You need to be pooping more.

Everybody talks about HRV, sleep scores, and recovery indicators, but who’s out here checking in on their poops?

Pooping is important. Like mission critical important. If you’re not pooping effectively you’re literally full of shit.

Defecation is your body’s main exit ramp. Bile is how the liver dumps metabolized hormones, cholesterol, heavy metals and toxins into the gut for disposal. If transit’s slow, that stuff doesn’t leave. Instead it gets reabsorbed via enterohepatic recirculation (those that have been following my detox protocols know).

Constipation is literally you recycling your own waste. It is heavily correlated with autism, depression and hypothyroidism. Binders, saunas, liver support, all of it is pointless if you’re not excreting.

I felt it my moral duty to teach you how to excrete before I drop the binder protocol 2.0 next week for paid subs (read part 1 here).

This will be a PhD in Poopology. I’m going to keep it short and sweet. Take notes and apply expeditiously.

How to know your poops are good

The Bristol chart will tell you everything you need to know about poops.

Form. Bristol type 4 is the gold standard. Smooth, sausage shaped, holds together. (If you dont know the Bristol Stool Chart, look it up. 10 seconds. Its the shared language for everything below.)

Type 1 & 2 indicate constipation, slow transit, dehydration, or fiber deficiency.

Type 5-7 indicate fast transit, malabsorption, irritation, or infection.

Frequency. 2-3 well formed movements per day is the functional ideal. Consistency matters more than frequency. Same time daily, especially after waking or breakfast, means your gut is running on schedule.

If you want to know your actual transit time, eat a spoonful of sesame seeds or some corn and note when it reappears. 12-24 hours is the sweet spot. Under 10 is too fast. Over 48 and youre backed up.

Ease. Should pass within 1-2 minutes without straining, pushing, or doomscrolling. Should be noticeably “emptied” after. Lingering “still something there” feeling suggests incomplete emptying (or pelvic floor dysfunction).

Minimal wiping required (ghost wipe is the meta).

Color. Should be medium to dark brown. Indicates healthy bile metabolism.

• Pale indicates bile flow issue (check gallbladder & liver)

• Yellow/greasy indicates fat malabsorption

• Green indicates fast transit, plant pigmentation, or potentially a bile dump

• Black or red is possible GI bleeding and you should probably get checked

  

Buoyancy. Stool should sink or sit low in the water. Consistently floating, greasy, hard to flush stools suggest fat malabsorption or excessive gas production. Should not leave heavy skid marks or oily residue.

Smell. All stool smells, but it shouldn’t be noxious. Foul, sulfurous odor can indicate protein putrefaction, dysbiosis, or malabsorption.

Red flags. Persistent undigested food, mucus, or blood are cause for concern. Same with pencil thin stools that stick around. Any drastic unexplained change lasting 2+ weeks, go see someone.

How to Improve Stool Quality

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The gap between what people think is going on inside them and what’s actually going on is wild. I used to think I could trust my intuition. Felt great, looked decent, training was solid. Why bother with bloods?

Biohacking without labs works until it doesn’t. The more you experiment, the more you must test.

I run labs every quarter. Specialty panels once a year. In this article I’ll go over:

• Why you need labs in the first place

• What labs to get (and what they show you)

• My personal lab results (very average but at least will prove I’m not on steroids)

Shoutout to Superpower for sponsoring this post. I’ve been getting panels from them since 2024. Code SUPERNOAH at checkout gets you free at-home blood draws with your membership. (Sign up here)

Get Labs Here

Lets commence.

The Subjective Feeling Trap

Your body is incredibly good at feeling “good enough.”

You hear it every year. Some celebrity announces stage 4 cancer out of nowhere. Alzheimer’s symptoms typically don’t show up until significant brain atrophy has already happened. Heart attacks in guys who looked fit a week earlier.

There’s too much latency between how you feel and what is actually happening at the cellular level. Symptoms are the body’s last resort. The effects you get from interventions, whether good or bad, show up on labs before they show up on your body .

Once you start running labs you never go back. There’s no better feeling than seeing a protocol reflect itself on your labs. It gives you a sense of agency spamming powders never will.

You Cant Fix What You Can’t See

Every protocol you run should leave a fingerprint on your blood. If you don’t have a baseline and a follow-up, you have no control group. You’re guessing whether the stuff you’re injecting worked, whether the supplement you saw on Twitter is doing anything, whether your giga-chad training actually moved the needle. Its the same reason concussion testing works the way it does. You need a baseline reading from when things were normal, otherwise you have no idea what “normal” even is for you.

Keyword is normal for you. Genetic variability is real. Some guys simply need less testosterone. Others run at perma-high cholesterol. How do you know if your labs are a result of your protocols or just the way you are? This is why we baseline test

Most Disease Starts In Your 20s And 30s

Most of what kills people in their 50s and 60s shows up in bloodwork decades earlier.

Insulin resistance, fatty liver, and artherosclerosis slowly creeps up. These are 10+ trajectories. You catch them by tracking, not by getting a colonoscopy after pooping blood.

Easier to stay lean than to un-fat yourself. Same principle applies to every chronic condition. Course correcting before an incident is 100x cheaper, easier, and less painful than recovering after one. Most people lack this forward thinking (don’t be most people).

Labs Are Cheap Now. Like Really Cheap

I used to not test simply because it was too expensive. Panels used to require a referral, doctor visit, and a 3 week wait. Even if you got approved for them, you got maybe 12 biomarkers. Now you can order hundreds of biomarkers from your couch for less than what most guys spend on Doordash.

What To Test

On average, I’m testing 8 categories

1. Metabolic markers

Fasting glucose, fasting insulin, HbA1c, uric acid.

Metabolic markers are a window into how efficiently your body handles energy. This is always my first priority considering my metabolic protocol focus. These tell you how metabolically flexible and insulin sensitive you are.

A lot of people only look at glucose when its often the last thing to become abnormal. Fasting insulin and HbA1c are more important in my opinion.

2. Lipids & Cardiovascular Health

ApoB, Lp(a), full lipid panel (HDL, LDL, triglycerides), hs-CRP, homocysteine.

Lipids look at how much fat is moving through the bloodstream, how its being handled, and blood vessel health. They also provide insight into metabolic health (cardiovascular health is closely tied with metabolic health)

ApoB is more predictive than LDL because it counts the actual atherogenic (clot-forming) particles in your blood, not just the cholesterol they carry. Lp(a) is genetic, mostly fixed, and you only need to test it once. If its high, you need to be lasered in on CV health. Hs-CRP catches inflammation. Homocysteine catches B vitamin status and methylation issues. Boring markers, but super important.

3. Hormones

Total testosterone, free testosterone, SHBG, estradiol, LH, FSH, DHEA-S, prolactin, progesterone.

Hormones are so much more than Testosterone. All of these have crucial functions and show how well your body is signaling as a whole.

Total testosterone means nothing if your E2 (estrogen) is crashed, prolactin is spiked, or sex hormone binding globulin is through the roof. After a few labs, you’ll find your “culprit”. For me its actually LOW estrogen (which is probably why I like beer) and high SHBG (which is why I like boron).

4. Thyroid

TSH, free T3, free T4, T3 uptake, TPO antibodies, thyroglobulin antibodies.

TSH alone is not enough. Plenty of guys with normal TSH have terrible free T3 (the active, needle-moving thyroid hormone. You can try and boost thyroid hormone all you want but if your body’s attacking your thyroid (shown by antibodies), nothing will move the needle.

Tired, cold, unexplained weight gain. All linked to thyroid. Thyroid is a delicate organ. It takes the brunt of damage from a toxic lifestyle. There’s a reason health Twitter is so obsessed with this organ. Every subjective complaint usually has thyroid as an up or downstream issue.

5. Liver

AST, ALT, GGT, alkaline phosphatase, bilirubin (total, direct, indirect), albumin.

My personal favorite. Your liver is your detox hub, hormone-processing organ, metabolic processing plant, and nutrient conversion center. Hardest working organ in your body and it deserves its flowers

Liver enzymes catch fatty liver, alcohol damage, supplement-induced hepatotoxicity, and a dozen other issues. GGT specifically is one of the best early warning markers for oxidative stress and toxin burden. If you’re biohacking, boozing, or taking pharmaceuticals, test your liver thoroughly and often.

6. Kidneys

Creatinine, eGFR, BUN, BUN/creatinine ratio. Urinalysis easy bonus for infections, dehydration, protein leakage, and stuff that points to bigger problems upstream.

Kidneys get nuked by chronic hyperglycemia, processed food, sleep deprivation, and sedentary lifestyle. Everybody knows an old person that died from kidney failure. If you don’t care about dying just know that bad kidneys also make you ugly and give you brain fog.

7. Inflammation & Immune

hs-CRP, ESR, full CBC with differential, ferritin.

Chronic low-grade inflammation is a pro-disease state. CBC tells you about red cells, white cells, platelets. Differential breaks down the immune cells. Ferritin is typically considered an iron storage marker but also indicates inflammation.

Inflammation is not bad, inappropriate inflammation is bad. Being inflammed is an energetically demanding state. It interferes with healthy signaling. It is the substrate for a whole can of other things to go bad. Lowering inflammation may not solve all your problems, but good luck solving your problems while inflammed.

8. Nutrient Status

Vitamin D, B12, folate, ferritin, magnesium (RBC, not serum), zinc.

You cant out-supplement a deficiency you haven’t measured. And you cant out-supplement an excess either, which is more common than people realize. Overnutrition is just as problematic as undernutrition.

Reading my Labs: The Most Underrated Biomarkers

Now I’ll go through my most recent labs (which I passed in flying colors btw). Here are the first markers I gravitate toward:

Fasting Insulin

The single best marker for metabolic health. My current reading is 3.0 uIU/mL. Optimal is under 5. Glucose can stay normal for years while insulin gets out of hand. By the time glucose starts drifting, you’re already pre-diabetic (and have been for a while). This is my northstar for shredmaxxing.

ApoB

Mine is 79 mg/dL. Optimal is under 90, with under 80 being the target for anyone serious about long-term cardiovascular risk.

ApoB counts the actual particles that drive plaque formation. LDL is a rough estimate of the cholesterol inside those particles. Two people can have identical LDL and wildly different ApoB.

Hs-CRP

Mine is <0.2 mg/L. Under 1.0 is optimal, under 0.5 is excellent.

This marker shifts fast in response to lifestyle. Bad sleep, bad food, bad relationships, chronic stress, all of it shows up here. Its a near-real-time read on whether your body is struggling. I’ve been aggressively combating systemic inflammation after CIRS and seeing it reflect in my hs-CRP is vindicating.

Lp(a)

Mine is 36 nmol/L. Under 75 is optimal.

This one is mostly genetic. You test it once in your life. If its elevated, you treat your cardiovascular health more aggressively from that day forward. If its low, you have one less thing to worry about.

Free Testosterone + SHBG

Total T is great, but Free Testosterone and SHBG show you what you can actually use

Mine: total T 807 ng/dL, free T 100.7 pg/mL, SHBG 39 nmol/L. The SHBG is on the higher end of normal, which means a chunk of my total T is bound and not bioavailable, hence I’m increasing my boron, carbs

Homocysteine

Mine is 7.5 umol/L. Under 8 is the functional target. Reference ranges go up to 12.9, which is too lenient.

High homocysteine is one of the strongest independent predictors of cardiovascular events and cognitive decline. Its also one of the easiest things to fix with B vitamins, methylation support, and lowering inflammation.

Vitamin D

Mine is 58 ng/mL. Optimal is 50-80. Anything under 30 is a deficiency.

Most people who dont supplement and dont live in the sun are sitting in the 15-25 range. Massive immune, hormonal, and mood implications. Do not fade Vitamin D.

Free T3 (+ TPO & thyroglobulin antibodies)

Mine is 3.7 pg/mL. Optimal is 3.1-4.2.

Free T3 is what you can actually use. Not T4, not Total T3. Free T3. If you want to FEEL your metabolism churning, make sure free T3 is optimized. This is the real unlimited energy hormone.

No amount of thyroid optimization matters if your body is attacking itself. TPO & thyroglobulin antibodies catch autoimmune thyroid disease years before TSH starts shifting.

What My Labs Are Saying

Wins:

• Fasting insulin at 3.0. Metabolic health is locked in.

• hs-CRP under 0.2. Inflammation is basically undetectable.

• Total T at 807 with free T at 100.7. Total is decent, free is a little low.

• ApoB at 79, HDL at 74, triglycerides at 69. Lipids are clean across the board.

• Lp(a) at 36. Genetic CV risk is low.

• HbA1c at 4.9. Blood sugar control is dialed.

• Vitamin D at 58. Solid without being excessive.

• Homocysteine at 7.5. Methylation is working.

What I’m doing differently next quarter:

• Working on lowering SHBG. Boron, more carbs, lower stress

• Adding an advanced toxin panel since I just moved out of a mold situation and like to reassess

• Getting a full-body scan because why not.

This is the whole point of running blood panels frequently. You see what works and what doesn’t on a consistent cadence. You don’t have to get everything tested all the time, but get the big guys tested and, if needed, they can point you toward deeper testing needs.

General Lab Protocol Etiquette

Frequency:

• Quarterly if you’re actively experimenting with protocols, peptides, or aggressive supplementation.

• Twice a year if you’re running a stable stack and want trend data.

• Annually as the absolute minimum for anyone over 25.

Conditions:

• Fasted 12 hours minimum.

• Morning. Cortisol and testosterone peak early & consistent timing is important

• Before training. Even moderate exercise shifts markers.

• Before supplements. I recommend not taking anything a day before as well.

Consistency:

• Same lab when possible. Reference ranges and assay methods vary, which can make tracking trends harder than it needs to be.

• Same conditions every time. Same time of day, same fasted state, same activity level the day before.

I personally avoid lab clinics at all costs. Feel like I’m doing court mandated drug testing. I get a phlebotomist to come to my house. Absolutely worth it.

Free At-Home Labs With Superpower (Code SUPERNOAH)

I’ve been using Superpower for labs since moving back to the US in 2024. They test 100+ biomarkers from a single draw. A standard physical covers about 15 to 20.

You get:

• 100+ biomarkers in one panel.

• At-home phlebotomy. Schedule it, they come to you, 10 minutes.

• A dashboard that translates raw numbers into a plan, in plain language.

• Concierge medical team available through the year for questions.

• Biological age vs calendar age comparison (genuinely fun to see).

• Personalized recommendations for sleep, energy, longevity, recovery, and prevention (super important)

Superpower runs labs effectively at cost AND is giving Health HQ members free at-home lab testing with their membership. Normally a $120 add-on. Use code SUPERNOAH here

Get Labs Here

p.s. If you want me to run through your labs with you and set up a custom protocol, you can book a time here

GM everybody. Times are hard. Feds keep printing money, people are getting laid off, a couple gay dudes in San Francisco are actively summoning the antichrist. We’re at that stage in societal collapse where everybody turns to degeneracy. Gambling, OnlyFans, doomspending. It’s feeling like the end times are near.

Unfortunately instead of some mass revolution fought Terminator style it’ll likely be something more like AI forcing mass layoffs which prompts universal basic income but only if you sign up for Digital ID and effectively give over your rights to privacy and sovereignty so now all of your actions thoughts and behaviors are closely monitored in your surveillance dossier and any level of subordination is met with algorithmic social and fiscal punishments.

All that to say, food’s getting more expensive.

There are two types of people in this world: Those that spend a lot on food and those that spend as little as possible. You’ve probably seen Blobfish O’Leary chastising Gen Z for spending $28 on lunch, and although totally tone deaf, he’s not wrong.

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Boomers flex eating spam and wonderbread for two decades while we are the ones out here subsidizing their dialysis and insulin shots. You can no longer AFFORD to eat like a boomer (read my detox series to understand why). Nor can you afford to be DoorDashing a $30 burrito.

