Why Too Much Cardio May Be Hurting Your Health & the Truth About Barefoot Shoes

Suggested Resources:

• Mark Sisson | Instagram
• Peluva barefoot shoes (grab 10% off with the code wellnstrong)
• Born to Walk
• The Primal Blueprint

Jac: All right, Mark, well let’s, let’s get into it. So I know we had, uh, we had some time last week scheduled, but I’m actually glad that it didn’t work out and we’re chatting today because I wanna kick things off movement-wise, Mark, especially since I hit a record number of steps this past weekend.

I hit 50K on Saturday, which to you I’m sure is, is nothing,

but for me, like,

Mark: That’s a lot. That’s a lot of walking. That’s like twenty-five miles for most people,

Jac: a

Mark: more. Yeah.

Jac: It was a lot, Mark. But, um, I mean, based on that, I find your story so interesting because you used to be this Ironman triathlete and marathon runner, and you ran what? A two eighteen was it? Um, insane. So I’d love to start with your thoughts on cardio for all of the runners listening, Mark, especially since I myself have recently…

You know, I consider myself part of that group within the past year or so. [00:02:00] But when you look at chronic long-term endurance training now, how has your perspective evolved on, you know, how it actually impacts our health over time?

Mark: Well, you know, it’s, it’s massive. I was, uh… I was– I bought into that whole thing where, uh, in the late ’60s when Ken Cooper wrote the book Aerobics, and he m-made this– had this theory that the more aerobic stuff you did, the more cardio you did, the longer you’d live. It would confer some magical, uh, you know, longevity wand across your, across your body.

And, uh, so from the age of twelve, fifteen, fourteen years old, I started running a lot and doing all the endurance activities and doing all the stuff that people tend to assume, uh, is good for you. Um, and I was, I was good. I mean, I was… Look, I was genetically gifted in that regard. I was an ectomorph with large lung capacity and a high pain tolerance, and that’s, that’s really what carried me through the career of being a marathoner, being a, a, a Ironman triathlete

Jac: Yeah

Mark: And over the years, I mean, I, I ran [00:03:00] 100 miles a week for seven years, uh, during the height of my running career.

Um, I put in, you know, tens of thousands of miles on the bike, um, some yards in the pool, and then I also supplemented with lifting weights. And I, I, during those years I was actually a painting contractor, so I was literally working, uh, you know, um, at, at a, at a h- high heavy labor job, running up and down ladders all day long.

Jac: Oh my gosh.

Mark: yeah, so I was, I was very physically active. But

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: uh, you know, I got, you know, I get, I get good, I raced well, I performed well, but I started– when I got injured because of too much training and then because, partly because of the shoes that I was wearing, which informed later on

Jac: We’ll chat about that.

Mark: desire to start a shoe company.

But also the diet, you know, it was very h- uh, high in carbohydrates, um, because carbo loading was the, was the sort of, uh, the main focus for most endurance athletes, like eat a lot of carbohydrates today so you can get– ’cause you’re gonna burn them off tomorrow when you’re training tomorrow, and then do a repeat, [00:04:00] rinse, repeat for years, decades.

You know, when I, when I retired from racing and I started coaching and I started writing books on training and, and, and, uh, living a, a, you know, a strong, lean, fit, happy, healthy life, I realized pretty early on that, um, we’re doing too much. That, that, that this, this, um, sort of unlimited amount of cardio is bad for people.

I started keeping a race sheet of all my friends, people I knew who were world record holders, uh, who were gold medalists, who were, um, world champions, who were local champions, and s- they were– some of them were dying in the a- you know, at 30 years old, at 40 years old. Some of them were having, uh, serious heart problems, um, heart, uh, heart attacks and surviving heart attacks and dying, or getting defibrillators installed or having, you know, pacemakers or, um, open heart surgery.

And it was alarming the number of people who were, um, having, uh, cardiovascular problems who you would [00:05:00] otherwise think, “These are some of the healthiest people I’ve ever seen,” because of the performance that they, they… So after, um, really reassessing my, my outlook on, uh, endurance training in general and then specifically for most people, I realized that the only people who should be running are runners.

And by that I mean, uh, lifted ectomorphs, large lung capacity, again, long legs, high pain tolerance. Those are the people who should be running metronomically six, seven, eight-minute miles per day, you know, miles a day, you know, miles a week. Most people, most other people should not be running. Maybe, maybe once in a while because, you know, we’re born to be able to run.

We’re not born to run like, like, like every day. Um, so I say we’re born to walk. I wrote a book called Born to Walk. Uh, we’re born to sprint, and I looked at an ancestral pattern, right? And our ancestors walked a lot- Uh, and they sprinted once in a while, you know, for their lives. They sprinted because they had to.

They sprinted to run away [00:06:00] from something, something that was gonna kill them, towards something they wanted to eat. But this did not happen often. And so what we see now in the… And, and now we see in the scientific literature that people who complete a marathon, um, have sort of the same blood markers as people who have just had a heart attack.

So that can’t be good. I know most, in most marathoners, it dissolves in a few, you know, hours, but it’s still kind of scary that, that you’re damaging yourself so much to complete this 26-mile race that your, that your body thinks you’re dying.

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: muscle tissue down.

Jac: I read that.

Mark: yeah, and it’s, it’s weird because…

It’s not weird if you think about it. Look, lifting weights is anabolic. It builds muscle. Lifting weights, sprinting is anabolic, but running long distance is catabolic. It tears muscle tissue down. I was a top runner. Um, I weighed 138 to 140 pounds when I was a runner. I’m five ten. I weigh 171 now. I, so [00:07:00] 30-plus pounds more now than when I was a runner.

Same body fat percentage, but I have more muscle. Now, you go, “Well, okay, how does that even work?” Well, I ran so much, and I lifted weights in those days. I was actually in the gym lifting weights. I wanted to be strong. I wanted to be as fit as I could be. But because running is catabolic, I could not keep muscle on.

So when we look at, like, okay, what is the, you know, what’s, like, what’s a, a, a good recipe for living a s- a, a longer, healthier, mobile, uninjured life? I think it involves a complex, uh, mix of some strength training, some high-level sprinting, a little bit of endurance training, but most of it at level two, like walking fast, just walking.

50,000 steps in a day is a good, is a good number. Um, and then

Jac: good or it isn’t good,

Mark: No, it’s fine. Look, walking is great. Walking is not… Here’s the thing. Um, walking is the [00:08:00] best thing a human can do. And, and, you know, 25 miles in a day, 50,000 steps, that’s a lot. And, and I applaud you. But that’s not gonna tear you up the way running 25 miles

Jac: Yeah. That’s what I was gonna ask you.

