involved in the physical fitness world, what are your one or two or three pieces of advice that the average person in Iowa, the average American can take away? What are the three most important and most doable things people might think about if they want to get healthier? Live longer, live with more vitality?

[Mark Sisson]

And I think it's easy. I think the three of them are clean up your diet. In other words, eat natural. Eat as naturally as you can.

[Dan Buettner]

So no processed foods.

[Mark Sisson]

No processed food. So that means no sugary beverages, no added sugars, no pies, cakes, candies, cookies, and even not so much pasta. Beans are great, right? Natural foods. Eat naturally. Either a Mediterranean diet or whatever a natural paleo primal diet would be for.

[Dan Buettner]

You, Blue zone diet might be all right.

[Mark Sisson]

Blue zone diet would probably work for most people. So that's, number one, get your diet cleaned up. That is just. That's the lowest hanging fruit of all. Number two, walk. And when I say walk, it's like, it sounds so counterintuitive, like walking. What is that gonna do? And by the way, most many people who are overweight and who are in pain say, well, I don't wanna walk because it doesn't do anything. It's useless. No, it's better for you to walk than it is to run. So if you say, well, I can't run cause I'm in pain and I don't wanna walk cause it's useless. No, walking is the quintessential human movement. We should be doing it as much throughout the day as we possibly can. Like five 10 minute walks spread throughout the day is probably more valuable than one 50 minute walk done once a day.

[Dan Buettner]

I would agree.

[Mark Sisson]

Okay, so clean up your diet, walk and sleep. Get your sleep dialed in. So that means go to bed at a reasonable hour and wake up at the same time every day. Try to wake up naturally without an alarm clock. You know, get, I don't know, minimum of seven, probably no more than nine. Some, some nice window that everybody kind of finds there. But, but those are the three things. Sleep, walking and food.

[Dan Buettner]

All very blue zones. It's evolved quite a way from the, from the days of run marathons and carbo load.

[Mark Sisson]

Yeah.

[Dan Buettner]

And. But I think we've finally arrived. Mark, I can't thank you enough. Great advice. And most of it meshes perfectly with blue zones and what doesn't. Hell, you might be right. But tell us how people can reach you, how they can interact with you, how they can get the shoes. Get the Born to Walk book.

[Mark Sisson]

Great. So Born to Walk, you know, available on Amazon and any, any bookseller. It's a, it's.

[Dan Buettner]

By the way, it's like a five star review. And I looked at it, 170 people reviewed it. It's very well received book.

[Mark Sisson]

Thank you. So that's on Amazon. Peluvo is P E L u v a peluva.com. it's the site where we sell our shoes. You can only buy it online. My own personal Instagram site is Mark Sisson Primal. And you'll see some shirtless shots of me there once in a while. But otherwise I dispense pretty good advice. Note to self, girls, I dispense pretty good advice on a regular basis there.

[Dan Buettner]

Yeah, perfect. Well, thank you for sharing your wisdom here. I regard you as. Even though you didn't sign up for it, I regard you as a mentor of sorts. So thank you for sharing with the rest of us here.

[Mark Sisson]

My pleasure.

[Dan Buettner]

Great to be here and we'll see you when you're 100.

[Mark Sisson]

It.