The average person is financially illiterate. They are incapable of making price-to-value comparisons, the per-quota test of nutrition. They either:

a) Spend way too much money on flashy health food
b) Spend way too much money on Doordash/restaurant food
c) Do both

This is foolish. First of all you must understand the restaurant dynamic:

Restaurants Don’t Care About Your Nutrition

Restauranteurs have two priorities and two priorities only:

1. Make the food cheap enough to spin a profit
2. Make the food tasty enough to keep you coming back.

They do not want you nourished, for a nourished person might snap out of their leptin-induced feeding frenzy. They might stop becoming a slave to their impulses. Bad for bizness.

Instead what they do is lean on food sciences: How can I make this taste as good as possible for as cheap as possible? How can I mimic the real thing (nourishing, healthy, quality food) at a fraction of the cost? The outcome is usually a food science abomination that would give a Victorian era child rickets.

This is just the restaurant game. Our government hates small business and independent food supply and act accordingly. Most locally owned restaurants went out of business during COVID. What remains are goyslop conglomerate chains you see on every street.

It’s almost impossible to flip a profit without a catch. You are incentivized to use small portions of the good stuff (particularly protein and healthy fats) and leverage filler (wheat, starches, etc).

Use restaurants for what they are: an opportune gathering point outside of home. If you’re eating out for sustenance you might as well tattoo “#1 GOYSLOP ENJOYER” on your forehead.

Farmers Markets are Fraudulent

Do you really think local farmers are having a market in downtown Tampa? Of course not. 90% of farmers markets are craft markets. And 90% of those “crafts” are overpriced gimmicks. Farmers markets are theme parks. Places where suburbanites can larp about the communities that boomers burned away under the guise of individualism.

It’s no different than those Moroccan dudes that sell bracelets in every European city center (except nobody at the farmers market has threatened to harvest my kidneys... Yet.)

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The Patrician’s Guide to Pinching Pennies

Between boomer-maxxing saltines with spam, Gen Z goonermaxxing Doordash, and Middle-of-bell-curve natural-pilled unemployed aspiring health influencer ribeye on wooden cutting board, there is a secret fourth option: Using discernment.

I used to be very broke. Like living on $1 tacos in Mexico broke. Even with those financial constraints, I was able to live a better and healthier life than people making literally 20x.

To this day I am still intentionally frugal. I have no problem spending money on things that matter but nothing grinds my gears more than paying more just because. Lifestyle creep is a hell of a drug and one I’d prefer abstaining from.

This is why I built my recession-proof meal plan. An S-Tier nutrition protocol that will give you better nutrition than 99% of the population for a fraction of the cost.

The Recession Proof Meal Plan

The recession proof meal plan is based off of principles. Immutable frameworks that can be sliced and diced to meet your unique proclivities. Rich or poor. Fat or skinny. Vegan or carnivore.

Understand that implementing the RPMP doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the finer things. Quite the contrary. Having an economically feasible meal foundation allows you to splurge financially when appropriate just like how having a dialed diet allows you to splurge calorically when appropriate.

This is what “those who wouldn’t know how they’d feel if they didn’t eat breakfast yesterday” can’t comprehend: Discipline breeds freedom. I can drink alcohol and go out to eat because I can afford it. Not fiscally, but metabolically. I have dialed my baseline to the point that I don’t need to count calories. Coronas and tacos get steamrolled by my blast furnace metabolism.

If you know that at the end of the day, you can have S-tier nutrition on less than most people spend on Fortnite skins, you can order whatever you want at that special occasion.

I’m going to break this guide down into two parts: Principles and Applications.

Principles: Fundamental frameworks you can apply to your own dietary preferences
Applications: An actual Recession proof meal plan you can plug and play today (For paid subs)

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The Art of the Deal

RPMP is all about shopping smart. Being savvy. Embracing arbitrage. Grocery stores are casinos and you’re George Clooney in Oceans 11. Every store has its “one thing” it’s good for. Publix for BOGO on meats. Aldi for fresh and cheap produce. Trader Joe’s for fringe snacks. It’s up to you to map out which has what. Gerolsteiner costs $4 at my local health store. It costs $2.46 at Publix. Same bottle, different supply chains.

Build your heist plan. Swing by your three stores in one swoop. Get your loot and get out.

Never Pay for Niceties

Want to know why Aldi, Lidl, Trader Joes and Wild Fork are so cheap? It’s because they are masters of supply chain optimization. Not because their products are worse than Publix or Whole Foods (often the opposite). Never underestimate the utilitarian, borderline autistic efficiency of a German supply chain.

Aldi is cheap because they’ve stripped every unnecessary cost. One cashier. Vertically integrated supply chain. No middlemen ramping up prices, which means fresher, faster produce. The savings get passed straight to you.

Wild Fork applies the same principle on steroids: 2 employees, small stores, zero inventory turnover because everything is frozen. The Erewhon enjoyers will be the first to go when times get tough. Why are you, as a man, paying $21 for a smoothie? “But Noah it’s made with cruelty free camel milk!” Shut up. Don’t be so impressionable. You must become immune to marketing. Focus on ingredient lists.

Embrace Economies of Scale

The expense of something is often less the thing and more all of the things around the thing. It costs more to box, wrap, ship, and package cereal than the actual cereal. So buy in bulk.

50lb bags of rice. Duffel bags of potatoes. Do not look at price per package, look at price per ounce.

Understand Turnover Offset

The reason delicate foods like berries are so expensive is because their price factors in turnover. You aren’t paying for that single bushel, you’re paying for the 6 packages that spoiled for every one package sold. This is why frozen is king. Frozen food offsets the turnover tax. Frozen food is often fresher than non-frozen.

Find Local Markdown Cycles

Food goes on clearance because every grocery store has their local food inspector breathing down their back. Not because the food is bad. Grocery stores with in-house butcheries end up with a lot of meat that they have to sell. Find out when they get new shipments and when they start markdowns. You can easily become acquainted with store staff and they’ll be happy to tell you when and where the best deals are (as long as you’ve been charisma-maxxing).

Once you start getting Sirloin for $7 a pound it’s hard to go back to paying full price.

Asymmetric Foods List

Save money on the simple things so you can pay up for the important ones. Generally speaking, fats require higher quality. Toxins are fat soluble, fats oxidize, and fat-soluble vitamin content varies significantly.

Pay up for specialty oils, organ meats, eggs (pasture raised), dairy (at least organic), and organic-dependent produce (some produce is more important than others, which I’ll explain later). When it comes to fats, quality beats quantity. Eat less, just better. Lean proteins and carbs have a lot more leeway.

Voting with Your Dollars

My rule of thumb is: Save as much money as you can at chain stores, spend as much money as you feel comfortable at local stores. There is a concerted effort to wipe out mom & pop shops and replace them with the Publixes of the world. Find a couple local stores, shop liberally even if it costs a little extra. Supporting local will feed your soul more than a supermarket ever will, and that’s worth a premium.

And besides, that’s the point of making money. To spend it on things that are important to you. So ask yourself, what’s really important? What makes you feel good? What makes you feel ripped off? I’ll gladly pay a premium to shop from somebody that knows my name. That takes pride in their business, and makes their products with love & care.

Remember that these are frameworks, not doctrine. No need to live like an ascetic. But no reason to give extra money to corporations that hate you. Maybe it’s my Midwestern roots or could be German genetics but I absolutely hate being ripped off and so should you.

What follows is my exact stack: Every store, every cut, every price point I aim for. The Nuclear Option for when you’re truly down bad, and the optimized version I run today.

Read below:

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I got nuked by black mold this year. My skin aged a decade, sleeping 12 hours a night, chronic brain fog. My whole system went haywire, leading to CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome). Throughout this process, I came to one bold conclusion:

Our detox capacity is fucked.

The modern toxic load is categorically different. Humans evolved with a baseline toxin exposure tolerance (smoke from fires, phytochemicals, microbial toxins), but we are triple digit multiples over our detox capacity.

Glyphosate, microplastics, PFAS, heavy metals, mycotoxins, phthalates, pharmaceutical residues, pesticides, industrial solvents. No prior generation of humans has faced this combination at this concentration with this level of bioaccumulation.

Your detox pathways are over capacity. Your glutathione is depleted and your liver is likely recirculating toxins as we speak.

Binders break this loop. They absorb toxins in the gastrointestinal tract (before they hit your liver) and carry them out through stool. Literally a cheat code for detox.

But it’s not just environmental pollutants we need to detox. Every day the bugs and cells inside of you are dumping millions of tiny particles that need to be excreted: Lipopolysaccharides (LPS), mycotoxins, SIBO metabolites, histamine, trimethylamine, ammonia. The list goes on.

This massive internal and external toxin load gets in the way of excreting natural metabolic and hormonal byproducts. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, but can be transformed from one form to another. ATP production produces byproduct just like combustion engines produce carbon emissions. Dead cells, hormone metabolites, metabolic acids. These all must be excreted.

If you’ve read my Detox Playbook (do so here if you haven’t already), you understand that detox is a complex and energetically demanding process. Multiple steps, major mineral and nutrient requirements, very stressful. Binders take a load off. They’re often the kickstart needed to get back to normal functioning, to stop the nasty cycle of toxin recirculation.

Binders have done more for me than any supplement I’ve ever taken. Anxiety. Histamine flares. Hangovers. Toxic mold poisoning. I’ve tried just about every one under the sun. In this post I’ll lay out why you must be bindermaxxing. Part 2 drops next week with the full protocol.

Lets dive in.

Your Body Wasn’t Built for This

Your toxin load is 1000x more than ever in human history and your body has less of every tool needed to handle it. There is no historical precedent for this sheer amount of load.

Air is Bad

Before it was just smoke and dust.

Now its car exhaust, factory smoke, plane fuel, Gavin Newsom-level wildfire smoke, road chemicals, brake dust, paint fumes, carpet fumes, furniture fumes, cleaning sprays, perfume in every room. Your lungs breathe poison all day.

Even mountain air now has plastic and aluminum in it. (What the actual SHIT.)

The dirtiest, unluckiest Victorian-era pauper never breathed what you breathe walking to your car.

Water is Worse

Before it was just an occasional bird poop in a stream. Easy work for our paleolithic immune system.

Now its chlorine, fluoride, lead from old pipes, copper from new pipes, PFAS, glyphosate, literal antidepressant and birth control residue from the blue-haired girl’s toilet down the street, microplastics, herbicide runoff, factory waste.

Even our rainwater now has PFAS in it. (Are you KIDDING ME.)

You literally could not muster up a concoction as noxious as the chemical soup coming out of your kitchen faucet.

Food is Inconceivably Atrocious

Before it was meat from animal, plant from dirt, fish from clean water. The same inputs your digestive system optimized for over the last 50,000 years.

Now its plants sprayed with glyphosate, atrazine turning the frogs gay, animals fed GMO-abominations and Snickers wrappers, pinned with more antibiotics and hormones than Caitlyn Jenner.

Fish from oceans full of mercury and plastic, wrapped conveniently in leaky BPA and phthalate paper, cooked in non-stick pans leaking teflon, stored in cans lined with BPA, pumped with preservatives, dyes, emulsifiers, and fake sweeteners just to make the goyslop palatable, processed at high heat to produce acrylamides and AGEs for no reason, void of all nutrients after sitting in a cargo container for 6 years.

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The Cumulative Effect

The problem is not any single toxin. It’s all of them at once.

You only have so many excretion pathways. Trying to detox heavy metals, mycotoxins, endotoxins, and plastic all at once is impossible. Your ancestral body was not designed for this.

Plastics. Microplastics, nanoplastics, BPA, BPS, phthalates. Your body does not know how to process petroleum-derived materials. They lodge in your tissues disrupting cellular function and hormones.

Heavy metals. Lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, aluminum, nickel. Accumulate for years and require specific binding or chelation protocols.

Mycotoxins (mold). Ochratoxin A, aflatoxins, gliotoxins. From water-damaged buildings or internal fungal colonization. Tend to recirculate so they need to be bound. Huge pain in the ass.

Endotoxins (LPS). Bacterial cell wall fragments from gut gram-negative bacteria. Drive systemic inflammation, depression, metabolic dysfunction.

Recirculated bile acids. Toxins the liver dumps into bile get reabsorbed without binders. Breaking enterohepatic recirculation is the alpha here.

Pesticides and herbicides. Glyphosate, atrazine, organochlorines, organophosphates. Store in your fat and recirculate as they get released (especially when shredmaxxing).

Histamine. From certain foods and gut bacteria. Causes headaches, irritability, MCAS symptoms. Needs clearance.

Hormone metabolites. Hormone production produces byproduct that must be cleared. Poor estrogen clearance drives estrogen dominance. Ray Peat’s carrot salad is primarily an estrogen clearance tool.

Ammonia. Subtle brain fog fuel. From poor protein metabolism and specific bacteria. Drives fatigue and “fuzziness.”

Acetaldehyde. The hangover compound. Also from candida fermentation and environmental exposure.

Parasite die-off toxins. When parasites die, they release major toxin loads often causing Herxheimer reactions.

Aflatoxins. Food-borne mycotoxins from contaminated peanuts, corn, grain, coffee.

Pretty much anything fat-soluble that recirculates through bile, anything produced by bacteria or fungi in your gut, anything mobilized during treatment protocols, and anything you’re acutely exposed to needs binding.

You’ve Been Detoxing Wrong

Binders are simple. You ingest them, they travel to your gut. Toxins stick to binder. Toxins leave in poop without causing a fit.

This makes them great for acute toxin exposure. But the reason I consider them essential is their ability to stop the toxin recirculation loop.

The Toxin Recirculation Loop (Detox Purgatory)

Your liver’s a workhorse. It pulls toxins from the blood and processes them in two phases. Phase 1 modifies toxins to make them excretable. Phase 2 attaches helper molecules (glutathione, sulfate, glucuronic acid) to neutralize and prepare them for exit.

The liver dumps processed toxins into bile, which flows from liver to gallbladder. The gallbladder excretes bile into your gut via the small intestine.

Bile is expensive to make, so your body likes to recycle it. 90%+ of bile gets reabsorbed and sent back to the liver. Sometimes that bile you’re recycling is full of TOXINS.

So toxins leave the liver, ride bile to the gut, get reabsorbed, go back to your liver where they get processed again, dumped again, ride to gut again, reabsorbed again. One permanent toxin loop.

This is called enterohepatic recirculation. The liver’s doing work, toxins going nowhere, you stay sick.

This is why people detox forever and never feel better. They’re processing the toxins but not excreting them.

Binders break this loop. They sit in the gut, grab toxins off bile before they reabsorb, and escort them out via poop. Toxins finally leave the body for real.

Binders Are Not a New Phenomenon

If you want to know something is legit, see how many cultures independently arrive at the same conclusion.

Pyramids, dragons, binders. Go back far enough and you’ll find these just about everywhere.

Hippocrates wrote about charcoal for medicinal use. Native Americans used charred wood for poisoning. Andeans dipped potatoes in clay to bind glycoalkaloids before eating. Aztecs harvested Spirulina from Lake Texcoco. One can argue the only reason we have any affinity for eating leaves is due to its fibrous binding properties.

100,000+ years of trial and error has led every surviving ancestral chain to understand that eating dirt stops a tummy ache. But like most traditional practices, modern people have lost the plot. They see it as pathological rather than the normal protective behavior it is.

We must retvrn to eating dirt.

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You Should Be Bindermaxxing If

I keep binders in my car. I keep them by my bed. When I find an opportunistic window of gastric emptiness, I pop a few.