Mark: Yeah, no, running, running 25 miles, which I did once a week for seven years. Whether or not I raced a marathon, I ran at least a 25-mile run one, one day, once a week. And it, you know, chewed me up. It was, it was, it was normal. Part of my training, and it made me a better performer. But it cost me, you know, my joints.

I had a hip replaced last year. My knees are sort of bone on bone from all that time running. So, uh, you know, it’s not, it’s not like you can, um, do any of that kind of damage walking because walking, you’re, you’re not in… You’re not pounding. You’re not hitting the pavement. You’re not getting the G-forces Uh, you’re not, and then most people who run, and this is a huge one, most people who run to, to lose weight are actually not burning fat.

They’re burning glycogen. They’re burning the carbohydrate stored [00:09:00] in their muscles. And because they run too hard, they run too fast for their fitness level. You know, they’re breathing hard, they’re sweating. They think, oh my God, what a valuable workout I just had. I must have melted off all the fat. And then they get back to their house and sit down on the sofa.

And within an hour, they’re hungry because the body goes, wait, you know, we didn’t really burn fat. We burned carbohydrate. We burned glycogen. And now the brain, which runs on glycogen for a lot of these people, because they have not become metabolically flexible. We can talk about what that means. Now their brain says, wait, we’re running low on glucose.

We got to go eat more carbohydrate. And so people who run a lot tend to overeat carbohydrates. Now, when I was a runner and I was eating a thousand grams of carbs a day,

Jac: Wow.

Mark: I would burn through it. Again, I was the ectomorph. I was the skinny guy. I couldn’t keep weight on. I was eating 6,000 calories a day and burning it off.

You know, I was a very inefficient eater for that same reason. My metabolism was not efficient. So it was very [00:10:00] wasteful and a lot of food would, you know, pass through undigested TMI.

Jac: Yeah. Yeah. Um,

Mark: so, yeah, so I just think that walking is the quintessential human movement. I think it’s the best thing we can do. And then lifting weights twice a week, not three or four or five times a week, twice a week lifting weights.

But most of our body composition that we’re looking for, an ideal body composition happens as a result of how we design our eating program, how we build metabolic flexibility, how we burn fat while we’re at rest, or even when we’re working out fairly strenuously. If we can develop this metabolic flexibility, we’ll burn off our stored body fat.

We won’t need to go think that we have to go run long distance to, you know, to melt off the fat.

Jac: Right. Yeah, and I want to get into that metabolic flexibility component, but a few questions on the running component, uh, Mark. Well, I’m glad to hear you can’t walk too much. Also, have you ever been to Greenville, South Carolina?

Mark: I think I have. I think there’s a running shoe story there. I think [00:11:00] I’ve been Yeah.

Jac: that’s where, that’s where I live. I moved here four years ago from Boston. My family’s still up in New Jersey, but I love it here, and they have a trail. It’s about a thirty-mile trail called the Swamp Rabbit Trail. You would fall in love with it, but that’s essentially where I walk every single day, and I average about thirty thousand steps.

And people look at me like, “You’re crazy.” I’m like, “Eh, Mark says walking’s fine.” You know? I can, I can walk as much as I want.

Mark: Now, are

Jac: I am. I got them about a month ago, and I’ll tell you, I had about five people stop me on the trail and ask what shoes I was wearing. And immediately, I told them all about barefoot footwear and the benefits, which I want to get into with you as well.

But, um, you mentioned lung capacity for running, right? Those who, like, don’t necessarily have a strong lung capacity. How does one assess that?

Mark: Well, lung capacity is assessed in a lab. You just do a, it’s, it’s a breathing, a closed breathing system, and you just are able to determine the volume of your lungs. Um, so that’s, you know, but it’s not an expensive [00:12:00] test. It’s, you know, you can ask

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: any sort of metabolic, uh, oriented doctor to do that for you.

And it’s one of several metrics, but it’s lung capacity, uh, is, is part of what determines VO2 max, you know, your ability to absorb oxygen and then utilize it in the muscles. Um, but, um, you know, some people just don’t have a lot of lung capacity. Some people have, uh, squandered whatever lung capacity they had because they don’t breathe right.

They, you know, they, they don’t do enough work in their lives to cause them to pant or inhale deeply or exhale deeply.

Jac: Right.

Mark: of different, uh, metrics around which we can talk about longevity, and that lung capacity thing is certainly one of them, and it’s certainly one way to… You know, if, if you were to look at like fifty different things you want to accomplish to live as long as you can and be as healthy as you can, be as strong as you can, be as mobile as you can be, be resistant to disease, um, and be resistant to injury, lung capacity would be one of those fifty.

Jac: Yeah, it’s interesting. And the [00:13:00] reason I ask that too is because I recently got a Garmin. I don’t know, like, wh- where you sit in terms of, you know, all of those technologies nowadays, but one thing I did notice, Mark, is that when I do run, it could be like a seven-thirty mile, my heart rate will spike to like one-eighty-five, one-ninety, and I got nervous ’cause I was like, “That’s an extremely high heart rate for someone who’s not necessarily going all out.

Like, what does that mean?” Yet my resting heart rate is in the forties at night. So I was just curious, like, is that, like, is that just a factor of me not having a strong aerobic baseline? Like,

Mark: So,

Jac: an accurate watch? Like, how does that work?

Mark: now I, I don’t trust those watches, first of all.

Jac: Yeah,

Mark: I, you know, have a lot of people, I have a lot of people I’ve hiked with who are telling me their heart rate’s one eighty, and I’m thinking, “No, it’s probably one fifty or one forty,” just based on, you know, taking the pulse of the neck, something like

Jac: Yeah, that’s the best way.

Mark: of it is, is I don’t trust that. But part of it could be if it, if your heart rate is… Like, do you know what your max heart rate is? Have you ever gotten to a max heart rate?

Jac: No, that’s the thing. I mean, my, my cardiologist said at my age, I’m thirty, right? He’s like, [00:14:00] “It probably should be around like one-eighty or one-ninety,” but he said some folks have higher, yeah, higher… Like, I could have a technically higher max output than others, but I, I don’t know how to assess that.

Mark: Yeah, but I mean, and I guess that, that’s an interesting, um, you know, the more, the more, um, interesting and I think, um, um, you know, telling metric is your resting heart rate. If it’s in the forties, then you’ve got this, this capacity to go from 40 beats a minute to 190 beats a minute, that’s 150 beat window.

That’s a huge window. That’s, that’s a good thing, right? Some people, um, some people’s resting heart rate is 78. You know, and their max heart rate might be 150. That’s kind of a small, a small window there. And unless they’re going to train their way into a lower resting heart rate, uh, you know, I, I mean, there’s no real science on connecting those kind of dots, but I would just say kind of like, uh, intuitively that you have a great heart rate range.