Here’s when I up my consumption. If any of these are you regularly, you should be bindermaxxing too:

• Traveling

• Eating like a jackass

• Drinking alcohol

• Suspected mold exposure

• Recovering from a hangover

• Active gut issues (bloating, irregularity, food sensitivities)

• Brain fog or 3pm crashes that feel chemical

• Post-antibiotic course

• Anytime you’re killing off pathogens (die-off symptoms)

• Active detox protocol of any kind

• Histamine flares or random allergic reactions

• Eating restaurant food

• Living in a city

• Living in a building older than 1990

• Generally feeling cooked

If you hit four or more of these in a normal month, your toxin load is outrunning your excretion pathways. Binders are not optional. They’re maintenance.

Binder Maxxing Part 2:

Next week. The Bindermaxxing Playbook

• The binder tier list. Every binder I’ve tried, ranked. Charcoal, clay, zeolite, chlorella, MCP, cholestyramine, the works.

• Which binder for which toxin. Mercury vs lead vs aluminum vs mold vs LPS vs glyphosate.

• The daily baseline stack. What I take every day for maintenance.

• The acute exposure stacks. Hangover. Food poisoning. Suspected mold. Travel etc.

• The exact weekly rotation schedule. Why rotation matters and how to do it easily

• Brand recommendations. Personal favorites

• The timing rules. How to take binders without making things worse

• The three mistakes that wreck most people’s binder protocols.

• How long to bindermaxx. Signs it’s working. Signs you’re going too hard. When to back off. When to push.

See you soon

-Noah Ryan

What used to be an obscure earth metal is now everywhere. Deodorant, cookware, tap water, vaccines, food. They’re spraying it in our air and injecting it in our babies (I’m not even tin-foil hatting here). The average American takes in 7-9 mg of it daily through diet alone. If you eat processed food, your intake can exceed 20mg/day.

Whether or not this is intentional, its a problem. Your body has no dedicated system for getting rid of aluminum. Constant input with no active clearance means aluminum accumulates in your tissues over decades. Bone, brain, liver, lymph. The half-life in bone is measured in years. In neural tissue, it’s even longer. Every day that you’re not excreting, you’re accumulating.

Everybody’s worried about seed oils and microplastics, which is great. But what about the neurotoxic metals you’ve been accumulating since birth? This guide will go through my five step aluminum detox protocol. I’ve put together the TLDR one-pager at the bottom for those not interested in details. Godspeed.

Why Aluminum Toxicity is So Bad

Aluminum’s toxicity is no new news. Unlike other metals (iron, copper, etc), aluminum has no biological role. No tissue benefits from it. It is a foreign body disrupting your tissues.

Aluminum Targets the Brain First.

Your brain is incredibly selective about what it lets inside. The blood–brain barrier exists specifically to keep harmful substances out of neural tissue. But aluminum bypasses this defense by impersonating iron (a metal that you actually need). Because of their similar charge and ionic size, aluminum can attach to the same transport protein (transferring) that normally carries iron through the bloodstream. Your brain has receptors that pull transferrin across the BBB so neurons can access iron (very important for neuronal health), But those receptors can’t tell the difference between iron-transferrin and aluminum-transferrin.

So aluminum gets escorted directly into brain tissue through the same delivery system meant for iron. They call this the Trojan horse pathway.

Once inside, it activates your brain’s immune cells (microglia) and dumps loads of inflammatory cytokines, causing chronic low-level neuroinflammation. This is increasingly recognized as a primary driver of neurogeneration and brain fog.

As a matter of fact, aluminum triggers the same damage seen in Alzheimers. Aluminum flips the enzymatic switches that cause tau protein to malfunction, effectively crippling your brain’s neural network. These malfunctioning proteins clump together creating the classic tau tangles we see in Alzheimer pathology. Exley (the GOAT) found aluminum in the cores of amyloid plaques of post-mortem brain tissue.

It Wrecks Your Cholinergic System Too

Remember how I always talk about acetylcholine as the golden nugget of cognitive enhancement? Well aluminum inhibits the enzyme that synthesizes it (acetyltransferase). This is the neurotransmitter responsible for memory formation, attention, and cognitive processing. Literally the molecule that makes you smart and intellectual.

Aluminum Calcifies your Pineal Gland

Your pineal gland is the most esoteric organ in your entire body. It sits at the intersection of all your systems, converts light into hormones, and it quite literally your third eye. It also naturally calcifies with age and, for better or worse, sits outside the blood brain barrier. Aluminum has a strong affinity for phosphate and calcium-binding environments like the ones found on your pineal. Hence aluminum selectively accumulates there. If pineal output is supressed, intuition and internal clarity suffers.

A dysfunctional cascade is triggered that ruins your brain’s ability to rapidly synthesize patterns from past experience. You become a bot, an NPC, a concubine to brain fog, emotional volatility, reduced creativity, poor pattern recognition, and disconnect from your instincts. Sound familiar?

Aluminum is ESTROGENIC

For all my meatheads who care less about brain health and more about hormones (I’ve been there), Aluminum is a METALLOESTROGEN. A metal capable of activating estrogen signaling pathways.

It is not simply estrogen that causes estrogenic effects, but activation of estrogen receptors that turn on specific genes. Normally they respond to estradiol (your primary estrogen hormone), but certain chemicals aka xenoestrogens can activate the same receptors. Aluminum is one of them.

Aluminum salts like commonly used in antiperspirants have been demonstrated to activate estrogen receptors in human breast cancer cells. The binding effect is weaker than estradiol on a per-molecule basis, but the problem is aluminum exposure is chronic and cumulative. Estrogen gets cleared, aluminum does not.

Aluminum Nukes your Mitochondria

All of your cells run on energy produced by your mitochondria. Mitochondria produce said energy via a chain of enzyme complexes. Aluminum jams two of the most important enzymes in that chain. It inhibits Complex I and Complex IV. This damage is cumulative and quasi-permanent: your cells are starved of oxygen and turn into ROS-producing factories, causing major inflammatory cascades. Neurons are especially vulnerable because they can’t divide to replace damaged cells. Damage the mitochondria and you damage the cell. Damage the cell and you damage the organ. Damage the organ and function declines.

Aluminum Depletes Glutathione

If you haven’t noticed by now, aluminum (Al) wrecks your enzymes. And enzymes are really important. Without them, your none of your systems work. Its like missing a spark plug in a car. Aluminum inhibits your primary enzyme needed for glutathione synthesis (y-GCS). This creates a cascade of intracellular glutathione depletion. No glutathione means no detox and no protection against oxidative stress, which means toxins circulate throughout your body in a horribly inflammatory spiral. Your inability to detox aluminum is making you unable to detox other toxins as well.

How to Detox Aluminum in 5 Steps

All things considered, aluminum detox is simple. Not easy, but simple. I have put together a five step protocol that uses a blend of common sense, research backed excretion methods, and more novel, experimental approaches. Any good protocol should be an even blend of these three.

In short, the protocol looks something like:

1. Remove ongoing exposure (trickier than you think)

2. Silica maxxing

3. Glutathione repletion maxxing

4. Alternate excretion strategies

5. Mitochondria maxxing and mineral support

I have simplified it into maxxing terms as I find it helps our alumino-compromised brains encode it to memory. Also don’t worry I’ll tie it together nicely in a cheat sheet protocol you can save. Scroll to the bottom if you want to be spared details.

NOTE: Metal Mobilization is no Joke

Forcing metal excretion with chelators, binders, and other tools can be dangerous. Mobilizing stored aluminum can cause redistribution and potential lodging in more sensitive tissues (like your brain). Metal-chelator complexes can burden the kidneys, especially if already compromised or dehydrated. If gut function is poor (or you’re constipated), reabsorption is more likely.

Do NOT run this protocol if you have:

• Kidney disease

• Pregnancy

• Eating disorder history

• Severe constipation

• Medication interactions

• Active illness

• Electrolyte issues

Start slow, like ridiculously slow. Only taper up if tolerating. This is not medical advice, I am not a doctor. This is for research and educational purposes only. No chad ramming allowed when it comes to metal excretion.

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At a glance this sounds like a good thing. But think about what it means for a drug to suppress cocaine-seeking behavior in addicts. Do you think one-shotting one of the most dopaminergically hardwired addictions comes without cost?

This means the drug is doing something specific to the dopamine circuitry that drives reward-seeking (and gives you actual reward). That same circuit governs your motivation to train, your drive to build something, your ambition, your sex drive, your ability to feel reward from accomplishment. Its the same system.

I mentioned this on Twitter and was genuinely surprised by how many people took personal offense at it, which leads me to believe that GLPs are also atrophying key brain regions involved in emotional regulation.

In all seriousness, I push back on GLPs not because I think they’re inherently bad nor because I want to be a contrarian. I do so because we are seeing a perfect storm of mass-adoptive hysteria. You must understand that we live in a messianic vacuum. Everybody is struggling, sick, and grasping for something to praise as savior. More often than not that savior comes in the form of health. Diets become cults (think carnivore, peaters, vegans), drugs become religious artifacts, health influencers become priests. Technology, particularly biotech, is occupying the role once reserved for mysticism, theology, and shamanism. You used to be saved by the divine, now you’re saved by a few pills and an insulin syringe. This sets off generational hardwiring that makes you transcend reason (a prerequisite for religiosity).

And honestly I don’t blame them. GLPs are close to magic for the average American (average body fat percentage in the US is 32% btw). We’re hardwired to get what we want with the least amount of effort. Why exercise and eat clean when you can simply slip a tiny little needle into the subcutaneous layer of one of your many fat rolls?

GLP-1s are big-pharma’s wet dream:

• Massive TAM (everybody’s fat)

• Large rebate margins

• Regulatory greenlight

• Doesn’t effect root cause (wouldn’t want to cannibalize customer base)

• Requires perpetual treatment

Novo Nordisk (creator of Wegovy and Ozempic) became Europe’s largest COMPANY. Not pharmaceutical company. Company in general. The economic winner from the continent that invented modern civilization is a fat loss powder.

Obesity is multi-causal, but really comes down to:

1. A dysregulated metabolism

2. A dysregulated reward system

We live in a world that makes us fat and dysfunctional. And thats a huge part of the problem. But we also live in a world that enables unchecked reward seeking behavior. The constant desire for “more” is what drives our economy. This is just gluttony and lust. We want more and we want different. These used to be called sins now they’re sections in college consumer behavior class (not joking).

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The instatiable desire for more and better has lead to newer and newer drugs. More mechanisms, more receptor activity, more results. It started with Exenatide, then Liraglutide, then Semaglutide, then Tirzepatide, now Retatutride. Each of these exhibit stronger and stronger fatloss, energy expenditure, and appetite suppression effects.

One day they’ll invent a drug that removes all want entirely. Addictions? old news. Food? waste of time. Self-defined success? not really feeling it. Risk? I simply don’t want enough to go through the effort.

What I’m Actually Saying

Do I think GLP-1s are one-shotting your chance at success and meaning? No. Do I think we need to approach them with nuance? Yes, please. This isn’t some fun experimental research chemical anymore. GLP-1 are one of the fastest drug adoption curves in modern medicine.

If there’s one system you don’t want to mess with, its your dopaminergic system. This is your drive, your will to power, your thumos, your jing essence.

SSRIs one-shotted my dopaminergic system and I still struggle with anhedonia to this day. I’m not saying these drugs are intentionally peddled to make us subservient, docile, and borderline lobotomized, I’m saying those peddling them couldn’t care less if they do (unintended benefit for them).

The pushback I got for saying SSRIs were not worth their squeeze was similar to what I got for saying GLP-1s may have a negative impact on dopaminergic signaling. Same argument but first group had blue hair and pronouns in bio.

I just want to throw this stuff out there to let it marinate. I don’t think GLPs are on the same playing field as SSRIs, and if you have a crippling cocaine addiction or are morbidly obese, the juice is worth the squeeze here. But most people online are neither addicts nor comically fat. They are health-conscious high performers looking for an extra edge. We are blurring the lines between sick-care and performance enhancement. And thus must have different discussions.

People find this particularly hard to believe, so I will spend the rest of the article discussing mechanisms and studies I have built this belief off of.

What Dopamine Actually Does

Before getting into the mechanism, it’s worth being precise about what dopamine actually does. Most people have a vague understanding of it as a “feel good chemical” and that framing undersells the problem.

Dopamine doesn’t make you feel pleasure. What dopamine does is make you want things. It’s the anticipatory signal. It fires before the reward, not during it. It’s what makes you get up in the morning with somewhere to be. It’s what creates the drive to pursue a goal before you’ve achieved it. It’s what makes food look appetizing, sex compelling, money worth working for, and a difficult project feel worth starting.

When dopamine function is suppressed, you don’t necessarily feel bad. You feel flat. Indifferent. Things that used to matter stop mattering. The want goes quiet. You can still function, you just stop being driven by anything.

This is exactly what some GLP-1 users are reporting and exactly what the mechanism predicts.

The Actual Mechanism Behind All This

GLP-1 receptors are expressed throughout the brain’s reward system: the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens, and the lateral septum. The lateral septum shows the highest GLP-1 receptor density of any brain region tested, higher than anywhere in the gut or periphery. These are not incidental structures. They’re the core of the mesolimbic dopamine pathway: the circuit that produces drive and assigns reward value to experiences.

A 2025 paper published in Science mapped exactly what semaglutide does when it reaches this system. The drug activates GABA neurons in the VTA. GABA neurons are inhibitory: their function is to suppress the firing of other neurons. When semaglutide hits the GABA neurons in the VTA, it increases their inhibitory output onto the dopamine neurons. Dopamine production drops. Less signal reaches the nucleus accumbens. Less reward response. Less drive.

To confirm this was the mechanism and not structural brain change, the researchers restored VTA dopamine activity in mice that had been given semaglutide. Reward-seeking returned immediately. The circuit was intact. The drug had been pharmacologically suppressing it. Remove the suppression, the drive comes back.

A second 2025 paper in Science Advances confirmed the circuit in the context of cocaine. GLP-1R activation increased VTA GABA neuron activity and decreased VTA dopamine neuron activity in rats trained to seek cocaine. The researchers mapped the specific anatomical projection: GLP-1-producing neurons in the nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS) send direct projections to the VTA, where they activate those inhibitory GABA neurons. This is a documented anatomical circuit with a real function in your brain. The drug is co-opting it.

The Suppression Is Not Food-Specific

A systematic review of 101 studies (30 clinical, 71 preclinical) found GLP-1 agonists reduce reward-seeking behavior across palatable food, cocaine, amphetamine, alcohol, and nicotine through the same shared mechanism. One pathway, every reward category tested. The drug doesn’t distinguish between an unhealthy craving and a healthy motivational drive. Both run through the same dopamine circuitry.

The human data confirms this extends to non-substance rewards. A 2021 randomized controlled trial gave liraglutide to volunteers and measured incentive motivation for food and for monetary rewards. Under normal conditions, hunger amplifies motivation for both: biological drive state increases how hard you’ll work for any reward, not just food. That’s a well-established effect across decades of research.

After liraglutide, that effect was statistically eliminated. Hunger no longer amplified motivation for money. Food and monetary rewards responded identically to the drug. The researchers weren’t measuring appetite suppression. They were measuring motivational drive, and it was blunted across both reward categories equally.

The drug is not suppressing appetite as much as it’s suppressing the motivational amplification system that appetite happens to run through.

The Wanting Problem

To undesrtand whats going on, you must distinguish “wanting” from “liking.” Wanting is dopaminergic: it’s incentive salience, the pull toward a reward before you have it. Liking is opioidergic and serotonergic: the pleasure of the experience itself. They’re separate systems, and they can be affected independently.

What GLP-1 agonists suppress is primarily the wanting signal. The incentive salience that makes a goal feel worth pursuing. Users on these drugs often report that when they do engage with something, they can still enjoy it. The liking is intact. But the wanting that would have pulled them toward it in the first place is diminished. They don’t seek. They don’t initiate. They wait to be brought to the reward rather than going after it.

This is why users describe being “productive but feeling nothing about it.” They can execute. They’ve just lost the internal pull that generates ambition, anticipation, and drive. That distinction between wanting and liking is precisely why the effect is so easy to dismiss. Users don’t feel acutely depressed, they just stop caring. And “I stopped caring” is a much harder symptom to attribute to a medication than “I feel terrible.”

If you still experience a reward response, but have no incentive salience. You are less self-initiating and more externally driven. You are easier to steer with defaults and cues. We live in a world of constant cue bombardment. Remember Operation bluebird? Project Artichoke? It is no longer a conspiracy that our music, movies, and social media feeds are designed to degrade our agency and impact our behavior. Chew on this for me.

The Drift

A population with chronically suppressed dopaminergic drive doesn’t become obviously broken. It becomes gradually less self-directed. Slightly less inclined to hunt for information rather than consume what’s pushed. Slightly less likely to build an opinion from the ground up versus defaulting to whatever has the most social proof. Slightly more comfortable inside existing structure rather than questioning it.

None of this requires conspiracy. Dopamine drives reward prediction error: the signal that says “that was worth it, do it again.” Suppress that signal and the effort-reward cycle weakens. People can still perform tasks. They just stop building the internal momentum that converts effort into drive. Compliance without ignition.

Lower incentive salience inside a world optimized to capture passive attention is just math. The algorithms, the narratives, the institutional defaults, they all flow downhill into low-resistance (low agency) people. Now amplified by drugs.

Of course some people on GLP-1s report more agency after starting, because the food noise was the thing consuming their bandwidth. For that population, suppressing a compulsive loop freed up genuine directed drive. The actual question is whether the drug reduces compulsive wanting while preserving purposeful wanting. For some people, yes. For others, no. The drug doesn’t know which you are. Your doctor isn’t tracking it. In a world saturated with low-effort, high-stimulation options engineered to capture passive attention, I’d rather err on the side of keeping the wanting. Besides, vices like compulsive behavior, insatiable cravings, and risk-taking are also an inherent edge. Your objective should be to harness these impulses, not eradicate them. Lock in.

So you need to ask yourself: Are you really mentally and metabolically compromised enough to roll the dice? Thats your decision to make.

The Prefrontal Cortex Layer

The limbic reward circuit isn’t the only area involved. GLP-1 receptors are also expressed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which governs executive function, goal-directed behavior, and the capacity to pursue long-term objectives over short-term comfort.

Beyond dopamine, GLP-1 modulates glutamatergic neurotransmission throughout the brain. Glutamate is the primary excitatory neurotransmitter, and it drives the sustained firing patterns that underlie focused effort, goal maintenance, and the cognitive architecture of motivation. When GLP-1 agonists dampen glutamatergic activity in prefrontal circuits, the effect isn’t just reduced wanting. It’s reduced capacity for the kind of directed, sustained drive that ambitious work requires.

The practical implication is that what users experience as “brain fog” or “reduced ambition” may not be purely limbic in origin. The same drug touching the VTA dopamine circuit is simultaneously modulating the prefrontal executive layer. Both contribute to the experience of motivated behavior, and both are being suppressed. Once again contributing to subtle “unraveling” of your coordinative agency.

Tirzepatide and Retatrutide Make This Worse

Most of the mechanistic research above is on semaglutide and liraglutide. The newer compounds escalate the problem.

Tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound) is a dual agonist: GLP-1 receptors and GIP receptors simultaneously. GIP receptors are expressed in the VTA and nucleus accumbens and modulate dopamine neurotransmission through pathways that overlap with, but are distinct from, the GLP-1R mechanism. A dual agonist hits the dopamine circuit from 2 angles at once.

Retatrutide, currently in Phase 3 trials at Eli Lilly, adds a third: glucagon receptors. GLP-1, GIP, and glucagon receptors all have CNS expression. All 3 have been documented in reward-relevant brain regions. A triple agonist pressing on 3 receptor populations in the mesolimbic system simultaneously has no pharmacological precedent in humans. The long-term neurological implications haven’t been studied but unless you’re literally Honey Boo Boo’s mom or a bodybuilder with unresolved childhood trauma, this triple agonism is entirely unnecessary

Tirzepatide outperforms semaglutide on weight loss in head-to-head trials. Retatrutide outperforms tirzepatide in early comparisons. The magnitude of reward suppression likely tracks with efficacy. Nobody is measuring it because nobody really cares.

The Disclosure Gap

GLP-1 clinical trials are designed to measure weight loss, glycemic control, and cardiovascular outcomes. Those are the primary and secondary endpoints that determine FDA approval. Motivated behavior, hedonic capacity, libido, and dopaminergic drive are not standard endpoints in these trials. They’re not measured. If an effect isn’t measured, it doesn’t appear in the label. This is allopathic model 101.

This is structurally different from a side effect being studied and found to be acceptable. The effect isn’t studied. The trials are not set up to detect it. The mechanism research exists in separate academic literature on reward neuroscience and addiction pharmacology, authored by researchers who are largely not in conversation with the clinicians prescribing these drugs for weight loss.

The result is that a drug with a well-characterized mechanism of dopamine suppression carries a label that says nothing about dopamine, motivation, or reward, because the approval data was never designed to capture those outcomes.

Modern medicine continues to operate trials with mechanistic myopia because that is what the entire model is predicated on. This will not change. We think we know everything there is to know about biology. Always have and always will (remember when they put asbestos in cigarette filters?). Maybe its hubris, maybe its indifference. Probably both.

What People Are Actually Experiencing

The anecdotal reports have been building for two years and follow a pattern consistent enough to be clinically interesting.

Users describe the food cravings going quiet, which is what gets marketed. What gets less coverage is what else goes quiet alongside it. Reports of alcohol use dropping dramatically are common enough that addiction researchers launched the cocaine and alcohol trials. Reports of impulsive spending disappearing, gambling urges evaporating, and nicotine cravings stopping without trying are widespread.

All good things right?

The benefit of dropping lifelong bad behaviors outshines the subtle changes in personality and quality of life. Hobbies feel flat. Work feels mechanical. Sex drive drops. Ambitions now feel distant. “Nothing feels exciting,” “Things don’t hit the way I used to,”.

These complaints are common enough to have generated sustained discussion among users who got the body they wanted and are now trying to figure out why it doesn’t feel like they thought it would.

The drug suppresses the motivational drive circuit. That circuit doesn’t know the difference between a pathological craving and a goal you’ve spent five years working toward. When you suppress one, you suppress both. The dose is not selective.

The Counterargument (There Always is One)

The counterargument worth taking seriously is that GLP-1 agonists may “normalize” dysregulated dopamine in insulin-resistant patients with severe metabolic dysfunction. Chronic metabolic disease compromises reward circuitry through inflammation and impaired signaling, and there’s legitimate data showing GLP-1 agonists can restore motivational function in that specific population. In a severely compromised system, the drug may bring dopamine function closer to baseline rather than below it.

This is totally true, but that argument applies to a specific clinical population. It doesn’t apply to the majority of current users, who are people without severe insulin resistance trying to lose 15-30 lbs. Their dopamine systems were functioning before they started. The normalization rationale wasn’t built for them, and it’s being used to dismiss a concern that the mechanistic research takes seriously. Sick care and optimization are two different things and must be treated as such.

We’ve (I’ve) Seen this Pattern Before

My SSRI experience produced a functionally similar outcome through a different mechanism. Serotonin reuptake inhibition rather than GABAergic dopamine suppression, but the result overlapped: flat affect, reduced reward response, (not so) subtle degradation of quality of life. No acute distress. Just a persistent absence of the intensity that makes things feel worth doing.

It took me ages to understand what had happened, and longer to fix it. Nobody discussed it before the prescription. The mechanism was documented in the literature it just didn’t make it into the clinical conversation.

The GLP-1 situation is the same script. The weight loss data is disclosed because it sells the drug. The dopamine suppression mechanism is not disclosed because it complicates the sale. The studies exist, the addiction trials are actively running, and the information is in the same journals.

“Low motivation.” “Nothing feels exciting anymore.” “I stopped caring about things I used to care about.” These are not personality changes. They are not life circumstances. They are not depression in the conventional sense. They are the documented, mechanistic downstream effect of pharmacological suppression of dopaminergic drive in the VTA, produced by the same mechanism that pharmaceutical companies are simultaneously running trials to patent as an addiction cure. Not everybody will experience negative effects. For some people, the outcome is worth the risk. But given our track record with SSRIs, Benzos and Opoids, we should probably learn to exercise some scrutiny once and a while.

If those symptoms appeared 4-6 weeks after starting a GLP-1 agonist, you know the mechanism. Your doctor probably won’t bring it up. The good news is research indicates that this dopaminergic countersignaling goes away once you get off the juice. The more you know.

That is all. Godspeed.

Sources for the curious and curious-adjacent

• Zhu Z et al. (2025). Hedonic eating is controlled by dopamine neurons that oppose GLP-1R satiety. Science. PMC12009138.

• Merkel R et al. (2025). An endogenous GLP-1 circuit engages VTA GABA neurons to regulate mesolimbic dopamine neurons and attenuate cocaine seeking. Science Advances. PMC11864183.

• Eren-Yazicioglu CY et al. (2021). Can GLP-1 Be a Target for Reward System Related Disorders? Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. PMC7848227.

• Hanssen R et al. (2021). GLP-1 and hunger modulate incentive motivation depending on insulin sensitivity in humans. Molecular Metabolism. PMC7859312.

Its hard to lock in when you don’t know what you’re locking in on. Even harder when you have 101 things circulating through your brain that you COULD do. This is debatably one of the best use cases for AI: Outsourcing redundancy

What this bot does:

• Elminates: Decision Fatigue: Tells you exactly what to do next

• Matches tasks to your energy: Creative work when you're sharp, admin when you're drained

• Breaks down overwhelm: Turns big tasks into micro-actions you can start immediately

• Keeps you focused: Clear completion signals so you know when to move on

• Connects to your goals: Every task loops back to why it matters

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We no longer live in a world where you can just “coast”. The social contract of Go to school, get a job, buy a house has been broken for a long time now. We are witnessing a hollowing out of the middle class. Wealth is being consolidated, jobs are being automated, our currency is being debased at unprecedented rates.

These are the facts. The mass adoption of AI agents will be the nail in the coffin. If you do not differentiate yourself now, you may just find yourself trapped in the permanent underclass. Zero upward mobility. No skills, just sentient enough to consume algorithmic content and pay taxes.

Whats the antidote to this harrowing fate you may ask? Its simply to LOCK IN. Not in the incel monk mode sense, but in a balanced, strategic, and tactical fashion.

Hard work is no longer a differentiator. Its all about working smart. In order to work smart you must be smart. But we live in a world that actively makes us dumber. The food you eat, the water you drink, the content you consume. Its destroying the fine fabrics of your brain. The ones that dictate critical thinking and capacity for deep work.

No pressure, but you need to lock tf in. Right now. There’s a million ways to skin a cat, but I want to show you how I, an individual with crippling ADHD and more concussions than a fullback, lock in.

This is protocol will cover everything from behavioral interventions, productivity tools, and full cognitive enhancement stacks, all for the sake of hyper-productivity.

THE GENERATIONAL LOCK-IN

Our brains are highly adaptive. Thats what makes humans special. Put a panda in the desert and its fucked. Put a shark in an aquarium and it dies immediately. Put a human anywhere on this planet and it adapts.

This adaptability is great, literally our secret sauce. But what happens when you put a hooman in a cushy, sedating environment? Shocker, it adapts. Consumption becomes the norm. Why work hard when you’re perpetually flooded with everything you could ever possibly need?

What we’re seeing is widespread attentional fragmentation. It takes 23ish minutes to fully recover from an “interruption” of flow state, the average knowledge worker is switching tasks every 3 minutes. Your smartphone is delivering the same variable ratio reinforcement as a slot machine hundreds of times per day.

Your biology is savvy. It will not adapt if it doesn’t have to. Why waste energy on testosterone production when you have no need for competition? Why sharpen your cognition when you have zero cognitive demand? Why burn fat when you have no energy expenditure? The same applies to neural circuits. It will prune them if you don’t use them.

It also adjusts to inputs. An apple doesn’t taste very good if you housed a sleeve of Oreos beforehand. Reading a book is torture if you just spent an hour scrolling TikTok.

Understand adaptation and use it to your advantage. Otherwise you will be taken advantage of. By manipulating inputs (neurochemical precursors, environment design, strategic supps etc), you can force upregulation of the exact systems you need to generationally lock in.

Don’t Force It

The best results come when you stop caring too much. Hyperfixating on locking in will likely inhibit you from locking in. Such is the nature of energy flow (the universe does not reward neuroticism).

Instead of fixating on the “lock-in” I want you to slow down, realize that this is a marathon, not a sprint (technically its a marathon of sprints). Focus on the INPUTS, worry less about the outputs. Just do the things and have conviction that your goals will come to fruition. Write down your goals, visualize them, then let them go. One day you’ll wake up and realize you’ve accomplished all of them without even trying.

If you want to go deeper into “resetting” your baseline, check out these two posts:

Lock-In Hours

We have our analogue hours; time where we do literally nothing. We also have our lock-in hours, time where we do just about everything. We live in the era of leverage. You can and should be getting a days worth of work done in a few hours. I do not believe in grinding 24/7. Relaxing, exploring, and enjoying hobbies is a part of my work schedule. I’d rather have a few hours of 110% output then 12 hours of 60% output. This is how you make STRIDES, avoid burnout and accomplish your goals without letting the rest of your life go to shit.

The most obvious time to lock in is the morning. You have effectively dopamine fasted for the last 8 hours. Your stimulatory threshold is at a 24 hour low. Your mind is clear, your thoughts are crisp. The morning is sacred.

Locking in Starts the Night Before

You may be saying to yourself “but Noah, I wake up groggy and tired”. Well what does your night before look like? This is the prelude to the lock-in. Don’t screw over future you.

Lock in. Ritualize your nighttime routine:

• NO bright lights, use incandescent or red bulbs

• NO stimulating content. Zero scrolling, zero phone in bed

• Brain dump as much as possible before winding down. Get your worries out of your subconscious

• Stretch, specifically your lower back and hips. Secret cheat code to a good night’s sleep

• House some GABAergics: Magnesium glycinate, L-theanine, glycine

• Have a glass of 1/2 tart cherry juice 1/2 Gerolsteiner water to avoid nighttime hypoglycemia

Your glymphatic system (a cerebrospinal fluid drainage pathway) is only active during sleep. Poor sleep means poor drainage means more inflammation means less cognitive capacity. If you wake up particularly groggy/puffy, take NAC or liposomal glutathione before bed to open up intracellular detox

Prime your Morning

You don’t go the gym and immediately bench your max. You ease into it. Same should apply with mornings. Wake up, immediately get sunlight. Even if its cloudy out, go outside. If you wake up before the sun, get a happy light. Signal to your body that its daytime. This will help you fall asleep too btw.

Get some movement in, specifically lymph work (big 6 is great here). Your lymphatic system is the waste highway of the body. If it gets stagnant, toxins accumulate locally, especially in your brain and gut. Inflammation ensues. And an inflammed brain is a dysfunctional brain.

Hydrate effectively. mineral water with added magnesium, potassium, and sodium. You lose 0.5-1.5 liters of water overnight via breath, sweat, and urine. Hydrating first thing in the AM gets those aformentioned detox pathways moving, boosts circulation, and reboots digestion. You don’t need coffee, you need electrolytes. Added bonus for including trace mineral drops or shialjit

AM Tech Abstinence

Stay analogue as long as possible. Minimal tech exposure until you absolutely have to. The SECOND you get on your devices, you are flooded with distractions. Social media, messages, notifications. No reason to send your CNS into sympathetic overdrive right off the bat.