Jac: All right. Good to hear. And Mark, you mentioned a few exercises that we should be [00:15:00] focusing on, but in terms of looking at it from an age perspective, like, how should, like, how should the way we train evolve as we age? So let’s say for a female who’s in her thirties, like, what should she be focusing on right now?

Mark: Um, well, so getting as many steps as possible, not, not to count calories, not even to count steps, just getting out there and walking. The body– I don’t, I don’t think in terms of calories burned when I’m walking. I just like… Especially, and you, I think you know this now, wearing Pelovis, you feel every step, and it feels good.

You feel the engagement of the muscles in the leg beyond just from the ankle up. Now you feel the bottoms of the feet. You feel the feet sort of conform to the s- the rock that you step on or l- or the tilt of the trail, and it feels good y- because your feet are strong. Because you’re not running, you’re walking, so you’re not putting those, the, the extra G-forces on your body.

No, you’re really not gonna turn an ankle doing this. Um, you’re just only, every step is gonna just continue to strengthen your feet passively, right? So walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. And I think, and again, we’re gonna [00:16:00] sort of finish this up by saying walk in Pelovis because we’re walking a barefoot shoe, a minimalist shoe that gives you good ground feel, um, gives you a sense of where you are in terms of proprioception, wor- works on balance, works on a lot of other things besides just building up the kinetic chain.

But walk, walk, walk. Lift, women should lift twice a week. Um, and it, and if it’s gonna be three times a week, then maybe they have one dedicated leg day. So two upper body lifting workouts, one dedicated leg day. And then I would say sprint once a week. And sprinting doesn’t have to be running at the track.

It could be on the elliptical trainer. It could be on the assault bike. It could be on the SkiErg. It could be anything that’s got, that has you doing a maximum effort for 20 seconds and then resting a minute and a half, two minutes. Another max effort for 20 seconds, maybe 20 to 30 seconds, depending on your fitness level, depending on your appetite for discomfort.

Uh, y- you know, and depending on, uh, you know, whether or not you’re, you’re, uh, fighting off an injury, for instance. Like, I love to [00:17:00] go sprint. I s- I still sprint, um, but because I have, uh, you know, my, my hips are not as, not what they used to be, and I have, uh, knee issues because of arthritis. My knees- All running.

Um, I mostly walk and I can walk great and easily, but once a week, once, once in a while, I’m, I’m fit enough to go do some sprints. I love doing sprints, but I’m very careful about just exactly where I need to be in terms of not working too hard, um, maintaining form. I’m gonna say not working too hard. I’m working as hard as I can, but maintaining form throughout all of that, right?

So

Jac: Yeah, and strength training. Yeah. One of my, one of my friends, Mark, uh, we were supposed to run a 10K the other month, and he tried to do in last October and e-ended up getting a stress fracture. And ever since then, now he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t think I’m ever really gonna run anymore.” But he’s been doing a lot of strength training because he realizes how hard running is on the body.

So I think it worked out for his benefit in the end.

Mark: You know, uh, most, most people have not– who have that experience [00:18:00] realize that they got injured one too many times running. It wasn’t worth the downtime. You know, you’re excited about running. You have to get your head into that space, and then, and then you get injured. Now you get depressed because you’re not running, and then you don’t want to lift weights because you’re gonna get bigger and more…

You know, it’s, it’s this whole, it’s this whole,

Jac: a

Mark: mind… It’s a cycle. It’s definitely a cycle. Yeah. So I think, um, I think lifting weights and sprinting and walking, and I can, I can tell people, “Look, I can, uh, I can have you to where if you really wanna run, do a lot of walking, some sprinting, and then one day a week, go run five miles or six miles.

Jac: was gonna ask what the cutoff is. Five or six? Okay.

Mark: Five or six miles. Um, I mean, if you’re gonna race, if you’re gonna get into the Turkey Trot or 10K or something like that, you know, you can do a little bit more. But for just general fitness, what I tell people is, “I can train you the way I just described, lots of walking, a little bit of sprinting, uh, specific lifting of weights, and one hard, hard-ish run [00:19:00] a week.

You will run faster per mile than if you were just out there slogging six days a week doing five miles of jogging. You’d never get faster because you just train yourself to be slow.” This is what happens with most non-runners who, who do, who try to run. I mean, I, I encounter so many people in my life who are, you know, they call themselves marathon runners, and they, you know, their, their best…

Um, you know, a thirty-eight-year-old man, his best marathon is three forty. Uh, it’s like, it’s, it’s less than unimpressive. It’s just like you, you picked the wrong sport. Like, like,

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: you’re a man, a reasonably fit man, and you haven’t broken three hours for a marathon, find another sport.

That’s not your sport. I mean, you can, you can brag all you want about all your finisher’s medals, but it’s just not good for you. That’s… I mean, i-if it was good for you, I’d say it doesn’t matter, but it’s not. It tears you down. It’s catabolic. Um, it is… And [00:20:00] then we get back to this thing about the cardiovascular system.

It’s, it’s highly inflammatory, and so a lot of people who have, uh, predisposition through their genetics for Uh, heart problems, it gets exacerbated by the type of training that they do about, uh, you know, training too high a heart rate for too long. Again, th- thinking they’re doing themselves a favor, thinking back to when Ken Cooper wrote his book about aerobics and the more you do the better, that– By the way, Ken Cooper himself, like 13 years later goes, “Whoa, boy, I messed up.

I should never have said that.” There’s a limit to what– to this,

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: and the limit is probably 3,500 calories a week of work output. So if you look at that in terms of running, that’s 35 miles a week is probably the limit beyond which if you go further, th- then the, then the benefits drop off, and that’s if you’re doing other stuff too, and that’s, that was just looking at runners.

That wasn’t even looking at the general population. It’s [00:21:00] 35 miles a week, so a lot of, lot of miles for people who had an otherwise stressful life. And don’t forget, many people who run are type As, right? So they’re already stressed. Um, and then they’re, they’re type A, so they think they have to go prove something

Jac: Yep.

Mark: ex-girlfriend or their ex-spouse or their

Jac: Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark: the bully at school or whatever.

Uh, and so now they’re in- incurring this additional stress, and of course, you know what they do next? They do a cold plunge, which is even more stress.

Jac: Mm-hmm.

Mark: you know, there’s just an accumulation of these stresses, and they get sick often, and sometimes they get injured. And I’m like, life does not have to be that hard.

Like, like it is not about struggling and suffering. It’s about doing hard stuff, but doing it very, um, mindfully and intent, you know, and having a plan that every time you go do a workout, if you’re calling it a workout, that you have a plan and, and fit it into a schedule. Now, if we’re gonna play, that’s different.