NO PHONE. You simply do not need it for the first half of your day. Your phone is a total energy suck. Just being in the proximity of it nukes your focus. Leave it far far away (its noon and I still haven’t gone on mine)

Do not go on your computer until you have a clear game plan of exactly what you want to accomplish. Zero room for deviation. Write it out: “I am going to open up Notion, do x, y, and z. I’m going to send a message to ____ and finish up documentation for _____”. Putting this on paper prevents you from deviating course.

This article has all the tools you need to prevent social-media-induced distraction

Go insofar as to preemptively block distracting sites/apps. Use OneSec of BlockSite extensions to make this easy.

Intentionality is the key here, which brings me to my next point. Find the ONE Thing

The ONE Thing

We live in an era of abundance. When you have the option to do anything, you often end up doing nothing. Success is about doing the ONE most important thing and disregarding everything else. Instead of scattering your attention across 10 priorities, just pick the single highest-leverage action that makes everything else easier or unnecessary. This is how you build leverage. Decision fatigue becomes a non-starter. You align with your true goals.

So ask yourself: What is the ONE thing you want to accomplish this year? What is the ONE thing you must accomplish this quarter to hit that goal? What is the ONE thing this month? This week? Today? Right now? Start there and stay the course.

Your lock-in period is for this one thing. Zero distractoins. No multitasking, full intensity.

LLM-Leveraged Brain Dump

Blank your slate. I want you to dump Everything and anything on your mind into a Claude bot (or LLM of choice). Tell it what you’re stressed about, all tasks you have to do, every project you have. Anything and everything. Then ask it to organize into

• Project

• Urgency

• Importance

Incomplete tasks create intrusive thoughts and persistent mental chatter until they’re either completed or offloadeed. Bluma Zeigarnik spoke about this briefly at length. You are burning your biological RAM by backend ruminating. Stop it.

Treat this like your executive assistant. Tell it to break down your tasks into smaller and smaller parts. I will be sharing my ProductivityBot Prompt in my next post.

THE LOCK-IN STACK

Now that you have your tasks, time to lock in. This is where we bring out the big guns (nootropics). The goal here is 2-3 hours to produce work that would normally take a full work day. Sprint then rest format. In short, you want to enhance your:

• Dopaminergic Pathways for motivation and reward salience (the drive to get things done)

• Cholinergic System for attention intensity and learning (the ability to “lock in on one thing)

• Noradrenergic System for arousal and mental energy (sharp alertness with cognitive endurance)

Dopamine to care about the task, acetylcholine to focus on the task, norepinephrine (adrenaline) to have the energy to get the task done.

Bonus: Modulating the GABAergic system can act as a buffer if going over your stimulation threshold (jitters, too wired, etc)

Other Cognitive Requirements:

• Oxygen and nutrient delivery to the Prefrontal Cortex (where executive function happens)

• Ample fuel in the form of glucose and/or ketones (your brain is an energy hog)

• Optimized mitochondrial function to turn raw energy substrate into ATP.

Fueling the PFC & Optimal Brain Networks

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is responsible for working memory, cognitive flexibility, and impulse inhibition. Glucose and oxygen consumption increases 20-30% during sustained cognitive work. The PFC is the first thing to go offline under stress (hypoglcemia, inflammation, sleep deprivation etc). This is why you doomscroll, switch tasks, and fall back into dopamine seeking behavior.

Optimizing dopamine and acetylcholine shifts your brain from its default mode network (DFM) to the task-positive network (TPN). DFM dominance leads to daydreaming, mental drifts, and general distraction. TPN dominance leads to LOCKING TF IN.

Combining optimal neuromodulator support with strong glucose and oxygen delivery to the PFC creates what can only be described as “giga-brain mode”. Sprinkle in a little mitochondrial support and you might as well be Bradley Cooper from Limitless.

Finding Which Levers to Pull

Everybody has different neurological optimization requirements. Some may need more dopamine support, others more acetylcholine, maybe even GABA. By experimenting with precursors of each neuromodulator, you can identify what “state” optimizing each of these pathways gives you.

Enhanced Dopamine: L-Tyrosine (225mg) + DL-Phenylalanine (225mg) + Caffeine (100mg)

These are two precursors for dopamine synthesis (tyrosine → L-DOPA → dopamine). They’re non-addictive, safe, and have a predictable onset time (45 min). Take these as you start your work on an empty stomach, combined with caffeine (increases dopamine indirectly via adenosine receptor antagonism).

Start small, work your way up. I take about 225mg of L-tyrosine and 225mg of DL-Phenylalanine from LifeBlud. If you take with Yerba mate instead of coffee, you may experience a heightened dopaminergic effect due to Yerba’s mild MAO-B inhibiting properties (inhibits the enzyme that breaks down dopamine).

Enhanced Acetylcholine: Alpha GPC (300-600mg) + Huperzine A (100-200mcg)

Alpha GPC crosses the blood-brain barrier and rapidly converts into acetylcholine, the learning and memory neurotransmitter. Huperzine A prevents the breakdown of ACh, meaning it stays around in the synapses longer. Combining the two means more synthesis and less degradation, a steady and thorough state of heightened cholinergic activity. Choline deficiency is highly common in ADHDers, and gives me a narrow beam focus that no dopaminergics ever will.

Cholinergic activity has a golden window, go over it and you can feel really really bad. I incorporate a microdose of nicotine with this stack, I’m talking 1-2mg for further ACh receptor agonism via a different mechanism. Once again, START SMALL. Find your goldilocks window. Its entirely possible that your brain doesn’t jive with higher acetylcholine activity, and thats okay. The goal here is to find out what pathways are in most need of optimizing.

(note: Huperzine A should not be taken daily. It has a 24 hour half-life)

Enhanced GABA: L-Theanine (200-400mg)

If you are prone to overstimulation, GABA may just be what you’re missing. L-theanine is unique in its ability to increase GABA without causing sedation. Any time I get overstimulated from coffee, nootropics etc, I pop a couple hundred mg of L-theanine. Best stacked with caffeine in a 2:1 ratio (eg 200mg theanine 100mg caffeine). It can be used more frequently without tolerance.

If you really want to feel the GABAergic handbrake effect, try stacking with magnesium glycinate.

Enhanced Adrenaline: Caffeine + Cold Exposure

Caffeine is a reliable adrenergic. Often too adrenergic. But if you really want to feel that adrenergic boost, rip some caffeine, some black ginger and get COLD. Ice bath, cold shower, dunk your face into a bucket of ice water. This is for those that get groggy or have a hard time “waking up”.

An Ideal LOCK IN Stack

I’m currently working on a whole cognitive enhancement guide, but here’s what we’re looking for to LOCK IN

• Zero mental drift

• Tasks feel effortless and rewarding

• Time distorts (hours feel like minutes)

• External distractions don’t even register

• High cognitive output, zero fatigue

30 min BEFORE max cognitive load:

• Alpha-GPC: 300-600mg

• L-Tyrosine: 225-500mg

• Huperzine A: 100mcg

As you start your work:

• Caffeine: 100mg

• L-Theanine: 200-400mg (if you get overstimulated)

• Glucose + Electrolytes (literal brain fuel)

After your Session:

• 200mg magnesium glycinate

• Carb & protein heavy meal

Remember, start with each of these individually, at small doses. You don’t want to overshoot your stimulation threshold otherwise you’ll feel like a tweaker and won’t get any work done.

This is obviously a very baseline stack for these specific neurological levers. But they will absolutely help you LOCK in. I am about to go deep on cognitive enhancment, sharing with you all the peptides, bioregulators, and advanced tools you can use to upgrade your biology. If this interests you, make sure to join my private newsletter.

Advanced compounds I’ll be covering next article:

• 4’-DMA-7,8-DHF (miracle-gro for your neurons)

• Bromantane (long-term dopaminergic upregulation, without a crash)

• Semax/Adamax (rapid onset BDNF maxxing)

• Exogenous Ketones (Esters and salts, alternative brain fuel)

• Cerebral bloodflow agents

• And much much more

LOCK IN

You really do realize that the things you own end up owning you. When you have less things, the things you do bring become more valuable. The key is bringing only what maintains consistency with your health while keeping everything light enough to actually travel with.

I’m not just maintaining my health while traveling, but continuing to optimize it. Most people let everything fall apart when they travel. Here’s how to avoid that.

Read more

Technically it’s already here. Different season means different diet, different lifestyle, different biology.

Birds fly 5,000 miles south. Bears gain 100 pounds and sleep for 3 months straight. Rabbits turn white. Frogs freeze themselves solid. Deer grow massive antlers. Salmon turn into literal abominations.

Do you really think humans are any different?

Winter Changes You

Seasonal inputs (light, cold, food availability) alter your physiology:

Hormones, metabolism, genes, behavior, all subject to change. Summer you and winter you are two different people.

Most people HIDE the exact signals that would otherwise tell our bodies to adapt. We insulate ourselves in the same indoor environment year-round: conditioned air, artificial light, the same goyslop diet.

How much of modern dysfunction is a byproduct of biological disrhythm? There’s a reason Iceland has the highest rates of suicide and it’s not just because “it’s cold”.

Our biology is incredibly adaptive, but its contingent on signals. No signal, no adaptation.

Thriving vs Surviving Winter

Winter should not be something that you “get through”. It is an opportunity to THRIVE. You need to take every season by the balls. If you aren’t getting stronger, smarter, and more capable every winter, you’ve missed the plot.

This protocol serves as a blueprint for how to dominate the winter months. How to take advantage of the cold and darkness to build a better you. A guide for you to capitalize on the changes of winter while everybody else is just trying to get through.

Winter Sucks, But it Doesn’t Have to.

Growing up in Minnesota made me hate winter. Dark when I left for school and dark by the time I got home. No wonder I was on Zoloft. I’d wake up, turn on a bunch of bright lights, eat an Eggo, run straight to my car, sit under fluorescent lights for 6 hours, eat prison food for lunch then drive home. At home, I’d study on my medium screen (computer), taking intermittent breaks to look at my small screen (phone), then wind down by staring at my big screen (TV).

No wonder I felt like shit. At no point did I go outside, eat seasonally, or get any sunlight. My brain was sending “wtf” signals and I don’t blame it.

Does this sound familiar?

Winter is… Good for you?

After 22 years of winter, I had enough. I moved to Mexico and never looked back. No more cold, no more perpetual darkness, no more seasonal gloom. 10/10 recommend.

But after a few years of eternal summer, I realized something was missing. There was a part of my brain that I no longer had access to. An inquisitive, contemplative, and insightful part. I’d go on ski trips for a week or two and realize it would come back. My brain would quiet down, I could think more long-term. The slower things like work, writing, and reading became more desirable.

I started looking into this deeper and realized that the cognitive changes that come with winter are a feature, not a bug.

Cold, Seasonal Climates are The OG Competitive Advantage

Think of all the most innovative cultures. What do they all have in common? Cold seasons.

You cannot afford to be lazy in a cold, seasonal climate:

• You can’t live impulsively. If you don’t stock food or plan winter shelter, you’re dead

• You must cooperate, or you’re dead

• You must delay gratification, or you’re dead

• You must create tools, preserve food and build storage systems, or you’re dead

Lazy, shortsighted behavior is punishable by death. Cognitive load increases and forward thinking becomes a selective breeding trait.

The closer to the equator you are, the less change there is. Resource abundance and constant climate mean no pressure to innovate, no long-term planning requirements. Warmth is comfort and comfort is complacency (biologically speaking).

Seasonal pressures are what led to the invention of calendars, agriculture and scheduling. The same force that paved the way for:

• Industrial revolutions

• Scientific method

• Modern infrastructure

Innovation thrives where the future is uncertain and immediate gratification is punished.

Future orientation is a byproduct of environment.

I moved to the beach to be carefree, and it worked. But my biology is wired for seasonal cold (German mountain genetics). I crave the innovative thinking that comes with winter, I just wasn’t embracing it.

How Winter Changes You

Not just psychologically, biologically. Winter was a lot harder when we didn’t have insulation, food delivery, and electricity.

Body Temperature Lowers, Metabolic Rate Decreases

You essentially go into hibernation-lite. Less daylight increases melatonin production. Thyroid and metabolism downshift slightly to conserve calories (in preparation for scarcity).

Increased Brown Fat Activation

Cold exposure activates brown adipose tissue, which burns fat for heat via mitochondrial uncoupling. This also increases noradrenaline and dopamine, meaning better focus and sharper mood.

Appetite and Carb Cravings Increase

You’re prepping for energy scarcity. More melatonin suppresses leptin, meaning more hunger signals. Shorter days lead to insulin resistance, meaning more fat storage (we’ll discuss this).

Testosterone Drops Slightly

Less UV means lower vitamin D which means reduced T synthesis. More stress (cold, hunger) means more cortisol, which is antagonistic to T levels.

Immune System Activates (Pro-Inflammatory Tilt)

You’re prepping for seasonal viruses. Inflammatory cytokines increase. Has a purpose, but needs to be controlled.

Higher Epigenetic Repair

Winter is your yearly repair cycle. Better cell cleanup, longevity improvements, and biological optimization. Best time to take advantage of biohacking.

Cognition Shifts

Less serotonin (from increased melatonin production) means higher dopamine/norepinephrine. Brain shifts from expansion to consolidation. Introversion, reflection, and strategic thinking follows.

One should logically accept these changes, embrace them, and act accordingly. Your biology will nudge you toward certain activities. Tinkering, thinking, building, learning. Its your responsibility to follow said urges

Read more

Self-Awareness as a Skill

The average person has the self-awareness of a nematode. Their sense of self doesn’t go past their favorite pizza topping and who they want to win the game on Friday night. Spend five minutes chatting in your local gym sauna and you’ll know what I mean. Spend enough time with normies and you’ll actually take pride in the fact that you’re bad at being normal. You’re not missing anything.

What disservice it is to spend your whole life never truly understanding who you are. Even worse, consolidating your sense of self in a trivial sliver of time.

There are Two Types of People

My college had some of the best lacrosse players in the country (big flex, I know). I knew two guys on the team in particular that I still think about to this day. Similar skill, similar ambition, totally different life outcomes.

Greg still lives in the town I went to school in. He works a job he hates, has zero prospects, and is borderline obese. The photos he posts on Instagram show a man who has lost his spark.

Kyle is crushing it. He went on to get his MBA, has a high-paying finance job and recently got married. I spoke to him recently, this guy’s dialed.

Greg was actually better at lacrosse. He made it his whole personality. One track mind. His sense of self was: I like lacrosse.

Kyle liked lacrosse too, but he knew that lacrosse was just a proxy for his true passions: Teamwork, competition, camaraderie, linear achievement of goals.

Kyle took inventory of his past and overlaid it with future life paths. He knew that lacrosse was temporary so he prioritized building a second life path: Excel in business school, use his athletic/academic prowess to land an internship, funnel all his innate drives & skills into his career post graduation.

Greg just liked lacrosse. Why would he care about school if lacrosse is life? I had a group presentation with him once. We got a D.

Greg wasn’t any less talented than Kyle. He learned all the same lessons and fundamentally had the same tendencies. He just never took inventory. He never extrapolated his skills past “good at throwing ball into net”.

Greg lost, Kyle won.

PART 1: EXCAVATION

How to Find Your Edge

Play archeologist with your past. Go back as far as you can remember, retroactively document your experiences. Pivotal moments, canon events, wins and losses. What sticks out to you?

The Childhood Obsession Test

What interests did you have when you were really young?

You are statistically most likely to become world-class at that which you were obsessed with as a child. It takes 10,000 hours to become world class at something. If you started at 7, you had a major head start. Not only that, what you do as a child fundamentally alters your hardwiring. You are in a psychedelic-level state of neuroplasticity up until around age 7. The things you do in adolescence set the groundwork for your perception of reality.