Play is, like, my favorite thing. Like, you know, I– Most of [00:22:00] what I do when I’m in a gym or most of my training is contemplated to help me have a better time when I’m playing and play uninjured.

Jac: Right. I love that. And I’m sure you experienced this yourself, Mark, but when you stopped doing all that cardio, I’m sure you noticed a difference in testosterone levels and, like, nervous system dysregulation. I remember you saying something about, like, cyclists, especially for men, have very, very low levels of testosterone.

Mark: The guys who race in Tour de France

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: after a couple of days of racing, uh, that if they walked into an emergency room, uh, you know, telling their doctor that they felt like crap on a Monday morning, uh, the doctor would start prescribing testosterone therapy for them.

Certainly, the irony of, of, of drugs in the, in the Tour is many of the athletes who got busted, and many of those who didn’t get busted, uh, who were using testosterone, were not doing it to become superhuman, jacked, you know, um, uh, guys. They were doing it to be able to get out of bed the next morning and go race bikes [00:23:00] So one of the classic cases of, uh, an athlete who tested positive for using exogenous outside testosterone, uh, and got found guilty because, because they, they tested the, the, um, the type of testosterone that was in, in his body was clearly from an outside source.

But his, but his levels were still low. They were like

Jac: Normal. Yeah.

Mark: hundred… Like low normal for a man. So if– It’s crazy that we do this to athletes and, um, and then deny them the very medicines that we would give other people. But don’t, don’t get me started on that. Anyway, yeah.

Jac: a whole other…

Mark: so this, so this idea of like chronic cardio, of, of going out and doing something hard, um, r-racing your heart to a max o-on a regular basis, um, it is detrimental to health.

And I, you know, my heart suffered. I, I’m like one of millions of pe- millions of people my age who have, um, scarred heart tissue from, um, raising my heart rate to its max [00:24:00] four times a week. Not once in a while, four times a week for anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour and a half. I mean, it was, it was incredible the amount of hard training that we did,

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: recovered from, uh, you know.

But the heart doesn’t have inner-innervation. So the heart can’t go, “Whoa, that hurts. Jeez, I…” The heart just keeps doing whatever the brain tells it to do. And over time… You know, if you go to the gym and you say, “Well, I’m gonna lift, um, I’m gonna do curls. I’m gonna do three hundred curls of seventy-five pounds,” the, the, the, the nerves, the pain nerves in your arms go, “Whoa, wait, hold up.”

Heart goes, “Whatever. I guess I

Jac: gotta

keep living.

Mark: gotta keep beating as fast as I can.” Yeah, so you have to be really, really careful of that. So,

Jac: That’s so true.

Mark: you know, just back to what do most people want? Most people wanna have… They wanna, they wanna be fit and lean and strong. They wanna look good naked, all of which kinda comes together.

And you don’t have [00:25:00] to bust your ass to do that. Again, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk as much as you can walk in, you know, barefoot shoes. Uh, lift weights twice a week. Do leg, do a leg day, maybe a dedicated leg day one or two times a week. Um, sprint once a week, and then watch your

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: You know? It’s pretty, it’s a

Jac: There’s your plan.

Mark: There’s a plan. Yeah. And these, by the way, these don’t take… The walking, I don’t even… Like, a-after the interview today, I’m gonna go on my evening walk. I do a one-hour walk every night. It’s just without fail. And it’s probably the best part of my day, and I’m not doing it to burn calories. I don’t care about the calories.

I’m, I’m smelling the smells and seeing the sights and breathing in nature and I’m outside and, and I’m, and, and I’m feeling every single footstep I take because I, I walk on cobblestones, I walk on grass, I walk on boulders sometimes. And it’s such a A sensory experience that does not happen with real [00:26:00] sh- with regular shoes, you know, because thick shoes and all this other stuff.

So to me, it’s, it’s like, um, it’s, it’s a fitting end of my day where I get to kind of download. I, I don’t listen to music. Um, I don’t care, I don’t care if you do, but in 50 years of running, ’cause I started running when I was 12,

Jac: When did you stop? Were you in like your early 30s when you kinda like just

Mark: Yeah. I mean, I haven’t run a mile in, in I guess 35 years now, maybe more.

I haven’t run a mile since I was 37. Now, I sprint, I cover a lot of ground walking and, and when I’m playing ultimate Frisbee, I’m probably running four or five miles during a game. But it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, sprinting and, and jogging and stopping and walking and changing direction, and it’s fun, and that’s the play part.

But I haven’t, I haven’t put on shoes and headed out the door to go do seven-minute miles for six [00:27:00] miles. Um, I mean, I haven’t done it for one mile. I mean, I’ve tried a couple times. I’m like, “Ah, maybe I’ll…” And I get, I literally get like 200 yards down the road running and I’m like, “What am I

Jac: Why am I doing this?

Mark: And I walk, I walk home, you know?

It it, it holds no, no appeal to me. Now, I love sprinting. I love sprinting. There’s a purpose to it, but there’s no purpose to me to jogging. Right? It’s a, it’s such a… And gone now I’ve, I’ve got such a point of view about it, about how bad it is that I’m like, I, you know, I, I… There’s noth- nothing in it for me.

There’s no benefit to be derived from it. For me. Now, again, if you’re somebody who loves to run, I would say, and you’re… First of all, if you’re a runner and you want to compete, go for it. I did that. I don’t regret that I did it. I did it, and I was, I was genetically set up to, to be able to do that. But if you’re not a runner, if you’re somebody who’s, who’s an e- a, a mesomorph or an endomorph, a larger person, and you think running is gonna be your thing and you still wanna [00:28:00] run, again, I go back to, okay, let’s figure out a way to train where you can walk a lot, you can do some sprinting, you can do some, um, uh, you know, f- uh, Norwegian four by four hard work on the assault bike or even uphill on a treadmill, walking hard on a treadmill.

And then one day a week, go out and run your five or for six miles and, and do a, and do a time trial, you know? And because if you do that and then you get to your turkey trot, you’re gonna beat all of your, all of your cohorts who are training their asses off doing 35 or 40 miles a week training for the same race.

Jac: So true. I’m gonna try that, Mark. I’ll let, I’ll let you know in a couple weeks, but I, I love that philosophy. I mean, honestly, the principle of less is more really does apply in like almost every area of life. But, uh,

you

Mark: so I call it the MED, the minimum effective dose of exercise. What’s the minimum effective dose of exercise? That’s gonna have me be strong, lean, fit, happy, healthy, productive, all those things that we say we want without– with the least amount of pain, [00:29:00] suffering, and sacrifice.

Jac: Yeah. So true. I love that. And you mentioned barefoot shoes a few times. For someone, Mark, who has never heard of a barefoot shoe, at the basic level, what is it?

Mark: Okay, so a barefoot shoe is defined as wide, thin, flat, and flexible. So it’s wide, wide enough to accommodate a splayed foot. So your feet, your toes wanna splay outward. They do not wanna be scrunched together like most shoes do. So wide is, is, is a critical part of a, of a barefoot shoe. S- uh, uh, thin because you wanna feel the ground underneath.

They have to be thin enough to have a little bit of cushion so you don’t get bone bruises walking on pavement and concrete and hardwood floors and all the stuff that we walk on every day. So they wanna be thin. Um, they wanna be flat. And by flat, isn’t just thin, it’s, it means, um, from, there’s no drop from the heel to the toe.

So they’re, they’re, um, simulating at your, what your bare foot would be on that same surface. So they’re wide, thin, flat, and then [00:30:00] flexible. Flexible enough to feel and un- change, change shape or allow your foot to change shape with every foot landing on cobblestones and rocks and twigs and stones and divots and holes and all the stuff that we step on when we’re walking.

Now, the difference, most minimalist shoes, most barefoot shoes, we call themselves barefoot, have this wide, thin, flat, flexible. But what we’ve done is we’ve built a shoe that has five toes. So it’s a five-toed shoe. It’s a poly-toe shoe. It, it’s a glove for your feet. It’s wide enough to accommodate your, you know– It forces a natural splay, as your toes splay outwardly, especially your big toe wants to be away from those, those other toes.

This is the problem with every other shoe which could cause foot problems for virtually everyone who wears them, whether it’s bunions or plantar fasciitis or Achilles issues because the heel is too raised, um, you start to lose… And then a lot of people get knee, uh, and lower back pain because the shoes are cushioned so much that the feet can’t, they can’t under– they can’t [00:31:00] inform the brain, they can’t signal the brain of what’s underneath the foot.

And so the, the brain has to kinda guess, “How much do I roll the ankle? How much do I articulate the toes? How much do I, how much do I bend my knee, you know, to accommodate the, the fourteen-inch ledge that I just stepped off?” All of that is negated by these thick shoes. So a barefoot shoe is designed to allow your feet to become much more, uh, much stronger.

Allows the s– the, what we call the smaller intrinsic muscles of the feet to actually work. Because most, even the top high-tech running shoes and gym shoes not only scrunch your feet together, they, and then they have a raised arch, which then unburdens your arch of even having to develop itself. So people say, “Well, my arches are weak.”

Well, they’re weak because you never trained them. You’re supporting them your whole life with this high arch in a shoe. It’s the worst thing you can do Um, yeah. So we’ve developed this Palova shoe, which is– And, you know, now we have, you know, a hundred thousand, uh, users, uh, [00:32:00] thousands of testimonials about, you know, incredible experiences about…

I mean, the hate mail I get is, is, “Damn you, Mark. Now I’ll never be able to buy another shoe again because I– these are so comfortable, you know, the most comfortable shoe I’ve ever worn,

Jac: It’s true.

Mark: and I feel the strength in my toes. I feel the strength in my feet. Um, when I do leg days in the gym, I’m in- I’m involving twenty percent more of my, uh, that kinetic chain, the muscles in the leg.”

Um, the big toe is connected to the glutes. So, you know, historically, bodybuilders and, and powerlifters would take their shoes off, uh, and lift barefoot when they’re doing lunges or squats or any of, any of the leg day in the gym because they know that the big toe needs to be abducted away from the rest of the foot.

It needs– It’s the strongest joint in the foot, and it needs to be out there on its own as a stabilizer, and the big toe is directly connected to the glute. So the big toe, which is al- alway- It’s a, it’s a, a well-known thing among, well, all, you know, [00:33:00] orthopedists and, and, and reflexologists and, and people who know the body.

But bodybuilders in particular know that if they wanna build strong glutes, they have to move that big toe out and splay it outward for when they’re, when they’re getting down in that squat position and getting back up, or doing deadlifts or doing lunges, all the things you can do in a, uh, in a leg workout.

Um, and if you– So, so, so, you know, the compromise is, well, I took my shoes off, but I had my socks on. Well, the socks still bring that big toe against the others. You’re not really able to move your big toe out. Um, you know, big toe, by the way, is also called great toe. And so in the gym, they go… The, the saying is, “Great toe, great ass.”

So that’s, that’s the connection. So we, y- yeah, you, you should either lift, you know, completely barefoot or with toe spacers on or, I mean, in my case, we have, like, thousands of people lifting in Palovas in the gym and noticing the difference.

Jac: That’s so interesting. Toe spacers. They say to use those, um… Or for people who have bunions, they say to use toe [00:34:00] spacers. So I’m assuming then barefoot shoes would be great for people who suffer with

Mark: Yeah. So, so not all barefoot shoes. So a lot of people, um, I know people with bunions who wear toe spacers inside their single toe box barefoot shoes if the, if the shoe’s wide enough. It’s a little uncomfortable bec-because if, if you, if you put a regular s- a foot that has bunions inside a wide toe box, nothing happens.

The foot doesn’t heal itself. It doesn’t, because the f- the toes, A, need to splay outwardly, which is why when we put p– We have a lot of people with bunions who are able to walk with much less discomfort and sometimes zero discomfort, um, wearing, wearing Palovas because it’s, it, you know, it doesn’t… Look, the bunion is a, is a serious deformation.

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: Not

Jac: gotta get my grandma a pair.

Mark: Not caused by genetics. No one gets bunions from genetics. You get it from bad footwear Oh, you get it from bad footwear. Bunions are not– those are not, uh, an– like no indigenous peoples, peoples in, you know, in, that are still, you know, [00:35:00] tribes in, in the, in the Amazon basin or in parts of Africa who never wear shoes, they never get bunions.

It’s just like, it is shoes, it’s modern footwear that causes bunions, it cau-causes plantar fasciitis, that causes Achilles issues, uh, that causes Morton’s neuroma, that causes all other types of, um, you know, neur-neuromas and neurological problems and, and, and, uh, um, circulation problems in feet. All of this is, is a result of…

Well, most of it is a result of, um, of footwear choices. Um, we talk about the circulation problem, some of that’s dietary, right? That’s like the, that’s the, um, uh, you know, that’s the sort of what happens with type two diabetes and loss of circulation there. Yeah.

Jac: So interesting. Wow. So apart from strengthening, um, your big toe with barefoot shoes, what are some of the other benefits? And I heard you mention something really interesting, Mark, about wanting to do a study with barefoot shoes and people with early onset dementia. Can you elaborate on the connection there?