I played so much Pokemon as a kid it’s baked into my worldview. Before that it was dinosaurs. After that it was anthropology & evolutionary biology. These all seem unrelated, but dig deep enough and you will find the vein between it all.

For me, I’ve always been obsessed with taxonomy, evolution, biology. The natural world and how animals like us evolve around it. My answer to “If you could live in any time period when would it be?” was always 1855 on Darwin’s ship to the Galapagos. This is my hardwiring. I love uncovering the subtleties of species, most importantly our species. Understanding why organisms act the way that they do. How their environment influences them. Why some humans have long limbs and others have short ones. Why we think the way we do and how we can use that to our advantage.

I am less of a biohacker and more of a bioexplorer.

The Tendency Audit

Go deeper than just interests. Focus on tendencies:

• What came easy to you but hard to others?

• What felt like play to you but work for your peers?

• What things came so naturally that you didn’t have to work for it?

This will be hard, and I implore you to recruit the help of your parents (and even grandparents).

The Process Autopsy

Don’t just think about what you did, think about how you did it.

I scored significantly higher on essays I wasn’t able to prepare for. I aced all my presentations when I was making stuff up on the spot. Preparation ruins intuition. It forces what would otherwise be a fluid exploration of ideas. I apply this same principle to my writing and speaking today. No notes, no preparation, just making space for the ideas to flow.

Think about how you prepared for exams. How did you study? Everybody has different learning styles:

• Visual learners

• Reading/writing learners

• Conversational learners

• Auditory learners

I’m a conversational learner. I learn by talking about what I’m learning. That’s why I started Twitter in the first place, to act as digital scaffolding for refining what I learn.

Do you see the thread here? Everything I do is a logical extrapolation of who I am at my core. Amplified and consolidated into avenues that are high leverage, low friction, and most applicable to my unique wiring.

Real-World Applications

I HATED creating fancy presentations in school. Wasting precious time on trivial redundancies like formatting, color coding, and visuals. I preferred simple, straightforward text for optimal comprehension & clarity. This is why I write on Substack and Twitter instead of editing feature-length videos and creating fancy Instagram carousels.

My friend Rocky was likely very different as a child. He probably loved the presentations, the design, the nuances. He knew his hardwiring, and played a game he was uniquely suited to win. Now he makes some of the fanciest, most aesthetically congruent epicurean content out there. Good on you, Rocky.

PART 2: BECOMING A SELF-OBSERVER

The Daily Awareness Practice

What was the last thing you did that made you feel good? What made you feel bad?

What task today gave you energy? What task drained you?

What is one thing that if you did more of tomorrow, you would have a better day? What about less?

What is one annoying thing that, if removed entirely, would drastically improve the quality of your life? What’s stopping you from removing said thing?

Most people couldn’t tell you what they did today, let alone how they felt about what they did. They can’t even begin to build a life that suits them because they don’t know what they’re suited for.

The Cultural Vacuum

To be fair, we used to not have to make many decisions at all. We did what our fathers did who did what their fathers did and so on. We had tradition, culture, moral and religious scaffolding that outsourced a lot of our decision making. We still hold remnants of this time in our last name.

But the cat’s out of the bag now. The powers that be (they) have torn it all down. They’ve gutted your culture, purged your heritage, and left you in this lonely, dry, and dystopian identity vacuum. They want you identity-less, they want you insultingly unaware. An unaware, unidentified individual is a controllable individual. A consumptive one who builds identity around what he has, not who he is. Nietzsche spoke about this briefly at length.

The only way out of this vacuum is to build your own personal blueprint. To gather empirical data on who you are, how you do things, and what drives you toward a life of fulfillment.

The 3-Week Tracking Protocol

For the next 3 weeks, write down EVERYTHING that brings you above or below your cognitive baseline. For every thing you do, mark down its effect on your psyche:

Example:

• Had constructive phone call with business partner: +3 energy, +5 optimism, +4 drive

• Put together document for client: -4 energy, -6 mood, +5 overstimulation

Do this with biological interventions too: food, supplements, health routines. Gather as much data as possible.

Pattern Recognition & Extrapolation

Once you have enough data, extrapolate. Piece together the puzzle, find the threads. Play scientist with yourself.

This requires a level of meditative separation most simply do not have. I didn’t. But I knew enough to know that about myself. And knowing myself, I knew that meditation was boring and went against my ADHD hardwiring. But I did know that I love gamification. All of us do. So I downloaded one of those meditation apps that tracked progress through levels and streaks, and practiced guided meditation every day for six months.

How did I know this would work?

Because I had already followed step 1. I used to be obsessed with Call of Duty, specifically leveling up guns. You’d have to shoot me to study for longer than 20 minutes at a time, but I played COD for 6 hours straight some nights. Totally fixated on leveling up my guns. I didn’t care about winning. Didn’t care about stats, only cared about leveling up my guns. Same with Skyrim and skill trees.

So I simply found a way to meditate that followed my existing hardwiring: Leveling up my skill tree (Meditation +50).

From Data to Action

Once you spend about 3 weeks of doing this, you’ll have enough data to start connecting the dots:

Instead of saying:

• “Calls with my business partner give me energy”

You can extrapolate:

• “I work best when collaborating with people toward a shared goal”

Instead of saying:

• “Writing reports drains me”

You can say:

• “Tasks that require rigid, non-creative, or monotonous work rob me of my spark”

Now you can confidently start working toward a life where you spend all your time doing things that give you energy which you can use to do more of that thing, creating a positive flywheel. You can assign a value to abdicating yourself from redundant tasks, from things that steal your spark. This no longer becomes a hunch feeling, but a logical and pragmatic decision for the betterment of yourself and everybody else around you.

The Multiplication Effect

If you can spend time doing things you love, that you’re good at, and that come easy to you, you will do more, produce more, and provide more value. You will burnout less and become even better at that thing, world-class even.

Spending time on things that drain you does everybody a disservice. You become a grouch, you lose all your aura. Not only are you unable to capitalize on your gifts, you can’t share them with anybody else.

This is an ego hurdle more than anything. Just let it go man. Accept the fact that you suck at excel sheets. Instead of brute forcing your way through them, ask yourself “what systems could I implement to make this as easy as possible?”.

The Goggins types want you to brute force your way through it, which is a good strategy if you’re room temperature IQ. But if you have the cognitive faculties, you’d be a fool not to use them.

PART 3: ALIGNMENT & BUILDING YOUR WORLD

The Subjective Side of Success

Once you’ve identified what you can do, now align that with what you CAN’T NOT do.

What is the one thing that will eat away at you if not pursued? What keeps you up at night? Do not shy away from this. I used to come home from the bars in Mexico and go straight to my computer. I’d write an entire thread, a storm of tweets, or just ramble in my notes for hours. Same thing with videos. Its like an urge I have, an addiction. If I don’t outwardly express my thoughts, I feel my insides eating away.

Most people hide from this, call it a distraction. But you cannot compete with somebody who loves the game. Whose default wiring gives them no choice but to embrace their given activity. Alignment my friends.

Building A World Around Your Strengths

Just because you’ve identified your strengths doesn’t mean you’ve earned the right to shrug off your weaknesses. You’ve got to EARN the right to not do the shitty stuff.

Hate doing dishes? That’s fine. You better be so good at the other stuff that you can pay somebody to do them for you. If you can’t do that, find a SYSTEM that makes whatever you hate significantly less painful.

My Minimalist Solution

I spent a year eating out of one bowl with one pair of chopsticks. I clearly identified that things held me back. They distracted me, overwhelmed me, drained me of precious energy. The benefit I got from owning things in abundance was outweighed by the pain of clutter, distraction, and overstimulation.

So I asked myself “what would this look like if it were easy?”. Answer one was to pay for a maid, answer two was to get rid of all of my things. I went with number two. I became a hardcore minimalist. Things you own end up owning you. I got rid of all of it. For three years, I lived out of one suitcase. This enabled me to live a life of freedom and adventure that would otherwise be impossible. Tyler Durden spoke about this briefly at length.

The Trade-Off

Building a life on your terms takes sacrifice. People stay at jobs they hate because they need the paycheck to pay for things they don’t need. They do not have the cognitive flexibility nor the testicular fortitude to imagine a life outside of those terms. And I don’t blame them. The alternative isn’t always glamorous.

I would have rather committed seppuku with a butter knife than get stuck in the rat race. I had a clear value hierarchy, with security and materialism at the very bottom. So the solution was simple: Move to a foreign country, live frugally, work on honing my skills and building a life I was uniquely suited to (eventually) win.

I gave up on playing games I had no interest in winning. Just like how I gave up on ever playing D1 basketball (I’m a stocky white guy). Based off my past data gathering, I knew that uncomfortable environments were where I flourished, so I sent it.

PART 4: BECOMING GOOD ENOUGH TO OVERCOME YOUR WEAKNESSES

You Are Entitled to Nothing

Remember, You are entitled to NOTHING. Whatever you want, you must earn it through smart work, hard work, and results.

I was 20 when I identified that I was an ideas guy. I had one goal: to get paid for my ideas. It took me FIVE YEARS of steady progress to get to the point where I deserved to get paid for my ideas.

Every year up until that point, I had to prove myself. To prove that my ideas were valuable by executing on them personally. From service to product, I personally had to go and get results to give my ideas worth. If I focused exclusively on my idea generating skill tree, I’d be that annoying person on the internet pitching ideas with no comprehension of implementation.

So I stayed true to my north star strength (ideas), but enlisted supporting strengths to amplify its value. I found other things I was good at, things that were tangibly valuable: Marketing, team building, creative work. I learned skills that I didn’t like, but were necessary: Systems, automations, analytics. I always kept my finger on the pulse of which skills were stepping stones and which skills were my core drivers.

Don’t Lose the Plot

Some people get sidetracked. They want to open a retreat center but need money to make their dream come true. So they move to Miami and start a drop shipping company. At some point, they lose the plot. Their goal posts have shifted and they forget entirely about their dreams. Now their life sucks and they don’t know why.

Do what you have to do, but never lose the plot.

Prove Your Worth

If you want to lean on your strengths, PROVE THEIR WORTH. Build immutable evidence that you are as good as you say you are. You need a repertoire of results, figures, and statistics to prove that you are actually valuable.

Then and only then can you start outsourcing what you’re bad at. You must earn the right to not do certain things. If I wasn’t good at what I did, I wouldn’t be able to take the liberties I do. I would not be able to partner with equally capable people with synergistic skillsets.

Get Competent AF

Regardless of what you’re good at, you must become good at getting good at things. This comes down to meta-learning. Leaning on your strengths is not an excuse to be incompetent at your weaknesses.

True strength comes from being T-shaped. Well-rounded, versed, and capable, but one secret sauce that makes you special.

The more broadly competent you are, the more flexible you are. The more you can jiu-jitsu your way into opportunities and ideal trajectories for success. Find your secret sauce, become competent enough at everything else that you can justifiably hone in on your strengths.

Key Takeaways

In short, The Scattered Mind’s Guide to Success is as follows:

The Excavation Process:

1. Mine your childhood obsessions for hardwiring patterns

2. Audit your natural tendencies vs. learned behaviors

3. Analyze your process, not just your outputs

The Observation Protocol:

1. Track energy/mood impact of every task for 3 weeks

2. Extrapolate patterns from raw data

3. Build systems that align with your wiring, not against it

The Building Phase:

1. Identify what you CAN’T NOT do

2. Create systems to minimize what drains you

3. Earn the right to outsource weaknesses through proven competence

The Competence Standard:

1. Prove your strengths with tangible results

2. Become T-shaped: one superpower, broad competence

3. Never lose the plot while building stepping stone skills

Check out other articles in this vein:

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Gm. Its that time of the month. For the next 24-48 hours, I will be hyperfixating on any questions you ask me. Maximum cognitive output, just for you. Ask away.

(If you haven’t already, go through and read some of the old AMA’s. There’s some absolute gems in there)

• AMA 1

• AMA 2

• AMA 3

• AMA 4

• AMA 5

• AMA 6

• AMA 7

• AMA 8

• AMA 9

• AMA 10

• AMA 11

• AMA 12

• AMA 13

• AMA 14

• AMA 15

• AMA 16

Just kidding. I made that up. But if Sun Tzu didn’t have god-tier articulation, no one would have ever heard of him in the first place.

This is one thing all great thinkers, leaders, writers, poets, politicians, and philosophers have in common: They all had elite verbal intelligence.

It isn’t their thoughts that they’re known for; it’s their ability to express their thoughts in a digestible, comprehensible, and convincing fashion.

An idea said out loud is worth a thousand in your head. A smooth talker with semi-smart thoughts will outperform the giga-brain with elementary-level articulation.

Verbal intelligence is inarguably the most universally appraised form of intelligence. And articulation is the ultimate form of leverage.

A brilliant idea trapped in your skull is inert. You can act on it, but it will never become bigger than you.

It has never been more crucial to max out your verbal IQ. Back in the day, people would read whatever they got their hands on. If you used proper English and knew calligraphy, you pretty much had it made.

Now the idea landscape is much, much more crowded. Total shitshow.

It’s hard to change people’s thoughts because most people don’t think at all. You’re not just competing with other ideas, you’re competing with every hyper‑stimulating brainrot reel on Instagram, all the AI slop, the soft porn, and the 24/7 news cycles clogging our delicate neurochemistry. All for the sake of making us stupid and suggestible.

This only makes raw idea articulation more valuable. No matter how advanced AI gets, it will never beat the realness of the human tongue.

You need to learn to speak well. To express your ideas convincingly, coherently, and consistently. Articulation is a skill, and skills can be acquired.

When I was younger, I asked myself what skill would be worth becoming world‑class at, and only one came to mind: verbal fluency.

Rhetoric, eloquence, expression of thought. To articulate your thoughts is to make them real.

Put more simply, verbal fluency is a differentiator, an edge that benefits every area of life. Smooth talkers command respect and attention. Mumblers are looked down upon.

You have the right to voice your opinion, but not the right to have your opinion heard. If you want people to listen to you, you must earn it. Captivate attention; do not waste anybody’s time with sloppy speech. Linguistic precision is the one true meta‑skill.

You Need to Learn How to Speak Better

There is nothing more frustrating than not knowing what to say. Brain scrambling for vocabulary, half‑formed sentences, stumbling through first impressions. Emotional damage.

Even worse: watching yourself get lapped by somebody with less brains than you because they can articulate, while you’re a grade A word vomiter.

If this is you, you may be verbally incompetent. It’s okay, though; every weakness is just an opportunity for exponential growth.

Most guys walk through life unable to express thoughts deeper than what they had for breakfast. They may think they’re smart, but their mouth says otherwise. Filler words like “um,” “like,” and “type shit” make up the bulk of their vernacular. No pity for these types. A poor speaker is a lazy speaker.

Articulation is the Ultimate Edge

We can no longer beat people up if we disagree with them. The days of mutually agreed combat are over. The only way to get the edge over your competition is to outspeak them; to be sharper, smarter, wittier, all in real time.

An intelligent man who can’t express his thoughts will get lapped by the average‑brained smooth talker.

If you think you have good ideas, you have a personal obligation to inject them into the marketplace of ideas. To do your thoughts justice. Articulation is power. Nietzsche spoke about this briefly at length.

This guide will lay out tactical tools you can apply daily to become in the top percentile for verbal intelligence.

“Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Verbal Fluency, Explained

Let’s get practical.

Verbal fluency is your brain’s processing speed for converting internal thoughts into external articulation. It’s how fast and accurately you can retrieve words, construct sentences, and deliver ideas that land.

For my quants, verbal fluency is your access speed and retrieval accuracy for querying the massive vocabulary database in your brain. Most people run on dial‑up; we want to upgrade to fiber optic.