Mark: [00:36:00] Yeah, so just as the big toe is connected directly to the glute, the big toe is also wired directly to the brain. Um, which is why if you’ve ever had like reflexology, a foot massage, if you’ve seen the, the, the, um, the charts of where the different parts of the foot, the bottom of the foot relate to the, um, efferent nerves, the organs, the different organs, the big toe is the brain.

So, um, you know, and I, like, if I have, ever have neck problems, um, my reas- I get a foot massage once a week. I get a ninety-minute foot massage, it’s unbelievable, once a week, um, by one of the best in the country, and she teaches all over. And by the way, she says I have the strongest feet she’s ever worked with.

And I don’t do foot exercises. I just wear Pelovas, and I just know how to, like,

Jac: testimony.

Mark: Big testimony here, but, um, and yeah. So, so the big toe is, is also directly wired to the brain. And so that’s, that is, um… One of the things I want to look at is when you take older people, well, first of all, you take people from the age of [00:37:00] three and put them in tight shoes, and then for the rest of their lives, you put them in tight shoes, and then when they get to be their sixty, sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five years old, now they’re wearing orthopedic tight shoes.

Now they’re wearing stuff that restricts and then supports their arch and doesn’t let their toe move and, you know, because it’s, they’re built on clouds, and so now they, it, you know, the only way they can move is on clouds, on, on these cushions, on these pillows. Um, it completely negates all of that big toe interaction with the ground.

And I would love to see a study done on people who are, you know, uh, sort of pre, um, uh, you know, uh, age-related dementia, uh, who are, um, going either barefoot or in, like a Pelova type shoe and a five-toe shoe, um, and see what happens when you really get to work that big toe again and, and really move a lot and be outside and move

Jac: That’s very interesting. Here’s a crazy question, Mark. Is there such a thing or… I mean, I’m sure this has crossed your mind, in creating, like, a customized barefoot shoe depending upon, like, the [00:38:00] specific person?

Mark: Well, you know, I know where you’re going with this because some people have like a, a, a toe, toe length differs on people. So sometimes the second toe is longer than the b- than the first toe, the big toe, the great toe. Um, some people’s, uh, pinky toe is way down the foot, you know? And, um, I think we can– Well, I think we’re gonna get to that point with, uh, 3D printing at some point.

But right now, um, it is so difficult to make a five-toe shoe, uh, just based on

Jac: I can imagine.

Mark: average mold that to make a customized shoe, we could, but, you know, it would probably retail for, I don’t know, nine hundred dollars or something like that. It would have to be because it, it would take, you know, one person an entire, um, day to make a shoe based on the fact you have, you have to do a mold of the foot and then use the mold.

It’s, it’s very complex. It’s a very complicated thing. I mean, that’s– I think our shoes are very well-priced. You know, our, our entry level is a hundred and forty dollars for the trainer, which is pretty much what, you know, most other… [00:39:00] You know, if you see it across the board, whether it’s, uh, on Nike or whatever, they’re at least one forty.

Um, and yet ours take a lot more handwork because you’re sewing, uh, stitching, and turning five different digits instead of just one giant toe box on this. Um, but you know, we-we’re getting, uh, again, we’re getting rave reviews from people who, whose lives we are changing. And, um, I’m, you know, that’s one of the things, uh, with my food company, Primal Kitchen, that was the greatest, you know, the greatest benefit to me was hearing from people who said, “Oh my God, Mark, you changed my life because I– now I feel I can eat the foods that I wanna eat and put the sauces on that I was afraid to use before because they were bad for me, and now they’re good for me.”

And I think that’s what’s going on with, with footwear and with foot health. I think foot health is the new sleep. I think it’s a really–

Jac: I was gonna say…

Mark: It’s the lowest hanging fruit in the world of longevity. You know, more

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: at over the age of sixty-five, something like thirty-five percent of people over the age of [00:40:00] sixty-five, you know, fall and break a

Jac: was– Yep.

Mark: And of those who fall and break a hip, twenty-five percent die within a few months of, you know, related, whether it’s c- could just be heart failure or pneumonia or whatever, just some organ failure. It’s a, it’s a really big deal. And, and the idea that you would trip just, just that in and of itself, think about it.

When you’re twenty, when you’re t- ten years old, fifteen years old, twenty, you trip all the time. You trip on crap in your house, but you catch yourself. You don’t go sprawling out on the floor and bust a,

Jac: Yeah. Yeah.

Mark: both wrists and a hip. You know, because you can catch yourself. No, your feet are strong enough And your legs are strong enough to catch you.

You, and so whether it’s being– h-having bad balance because you haven’t worked your, the muscles in your feet, or just having weak feet because you haven’t worked the muscles in your feet to be able to catch yourself if you, if you do trip, or whether it’s not having weak bone density, low bone density because you didn’t go to the gym and lift weights because you couldn’t because your feet were hurting.

All these [00:41:00] things go back to foot

Jac: Yeah That’s so true. I love how passionate you are about this. And also, by the way, Mark, I have about five Primal Kitchen sauces in my cabinet right now. So you have definitely changed my life in that regard, but palovas have changed my life as well. Um, Mark, you’re, you’re such a wealth of information.

I could talk to you for hours, but I know we’re nearing on time, and I do wanna cover a little bit of your, uh, nutritional philosophy, um, because I know you mentioned, you know, the importance of being metabolically flexible. Again, for the otherwise lay person who never heard that term before, what does that mean and how does one actually get in that state of being metabolically

Mark: Yeah, it’s a good question. So most people– You know, we have these different, uh, energy sources, these different fuels we can burn in our body. We have carbohydrate from our meals. We have glucose in our bloodstream, which is still carbohydrate. We have glycogen in our muscles, which is still carbohydrate. Um, we have fat stored, uh, on our, in our, you know, in our fat cells.

We have fat on a plate of food if we’re just recently having eaten. Um, and we [00:42:00] have, uh, ketones. Ketones are a byproduct of fat metabolism, and the brain is able to use ketones as a fuel very efficiently, very effectively. Most people go through their lives only really ever relying on carbohydrates. So they eat five meals a day.

They get low blood sugar, which is another term for low blood glucose. Um, they don’t train themselves to burn body fat because they haven’t, uh, done the work metabolically. They haven’t created this metabolic flexibility. So metabolic flexibility means the ability to derive energy from whatever substrate is needed for the activity you’re doing at the time.

So y-your body’s ability to burn fat at rest all the time and never really rely on stored glycogen. Your body’s ability to burn fat even wh- certainly when you’re walking and walking fast. And if you’re real- well trained, even up to eighty or eighty-five percent of your capacity, getting most of your energy from stored body fat.

Um, yes, you can always burn glycogen, and your body will always burn glucose. But then with this fat adaptation, this ability to burn fat [00:43:00] efficiently, comes another, uh, benefit, which is the brain’s ability to utilize ketones effectively. Ketones, people had a sort of a negative view of ketones up until about ten years ago when the ketogenic diet first started making, making headlines again, ’cause it first made headlines during, um, the Acton’s days.

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: the ability to go long periods of time if you want, without eating, and not suffering any consequences. So you can burn fat if you’re at, um, you know, at rest. I mean, here’s an example. So I, I have a strategy where I, I eat two meals a day. So I do a-

Jac: what does a, what does a day in the life look like for Mark?

Mark: So I get up in the morning, I have coffee, and, uh, and then I– that’s when I have…

That’s sort of, you know, I don’t have breakfast, I have coffee. And then I go to the gym at ten or ten thirty, and I do a hard workout, or I go for a bike ride on, on the sand, or I go for a hard paddle. Fasted, I don’t eat anything. I don’t eat anything. I don’t eat anything when I get back. And for me, because I know I’m burning [00:44:00] mostly fat when I’m doing that, um, and I have enough carbohydrate in my– in the glycogen in my muscles because I don’t train every day, Jacqueline, I don’t…

I– So every, every day that I don’t train hard, my body continues to, to, to re-refill the glycogen stores even though I’m not carbohydrate loaded. So I have a relatively low carbohydrate diet. I eat two meals a day, protein-centric, so I get maybe a hundred and twenty grams of protein a day total. I have some vegetables.

Do not carb. I get, uh, uh, I get some, um, vegetables in there. I get some fruit in there. Um, and I have some carbs. I have, uh, you know, some great seed crackers that I have at night with cheese. For instance, I have a little wine and cheese when I get back from my walk, my hour-long walk. I have a little wine and cheese before dinner.

Um, but that’s my… So that’s sort of my day. Now, what it means is from the time I finish my dinner at seven thirty or eight o’clock at night until, until one o’clock the next day, [00:45:00] I don’t eat anything. I have coffee. fasting, but I’m fasting, I’m burning fat the whole time. My… And, and because my brain knows how to use ketones, I’m not…

And I’m not overproducing ketones. This is a big thing where people like ten years ago, they were buying all these ketone meters and be like, “Oh my God, I– like I’m, I’m, I’m… Look at all these ketones my body is putting out because I’m not eating any carbs at all and having a high-fat diet.” Once you become metabolically flexible and fat adapted, which is easy to do, I’ve written several books about it, um, the body doesn’t have to make that many ketones in, in order to fuel the brain, and the brain is really the only organ that needs the ketones.

The muscles don’t really need ketones if you become good at burning fat. So this metabolic flexibility, the muscles are burning fat. If you’re doing high, heavy, high-intensity glycolytic work, they burn glycogen, but it’s already there. Um, the brain is burning ketones. Um, and if it’s not burning ketones, it’s got plenty of glucose for gluconeogenesis because your liver is

Jac: Yep. Yep.

Mark: fashion.

The brain does not have this wild swings in energy [00:46:00] demi– demands throughout the day, so it’s not like, you know, if you go to the gym and you do heavy leg day, th-there might be a time when your, when your, uh, energy demands are like fifty times what they normally would be when you’re on the leg press machine.

Not so with the brain. While you’re doing that, the brain’s just co-cruising along at the same level of output, about five hundred calories a day. You know, which is about twenty-two calories an hour, which is very easy since the liver can produce seven hundred and fifty, um, uh, calories worth of ketones in a day.

Plenty of opportunity there to f- to feed Ste- a steady supply of ketones and not raise ketones so high that you pee them out or you breathe them out of your bad breath. All the things that people talk about, you know, keto breath. So again, my whole thing has gone from like paleo diet to primal blueprint, to ketogenic, using ketogenic for reset, to now however you achieve metabolic flexibility.

Combination of restricting carbs, combination of, [00:47:00] um, time eating, like again, restrictive eating windows, um, or the when you work out and how you work out, um, encouraging fat burning versus blowing through all your glucose and doing it every– glycogen and doing it every single day like runners do. There’s a beautiful window you get here where you’re metabolically flexible, you’re fit, you don’t get sick, you have all the energy you need, you can put on muscle when you want to, and most importantly, you’re never hungry.

That’s the biggest part of this. That’s the biggest part of metabolic flexibility. I don’t want anybody to ever be hungry, right? But hunger dissipates when your body knows exactly how to extract energy from your own stored body fat. I’m, you know, again, at a hundred and seventy pounds, you know, I probably have ten percent body fat, seventeen pounds of fat on me.

You know, that’s, that’s, uh, fifty thousand calories of fat on me, um, which you wouldn’t know by looking at me, but that’s, that’s what it is. So I’m never gonna run out, run out of energy because, you know, I’m not gonna go… [00:48:00] I’m not gonna go on a twenty-day fast

Jac: That’s so interesting. So, so here’s a question for you then, Mark. So for a woman who, let’s say me, right? Who’s metabolically flexible, right? You don’t necessarily s- like, see an issue with her doing a fasted workout because I feel like it’s such a nuanced area where a lot of people are like, “Women should never work out in a fasted state because it’ll affect their hormones and whatnot.”

But you’re saying if they’re metabolically flexible, like it’s fine.

Mark: point. That’s a great point, and I’m not gonna say, and for– and I would say for every guy, that’s true. For a lot of women, what I just talked about is not true because of the, because of the hormonal issues, and it depends on where you are in your cycle. It depends on where, where you are in your life.

But a lot of women do very well doing exactly what I just described. And if you try that and it doesn’t work for you, then, then I say throw in, you know, uh, seventy grams of carbs in the morning, whether it’s a, you know, sweet potato, a banana, um, even oatmeal or something like that. You know, figure out…

Look, from day one, [00:49:00] I always talked about the experiment of one. We are all an experiment of one. I can give you templates and guidelines to work through, but you have to do the work for yourself and figure out what it is about you that, um, you know, that, that’s unique to your personal genetics, uh, to your life, your lifestyle that took you up, you know, from this point on.

Um, and, uh, you know, it’s– but it’s, it’s– the information’s there. You just kind of have to experiment with different strategies. And, and I think if you can work out fasted and not have it Negatively impact you. Great. This is all, this is all about feeling good. This is all about… Now, I want people to feel uncomfortable, right?

And doing hard things is different from feeling uncomfortable. Like, I want you to do hard things, you know? But I don’t want you to be uncomfortable for the rest of the day because you did a hard thing.