The mechanism is straightforward. Three core systems must fire simultaneously:

• Lexical retrieval: accessing the right words.

• Syntactic construction: organizing words into coherent sentences.

• Executive control: managing cognitive load during real‑time speech.

When one lags, the whole system fumbles and you regress into “um… like… type shit.”

This assumes that you have good ideas in between your ears to begin with, but that’s a protocol for another day (IQ‑maxxing protocol, mayhaps).

The goal of verbal fluency is to:

• Articulate complex ideas clearly.

• Maintain verbal flow under pressure.

• Access sophisticated vocabulary when needed.

• Spin up coherent arguments in real time.

• Command attention through precise language.

Your baseline is verbal mediocrity. You gravitate toward simple phrasing because your brain can’t handle the processing load to articulate accurately. You are verbally cucking yourself and pissing your (potentially) important ideas down the drain.

Articulation is Important If You’re a Winner

It sharpens your thinking.

Nothing weeds out foggy ideas better than putting them into words. When you force yourself to put an idea into words, you expose the gaps, contradictions, and sloppy assumptions you’ve been hiding. Most people are dumber than they think and only as smart as they sound.

It lets you coordinate with other humans.

Most issues are communication issues. Everything from relationships to business to leadership runs on communication. If you can’t articulate what you want, what you mean, what the plan is, and what your standards are, don’t expect anybody to follow your lead.

It gives you control over your mind.

Articulating your emotions, motives, and boundaries shines light on unconscious impulses controlling your life. They become tangible, negotiable, and actionable. You’re going to be brainwashed by somebody; it might as well be you.

It gives you power.

People judge intelligence by how well you speak. If you express your ideas with precision and force, you’re perceived as sharp, capable, and competent. If you’re tripping over consonants, you’re perceived as a chud. Articulation opens doors that raw intelligence never will.

It makes your ideas transferable and scalable.

Ideas only become powerful when other people can understand and use them. This requires the gift of gab. Clear speaking scales. You will never expand outside yourself if you cannot articulate yourself.

It solidifies your identity.

When you articulate who you are and what you value, you define yourself. Language organizes the self. Undeveloped articulation leads to an undeveloped self. If you can’t say it, you will never be it.

It lets you shape the narrative.

We are all competing in the marketplace of ideas. If you can articulate your worldview better than others, people will adopt your frame.

Why is Everybody so Inarticulate?

We have become fundamentally lazy speakers. This is by design. The last thing our technocratic overlords want is a bunch of articulate young gentlemen weaponizing their words to build a better world. Embracing verbal fluency is an act of defiance.

You are what you consume. And the average Joe is sipping on brainrot goontok 6 hours a day. Their vocabulary arsenal starts with “bet” and ends with “type shit.” The slopification of a once‑beautiful language. No sophisticated language in, no sophisticated language out.

Somewhere along the way, filler words became normalized. You need to accept them for what they really are: processing failures. Your brain couldn’t retrieve the next word fast enough, so it inserted garbage to buy time. It now believes that filler words are acceptable. They’re not.

Most people stopped learning new words after college (and have lost 50% of them since then). This is unacceptable. There are over 400,000 words in Webster’s English Dictionary, and some people are operating in the triple digits. Vagueness kills conviction.

Cut this out. All of it.

Subscribe now

The Verbal Fluency Protocol

You speak every day; why not commit to getting better? If you implement 90% of this list, you will 3–5x your speaking skills in a matter of months. I’m not telling you to become a pretentious wordcel. I just want you not to speak like a simpleton.

Read more

Health HQ Black Friday Rules:

1. Only buy things you’d be buying if it weren’t Black Friday

2. Only buy consumables or utility items (Things you’d need anyway)

3. One-in, one-out

For me, this looks like gifts for others, supplements, cosmetics, and ‘essential’ utilities like cotton shorts, barefoot shoes, health tech and wooden cutting boards. All of which are replacing an existing product

Here are a few deals worth taking advantage of this BFCM. Some of these brands I’m affiliated with, some I just like. All run by quality, value-aligned individuals

Self-Plug: Custom Protocol Bundle

I’m opening up a limited number of slots for my comprehensive optimization protocol. This includes:

• 75-minute deep-dive consultation (audit of current protocols, environment, constraints, and goals)

• 15 min Follow up call (for tweaking after month 1)

• Fully personalized optimization protocol covering:

  • Metabolic optimization

  • Strategic androgen optimization

  • Complete supplement stack with exact dosages and timing

  • Circadian alignment protocols

  • Lifestyle/environment design

• Lifetime subscription to Health HQ Insider Substack (normally $11/month)

• Access to exclusive client-only protocols (never published publicly)

I’m bundling all of this for $450. If you’re looking for a custom protocol, exclusive client-only protocols, and lifetime access to Health HQ, you can sign up here

High ROI Black Friday Deals

All links are in underlined headers. Discounts are pre-applied or on-site

EMR-TEK: 50% off Red Light Panels (code NOAH)

The best deal I’ve seen this year. 50% off their Red Light Panels. Krypton has both UV, Red Light and NIR light. Probably the best investment on BFCM

Based Supplements - Mega Shilajit Jar + Up to 55% off

We had a bunch of overstock mega jars so we’re selling those at normal shiljat jar price. Also doing big bundle discount on our vitality trio. Check it out

Wayve Wear - 20% off

My favorite clothing brand. I have every pair of their shorts and most of their shirts. 100% organic cotton with Merino wool lining. Made by Yahli out of California. 10/10

Meraki Medicinal - 50% off + free merch

Vance is running a 50% off for methylene blue subscriptions. Also giving away some hats & stickers. I lost a bet so obligated to post this one

Oliva Dorado - 20% off

Artesian-grade single-farm Spanish olive oil. My gift of choice. Jeremy (founder) is about his oil.

Wayve Wear - 20% off

My favorite clothing brand. Run by Yahli out of California. I wear their pants every day and their shirts weekly. 10/10

Oral BPC 157 - 10% off

I’ve probably taken more BPC 157 than 99% of the internet. I love it. Recovery, gut health, cognition, vascularity, hair growth. The list goes on. My only unfair advantage and something I always have on hand

Loxstar - 35% off

New peptide hair growth serum by my friends Vance (Meraki founder) and NootBro. Have experienced noticeable hair thickness the past few months. Combine this with redlight and dermarolling for max effects.

Notable Alpha - 30% off

My favorite Testosterone Booster. Increases free T, boosts dopamine, immediate noticeable impact on vitality & mood. Proprietary extracts that are hard to come by and actually work (check out some of the studies on their site)

LifeBlud - 25% off

If you’re going to be taking supplements daily, make sure they’re pure & reputable. Lifeblud conveniently stocks all of my favorite amino acids, minerals, and vitamins

• Taurine

• Glycine

• Creatine

• L-Tyrosine

• B Vitamins

• TUDCA

Bioenergetic-based supplements. No fillers. Elite quality. The founder overstocked on amino acids and is practically selling them at cost right now

Limitless Life Peptides - 35% off (code NOAH15)

The go-to for everything peptides.

• BPC-157

• TB-500

• Ipamorelin

• CJC

Currently Running VIP & KPV from limitless for my mold poisoning protocol. If you’re looking at getting any injectables this year, now is the time. My discount code stacks with their 20% off added at checkout

Equip Foods - up to 40% off

My go-to for beef protein isolate, collagen, and colostrum.

Ramp Health: B4 - 35% off

Alcohol is bad for you. But the social fluidity that comes with alcohol has its benefits. You can get the social effects of alcohol without the alcohol if you know what to target (eg. boost GABA & dopamine) B4 from Ramp health does this well. Been taking it before going out. Makes 1 (or zero) drinks feel like enough and mitigates the damage from alcohol

Ryker Clothing - 25% off

100% cotton shorts with merino wool lining. I have 4 pairs and wear them every day of the week. Great for training and the natural antimicrobial properties of the merino keeps them smell-free.

Mirror Skin Copper Elixir - 20% off (code NOAH)

I know that skin health starts from within, but Lipid-encapsulated GhK-Cu is incredible. Noticeable improvements in a week, I’ve been using it for 6 months and its leveled up my complexion

Fountain Head Shampoo - 25% off

Saw what was in my girlfriend’s shampoo and was mortified. Got her Fountain Head and her hair has never been better. Raw honey shampoo + Aloe & Honey conditioner. I’ve been using it myself (the mullet needs nourishment)

Nic Nac Nicotine Lozenges - 15% off

Nicotine is one of my favorite nootropics. Nic Nac has great nicotine lozenges that are cleaner than their pouch-based alternatives.

If you’re going to use nicotine, use these. Read my nicotine thread for how to properly use nicotine as a cognitive enhancer

Health Y Sol Soap - 10% + Free Soap + Mystery Gift (code NOAH)

Tallow based soap is the best soap. What more can I say

Wyde Footwear - 25% off (code NOAH)

Barefoot shoes that aren’t ugly. My everyday wear and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. They just got a US warehouse to dodge tariffs & shipping cost. Melker (founder) is a wizard.

Rhizals - 20% off

Leather grounding shoes with water buffalo soles. Copper rod for conductive charge. If you’re looking to get some grounding in these are your guys (they look classy too)

Hope you enjoy. Buy what you need, get rid of what you don’t. Have a great weekend

You, my friend, might be chronically overstimulated. Your fight or flight is stuck on ON mode. Total sympathetic nervous system dominance. In short, your central nervous system is shot.

You’re not alone. Its impossible to not be overstimulated in this day & age. We’ve normalized a state of constant neural bombardment that would have one-shotted a Victorian era child. Reels, feeds, screens, notifications, noises. You wake up, immediately grab your phone, scroll through 50 pages of content before your brain even knows its up, check emails while brushing your teeth, listen to a podcast at 1.5x speed during your commute, watch Youtube while housing your double steak slop bowl for lunch, and wonder why you can’t focus for more than 90 seconds.

This is overstimulation, and its destroying your quality of life. Productivity plummets, meaning evaporates, creativity disappears, presence is nonexistent. Your attention goes where the algorithm tells it to.

We Weren’t Built for This

For 99.9% of human history, daily life was brutally simple. Wake up, find some berries, hunt a squirrel, sit by the fire and weave some baskets.

Change was slow, stimuli were sparse, and it paid to be hyper-aware. Your brain evolved to process maybe 50-100 novel pieces of information per day. A rustle in the grass, the sound of a stream, some new animal tracks. Life was fickle back then, one bad hunt and you starve, one wrong move and you get eaten by a panther. So your nervous system learned to take every signal seriously. We developed a finely attuned sensory network. Real life spider senses which we seem to have forgotten.

This is what we call a maladaptive trait my friend. Qualities that used to be highly beneficial, but now cause more harm than good. But honestly what do you expect? Put a rat in a box and it starts doing cocaine, put a bird in a cage and it pulls out its hair, put an Orca in sea world and it gets so depressed it eats its handler for fun. Do you really think we’re any different? Does anybody think that living in isolated shoeboxes under artificial light with zero community, purpose or connection to nature is good for us? Give me a break.

Remember. Our original environment was scarce, incredibly scarce. It paid to put on fat easily, to be hyper-attuned to stimuli, and to want to have sex 24/7. But now, in our dystopian world of abundance, these are the exact hardwires manipulated to keep you hooked. Hooked on junk food, social media, porn. Your biology is being manipulated by the most deplorable companies on the planet.

What Is Overstimulation (And Why You’re Cooked)

Overstimulation is when your brain receives more sensory input than it can effectively process. Too much novel stimuli and it burns out. Like a kid coming off a sugar crash.

The mechanism is straightforward: Constant novelty spikes dopamine, which increases glutamate (primary excitatory neurotransmitter), which literally burns through your neurons when chronically elevated. Meanwhile your GABA (calming, inhibitory neurotransmitter) tanks, your brain loses its ability to hit the brakes, and you end up wired but tired. Too frazzled to relax, too exhausted to work. Just enough sentience to scroll Instagram reels and order door dash.

Once you reach this state, you’re already cooked. You can’t just snap out of it, you blew your dopaminergic load and are literally burning neurons. This is reqiring your brain to be incapable of:

• Deep focus

• Getting actual rest

• Enjoying the small things

• Emotional regulation

• Entering flow states

Your baseline is brainrot. Anything less feels like torture. Your brain gravitates toward the most stimulating thing and disregards the rest. Why the fuck would your brain spend an hour reading ONE book when it could watch ONE THOUSAND TikTok videos. Why listen to birds chirping when it can listen to Call Her Daddy on 1.5x speed. Why watch a sport in person when you can watch 5 simultaneously while betting your mortgage on all of them? Booooring.

We have removed the meaning from stimuli much like we removed the nutrients from calories. All signal, no beneficial outcome. Not what we want.

If you’re reading this, you probably want to be cool, calm, and collected, relaxed but alert. You want control over your impulses, to derive pleasure from meaningful pursuits. You reject the overstimulated psychosis that keeps you in constant fight-or-flight. You refuse to have your attention pawned off to the highest algorithmic bidder. Kudos to you.

Overstimulation Abstinence Stack (AVOID)

These are the most common culprits for cucking your nervous system.

Stacked Stimuli

Eating in front of the TV. Watching YouTube while scrolling your phone. Talking to someone while checking messages. Driving, looking at phone, podcast on 1.5x speed. No. Double. Dipping. On Dopamine. No parallel processing, your brain cant’t handle it. This isn’t multitasking. There’s no such thing. You’re half-assing two things and frying your nervous system in the process. Every additional stimulus compounds the neural load exponentially, not linearly.

Morning Phone Grab

It really is the damn phone. You get 8 hours of dopamine reset every night. Don’t be a FOOL and ruin it by blasting digital crack hits within 60 seconds of consciousness. You’ve now set your baseline for the day at “brainrot, chaos, information overload”. Everything else feels boring by comparison and your focus is cooked before you even get out of bed. If you think you actually have something important to get to, you’re lying. If you have to get on your phone for work, wake up earlier. Morning time is sacred.

Constant Background Noise

Direct correlation between IQ and noise tolerance. Life was astonishingly quiet until industrialization. Now you’re marinating in auditory AIDS 24/7. HVAC systems, construction, music, cars, podcasts, conversations. Cut this out as much as possible. Embrace silence. Wear ear plugs. Just because constant noise is common doesn’t mean its normal. And why would you want to be normal anyway.

Speed Consumption

1.5x podcasts. 10 second tiktoks, 150 tweets a minute. Skipping, scrolling, browsing. You are training your brain to expect information at a pace that makes normal consumption feel geriatric. This is why you can’t sit through a movie anymore. Why meetings feel unbearable and reading feels like pulling teeth. You’ve taught your brain that if information isn’t coming at mach speed its not worth paying attention to. Cognitive goonery.

Constant Availability

You aren’t supposed to be easy to get ahold of. Men used to go on solo expeditions for months without contact with the outside world. Turn your notifications off. Remove the expectation that you’re available 24/7. Your brain is never able to truly disengage. You’re sympathetically activated, 24/7. Waiting for the next text, the next request, the next stimulus. Set the precedent that you respond when you respond. I’ve been doing this since the get-go and nobody’s had a problem with it. Its just how I operate.

THE OVERSTIMULATION PROTOCOL

I don’t want you to go full zen hippie on me, but I do want you to be a calm, cool, and collected member of society. I want you to regulate your nervous system so you can actually access peak performance when you need it. Is that too much to ask? This goes hand-in-hand with my Dopamine Detox Protocol and Analogue Hours framework. Its absolutely essential that you train your brain to operate in a parasympathetic nervous system state, then strategically activate when you need to accomplish tasks without burning out.