Jac: Yeah, so true. I’m gonna try that. Well, again, that’s the thing. I feel like in the wellness space, right, like you might be feeling otherwise fine and then hop on social media and see some influencer say, “Never work [00:50:00] out fasted.” And then you’re like, “Oh, no, gotta have my banana and almond butter before my run,” even though you like, you don’t necessarily need it.

So,

Mark: You don’t- In fact, the last thing, you know, it’s gonna be in your stomach. Like, if you, you… That’s, that’s such a mental thing to have anything in your stomach before you run. And when you run, you’re, you’re, you’re gonna be using the glycogen in your muscles, and that’s it. Nothing… You know, at any one point in time, there’s only five grams of glucose in your entire bloodstream.

So, and then when we- you f- put anything in your stomach, it’s gonna divert blood away from your legs into your stomach to try and digest that. It’s like a big mistake for most people to try to eat something before they run, for sure.

Jac: Yeah. So true. Mark, this is so fun. So I know your workout routine. I know what you eat every day. What about supplements? What’s your supplement stack? Do you take creatine?

Mark: minimum effective dose again. So I was in the supplement business for a long time, and then I just, I just realized, you know, it’s just too much work to try and balance everything. At one point, a friend of mine takes 50 different [00:51:00] bottles of stuff every day, and

Jac: Right.

Mark: not, I’m not seeing the results.

Uh,

Jac: Yeah.

Mark: so right now, I, I really don’t take pr- much of anything. I take, uh, collagen as a supplement. Um, I believe in collagen as a supplement, but it’s really a food group. It’s, it’s more a food group than it is a… It should be the

Jac: Like magnesium,

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, I take vitamin D sporadically because I, I’m out in the sun a lot, but I don’t convert it well.

That’s part of my, my heritage, uh, like my DNA a- analysis. Uh, I do creatine once in a while, but I don’t, um, you know, I, I, I go off it more than I’m on it because I have… It’s really interesting. I have, uh, my blood work shows that I, that I’ve got, like, uh, high creatinine and, and high levels of different things.

It would look like I have kidney disease, except if you know enough about, about that blood work, you go, “Wait a minute. I, I take in a lot of protein. I have a lot of muscle mass from my age,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you go down the list. And then [00:52:00] because creatine is one of those factors, ’cause it’s what they call estimated eGFR, estimated glomer- glomerular filtration rate.

So I go off creatine every once in a while before I get a blood test just to, just to be sure. Yeah.

Jac: a good plan.

Mark: but again, I think it’s good, but I don’t think… I think any more than five or 10 grams is, is, is now it’s not good anymore We’re

Jac: ago, and he was talking about all the studies they’re doing now in terms of the benefits for cognitive health, that people are supplementing like 10, 10 grams a day.

Mark: sometimes. Yeah.

Jac: yeah, upwards of that too even. So it’s interesting. But again, my question to him was like, if you supplement indefinitely, right, like, will that affect your own body’s ability to produce it, right?

Like, I’m always wondering that within– with any supplement you take,

Mark: No, and that’s what happened with creatine was always as a bodybuilding supplement. They always said, you know, it’ll give you the benefits in the gym that you want for a couple of weeks, which is the ability to do one or two more reps of whatever weight you could normally… Like, whatever you could [00:53:00] normally do 10 of, now you can do 11 or 12 of, which will help build muscle.

But then after about six weeks, that effect drops off. It’s not gonna be linear forever. So then you, you, you know, you, you, um, you clean– you do a clean out phase of two months or whatever, then start stack it up again, and hopefully you start from a higher level than you started

Jac: Yeah. And that’s why I’m a fan of pulsing therapies, right? Whatever therapy it is, because you don’t wanna give your body a chance to adapt to it and then it, like, loses its benefit, you know?

Mark: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Jac: Yeah. Well, Mark, I know it’s almost 4:30. Again, I could talk to you for a couple hours, but this has been so fun.

I hope to have you on again at some point soon. But for my own, uh, my own personal business, uh, journey here, I told you I left my full-time job about a year and a half ago to do Well and Strong full-time. As a fellow wellness entrepreneur, what would you tell yourself in the early days, uh, when you, you know, embarked on even starting, like, Primal Kitchen and some of your first companies?

What advice would you give yourself?

Mark: No, I mean, it’s all about persistence and perseverance. Uh, you know you’re in the right field. So, so that’s [00:54:00] not an issue. You didn’t pick a business that was, uh, y- you know, in a failing industry. You picked a business that’s in a growing industry. Now it’s really about you just hanging in there through the hard times, ’cause there’s gonna be hard times, right?

And, and, and then it’s being open to new possibility. Being able to pivot a little bit and go, “Okay, maybe I should specialize in this area of women’s health,” or, “Maybe I should, you know, uh, put together a, you know, this ty- type of program.” Or, “Maybe I sh- it’s time to do… I’ve got a big enough audience, maybe I should do, um, you know, a, a supplement stack,” or whatever it is.

You know, be open to the possibilities there. But, but, but be, you know, be pers- persevere, be persistent. Um, s- you know, stay committed to this course ’cause you’re only helping people.

Jac: Yeah, so true. And that’s something I admire about you, Mark, is that you, you know, you s- said the word before, like, you never regret what you did, you know? And I love that you use every bit of experience you had, whether it was good or bad in running or whatnot, because that has essentially led to, like, where you are now, right?

And it’s changed your views on certain [00:55:00] things, and you’ve helped other people. So, you know, nothing is ever wasted. Um, so for anyone listening who’s like, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that,” I, I disagree. I think you make the decision that you can in the moment with the information that you have, you learn from it, and then you move forward.

Mark: I mean, my, my mentor, Art Devaney, who died about two months ago, said, um, uh, you know, “No mis- uh, no mistakes, just feedback.”

Jac: I love that. Yeah. So true. Well, Mark, where can listeners find you?

Mark: Uh, so on, um, on the Gram, I’m Mark Sisson Gram. And, um, and then, uh, the shoe company is, is Peluva, P-E-L-U-V-A.com. And then our Instagram handle on, uh, it for that is Wear Peluva, W-E-A-R Peluva.

Jac: Awesome. Well, I’ll be linking all of those in the show notes. My last question for you, Mark, and this is always my favorite one to ask, and that is, what does being well and strong mean to you?

Mark: I just need to get the most out of every moment possible. Most enjoyment, um, [00:56:00] satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment out of every possible moment that I can.

Jac: Amen. I love that. Well, you let me know the next time you’re in Greenville so we can walk the Swamp Rabbit Trail together.

Mark: would love to read that. Sounds great. Sounds like it’s

Jac: you would love it. It, it is. I’m gonna send you some pictures. Well, awesome, Mark. Until next time.

Mark: right. Thanks, Jeff.

Jac: Awesome