Ditch the ego. You don’t have to be “on 24/7”. The “you sleep I grind” hustle movement is categorically lame. Its for people that are deeply insecure and don’t have anything else going for them. They all end up hypogonadal and schizophrenic at 42 anyway.

Eliminate Stacked Stimuli

Non-negotiable. Single-stimulus should be your primary framework.

• One screen at a time, maximum

• No phone while talking to humans

• No YouTube while eating

• No scrolling while watching anything

• Walk without earbuds at least 3x per week

Yes, you can listen to podcasts during walks. Yes, you can blast music while working out. But you need to prove to yourself you can do these things without auditory input. If you can’t, you’re more overstimulated than you think. Can you sit through an entire movie without checking your phone? Use this as your litmus, you gooner

Implement Analogue Hours

Minimum one hour daily. Zero technology. Not even “healthy” tech like Kindle or writing on your laptop. Become amish.

• No phone

• No computer

• No screens of any kind

• No digital devices

• Not even writing on a digital device

What you can do:

• Read physical books

• Write in an actual notebook

• Walk outside

• Sit and think

• Have in-person conversations

• Literally just exist

This will be your most productive and restorative hour of the entire day. Schedule it religiously. Treat it as non-negotiable as sleep. Timing doesn’t matter as much as consistency.

Protect Morning & Evening Gates

You get 8 hours of dopamine reset every night. Don’t ruin it by doomscrolling within 60 seconds of consciousness. How stimulated you get in the AM sets the pace for the rest of the day. Get AM & PM right, and the rest of the day falls into place. Get those wrong, and you’re succumbing to whatever grips your attention (near-unanimously Instagram Reels).

Morning Protocol (First 60-90 minutes):

• No phone for at least the first hour

• No screens until after movement/sunlight

• Slow, deliberate actions (making coffee, sitting outside, journaling)

• Let your brain wake up naturally without artificial stimulation

Evening Protocol (Last 90 minutes before bed):

• Hard screen cutoff 90 minutes before sleep

• Dim lighting only

• Slow-paced activities (reading, conversation, stretching)

• Noise & light reduction (earplugs if needed)

Strategic Noise Elimination

This is massively underrated and the most underutilized tool in nervous system regulation. You are a finely tuned sensory machine. You’re designed to identify the most subtle of stimuli. Literal spider senses. Constant auditory stimulation keeps your nervous system on alert all day.

Invest in earplugs, foam or silicone. Use them during:

• Deep work sessions

• Evening wind-down

• Any time you’re in loud environments

• Whenever you need to drop into parasympathetic state

Create actual silence periods during your day. Notice how different your nervous system feels in genuine quiet. The difference is absurd.

Reducing Light Stimuli

All these lights are too damn bright. Headlights, store lights, street lights, flash lights, strobe lights. Kanye West spoke about this briefly at length. Lights are giga-stimulants, just ask the sun.

• Avoid blue light as much as possible

• Get incandescent light bulbs

• Use blue light blockers

Biohacker’s Guide to Overstimulation

Now time for everybody’s favorite section: drugs. Tactical tools you can use to avoid overstimulation. We want to strategically manipulate specific neurochemical systems that govern your brains ability to chill out. I’m not a fan of blanket recommendations, but I’d be hard pressed to find anybody that isn’t suffering in the GABA department.

We have three primary objectives when combating overstimulation:

Balancing the GABA/Glutamate ratio

Glutamate is excitatory, GABA is inhibitory. In an ideal world these are balanced, but our GABA system can’t keep up with modern demands for inhibition. Hence, we must GABA max.

Read more

Most guys who understand nutrition have the basics figured out: Protein matters, don't eat like a slob, prioritize whole foods. But there’s a massive gap between understanding what to eat and knowing when to eat what, especially relative to training.

Your body operates on hormonal cycles that shift dramatically throughout the day. Cortisol peaks in the morning, insulin sensitivity changes with circadian rhythm, glycogen storage capacity fluctuates based on when you last trained. This all impacts what your body decides to do with the food you eat.

Understanding the metabolic context of training windows and adjusting your fueling strategy accordingly is key to flexible shredmaxxing. Anybody can get jacked with a militant schedule (see example: average prisoner gymbro), but its a different can of worms when you’re traveling, time zone hopping, dealing with unpredictable work schedules, or have other obligations that take precedent.

This protocol will serve two purposes:

1. A full nutrition program for morning, midday, and evening training schedules

2. A semi-comprehensive overview of metabolic foundations so you can create your own eating schedule

I hate rules, you should too. Understand mechanims and you can free yourself from the chains of room temperature IQ meal plans.

Understanding Metabolic Foundations

Nutrient partitioning is everything. Where your body sends nutrients (muscle cells vs fat cells) depends primarily on 3 factors:

Insulin Sensitivity: How effectively your cells respond to insulin’s signal to uptake glucose. Highest in the morning and immediately post-workout, lowest in late-evening.

Glycogen Depletion Status: Empty muscle glycogen tanks pull nutrients into muscle tissue like a vacuum. Overflowed tanks shunt excess carbs toward fat storage.

Hormonal Environment: Cortisol, growth hormone, androgens, and thyroid hormones all influence whether nutrients get used for energy, stored as glycogen, or converted to fat

Keep insulin sensitivity high, optimize hormones, keep your metabolism burning in “goldilocks” zone to upregulate basal metabolism. And respect. the. Randle. cycle. When you eat fats and carbs together, they compete for the same oxidation pathways. Your body can’t efficiently burn both simultaneously. Neither fuel source gets used optimally and excess energy gets stored.

There is no shredmaxxing without respecting the Randle cycle.

Core Protocol Rules:

Randle Cycle Separation:

• High-carb meals: 80% calories from carbs, minimal fat

• High-fat meals: <30g carbs, prioritize high quality fat intelligently (treat like supplement)

• The higher your daily caloric intake, the more important this is. The more your metabolism is upregulated (via shredmaxxing), the more you can mix fats & carbs (although I don’t recommend if wanting to shred).

Fruit Till Noon (FTN):

• Implement 3-5 days per week.

• Consume only fruit, fruit juice (plus optional MCT oil/collagen) for 3-4 hours after waking

• Trains your body to efficiently metabolize carbohydrates, upregulates mitochondrial function without the burden of protein/fat digestion

Fructose from whole fruit gets processed differently than glucose. It goes through the liver first, doesn’t spike insulin as dramatically, and actually improves hepatic (liver) insulin sensitivity over time. By extending your overnight fast with pure fruit, you keep autophagy elevated, maintain fat oxidation from the night before, and prime your metabolism for efficient carbohydrate use earlier in the day. This is quasi-intermitting fasting without any of the catabolic, pro-cortisol effects (quite the opposite).

Starch Loading Around Workouts

Stack complex (starchy) carbs pre and post workout. Starch breaks down into glucose over 2-4 hours. Consume pre-workout to improve performance, pump, and muscle growth. You want to “use” starchy carbs to train hard and recover harder.

• 50-100g starch carbs 60-90 minutes before training

• 150-250g starch carbs withing 60 minutes of completing training

Post-workout is your glycogen supercompesation window. GLUT4 transporters are maximally expressed on your muscle cell membranes, insulin sensitivity is sky high. Your muscles are giga-primed to pull in glucose. Most well-trained guys have 400-600 total muscle glycogen capacity, you likely depleted 30-50% during training. Aim to slightly exceed glycogen depletion for super compensation. The more muscle you have and the harder you train, the more carbs you need. Combine with lean protein for optimal anabolic state.

Complex carbs give me a noticeably “fuller” look. Simple sugar for getting lean & dry, complex carbs for getting jacked & pumped. Cycle accordingly.

Leverage Pro-Metabolic Tools

Beyond basic nutrition & timing, specific compounds can amplify your body’s ability to handle carbohydrates, partition nutrients toward muscle, speeding up metabolic upregulation and mitigating risk of becoming a chud.

These aren’t fat burners or appetite suppressants, just tools that improve how efficiently your cells use fuel.

• Taurine →Shuttles glucose into your cells, preventing excess blood sugar

• L-Carnitine L-Tartrate → Improves fat mobilization (burn) AND insulin sensitivity in skeletal muscle

• C3G → Increases GLUT4 expression, increases insulin sensitivity

• Black Ginger → Thermogenic, increases fat oxidation and glucose uptake, activates AMPK, upregulates cAMP

• Ubiquinol & PQQ → Boosts ATP production in high-energy organs, protects mitochondria

These are tools. Minor tweaks that can upgrade your machinery. Like installing a new fuel injector & transmission on your car. Essential? No. Efficacious? Absolutely.

Upregulate mitochondria, boost fat mobiliation, and make sure glucose efficiently enters your cells. Taurine in the AM, Taurine, Black Ginger, & L-carnitine pre-workout, C3G Post-workout, Ubiquinol with high fat meal.

This serves as troubleshooting and scaffolding for various workout times. I recommend you Copy-paste the sections that apply to you into a separate document and keep on your phone. Godspeed

MORNING WORKOUT

For those with tight schedules. Morning workouts actually have their benefit. Cortisol is naturally spikes, meaning more fatty acid mobilization and nervous system activation for high intensity. Growth hormone is elevated from the night before, but glycogen is depleted.

Training fasted can lead to muscle breakdown and recovery issues. Here’s what I recommend:

The Night Before

Carb refeed BEFORE you go to bed. 90 minutes after your high fat meal (if time enables), get a moderate carb & protein refeed in. Yogurt, honey & berries. Maybe some sprouted oats. Troubleshoot and see which meal leaves you the most “full” upon waking (gauged by pump & performance at the gym).

Pre-Workout (Upon Waking)

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Hard work is overrated. Sure it’s important, but it’s not a differentiator.

For every 1 percenter that attributes their success to “hard work and dedication”, there’s 99 people that worked just as hard, were just as dedicated, but have little to show for it. People get caught up in the “hard worker” identity. They work 60 hours a week to accomplish what others get done in 12. Their life is exhausting. They work so hard they have no time to learn how to work SMART. They stick with inefficient systems for years simply because that’s how they always do it.

These guys always burn out. They wreck their health, happiness, and quality of life. But for what? Nonsense. Climbing faster up a mountain doesn’t matter if it’s the wrong mountain. Working harder doesn’t matter if you’re working on the wrong things.

This bleeds over to life as a whole. Most people grind away, never asking whether they’re playing games they’re uniquely suited to win. They stay in suboptimal environments, build habit out of ineffective routines. They lack creativity, they accept the status quo, and never consider there may be a better, easier way to get to their end goal.

They’re rowing up shit’s creek without a paddle. Gnashing and gnawing against their vices. They try to eradicate their bad qualities instead of integrate. They’re playing life on nightmare mode for no reason at all.

I’m going to share with you how I turned the game of life on easy mode. A system to accomplish all your goals on auto-pilot. A tangible guide to lifestyle design.

I’m going to show you the exact 6-step framework to design a lifestyle that makes failure effectively impossible.

Shall we?

Know Yourself

Most people simply don’t know how to observe themselves objectively. They’re afraid to dive deep into their psyche lest they run into something they don’t like. They approach their faults with shame instead of curiosity. This is the number one thing keeping people back: the inability to view themselves objectively. To take inventory on who they are. To map out their behaviors and tendencies.

I used to be a highly reactionary individual. Zero self-control, inflammatory, aggressive. I was a slave to my emotions. That was until I learned how to observe myself objectively. I spent six months doing guided meditations daily during lockdown. After a while, I learned to observe my emotions instead of being consumed by them. I could view myself from third person, segmenting myself and my brain.

I turned myself into a science experiment, documenting all my behavior, thoughts, and actions like a researcher observing a lab rat. I compounded this by obsessively studying the ADHD brain, Jungian archetypes, and assorted readings on human psychology.

By the end of that six-month period, I had a near-definitive snapshot of who I was. Now that I knew this, I could strategically create an environment, lifestyle, and routine that complemented who I was.

I stopped playing games I was supposed to play and started playing games I was uniquely suited to win. No longer was I a slave to my emotions. My compulsive behaviors vanished and I finally felt in the driver’s seat of my own life.

What I Learned

I learned more about myself in six months than most learn in 10 years of therapy:

• What gives me energy

• What drains energy

• My core values

• My weaknesses

• My optimal daily rhythm

• My potential

• My limits

I finally knew how my brain worked. I stopped complaining about my faults and simply built around them in order to reach my goals. Now that I had this information, I could start implementing it in my life.

Note: There is no such thing as good and bad traits. Traits are traits. Hone them properly and they work for you, let them manifest negatively and they work against you. The same trait that makes me inattentive and scatter-brained makes me elite at connecting dots and generating ideas. This is why I focus on strategy and not accounting.

Remove Baggage

Most people hold onto things that no longer suit them. Things, habits, routines, visceral reactions, emotional baggage. You gotta purge all of that. I went so far as to get rid of 99% of my stuff and move to a foreign country, but you don’t have to do that.

Simply take inventory of your life and figure out what baggage no longer serves you. Where are you working against yourself? Obsessing over politics? Hoarding T-shirts? Housing a pint of ice cream a night?

When I’m coaching people, I always tell them that WE are coaching them. I go so far as to address them in third person. You can’t get through to somebody who is emotionally tied to the subject at hand. Bring up their faults and they get defensive, ashamed, or straight up shut down. The key is to treat yourself as somebody you’re responsible for. Like a direct report in the corporation that is you. You are playing manager and operator at the same time, and need to know when to switch between the two.

Once you get rid of that knee-jerk emotional reaction to your behavior, you can get creative with it. Every fault is an opportunity for a new strategy. It’s all one big game of Sims. Once you get a few wins, you’ll be hooked on personal development. You’ll sniff out inefficiencies in your life with drive and vigor. No hurdle is too big when you’re playing strategist.

Map Your Goals

By this point, you should have a clear understanding about what really drives you. What you want to accomplish and why. Accomplishing these goals is as simple as:

1. Removing anything that detracts you from reaching your goals

2. Crafting a lifestyle that makes achieving said goals inevitable

It’s easiest to start with your immediate environment. If your goal is mental clarity, find things that distract you and remove them. Take willpower out of the equation:

• Simplify your wardrobe (reduce decision fatigue)

• Streamline your work routine (minimize cognitive switching tax)

• Get rid of ALL junk (free up mental real estate)

Set the table, so to speak. This makes room for intentionality.

Staying in Sandbox Mode

The Goggins-type, life or death, masochistic self-development model is broken. You’re bound to fall off the bandwagon at some point. Instead of being hard on yourself and self-flagellating, use that failure as an opportunity to learn more. Why did you mess up? Is there too much friction with your current routine? What roadblocks are making hitting your goals difficult? There is no deadline on creating an optimized life. Nothing is really that make or break, all that matters is progress and intentionality.

Don’t rest your laurels on hard work. Strive for alignment. Everything you do should be fluid and natural. No rigidity, just flow. If you can accomplish this, all your goals will be baked in.

Optimize Your Environment

You wouldn’t put a monkey in an aquarium, why are you settling for an environment that doesn’t suit you? I know myself well enough to know that I need:

• Close proximity to nature

• Minimalist, uncluttered space

• Lots of sunlight

• A vibrant, varied daily routine

• Daily creative expression

• Ample physical activity

If any of these are missing, I become a nihilistic asshole. Call me fragile, I don’t care. Being able to “live anywhere” and “do anything” is cockroach coded.

Because I know what I need, I’m willing to give up what I don’t. I don’t need a vibrant nightlife, a restaurant scene, or nice amenities. I don’t need a nice car or nice clothes. If I find myself gravitating towards what OTHERS want, I know I’m losing the plot.

Make sacrifices for things worth sacrificing for.

Tangible Examples

Example 1: Healthy Home Maxxing

You’re in your house every day, why wouldn’t you make it as effortlessly optimized as possible? If you do something every day, find a way to optimize it.

• You sleep every day → get organic sheets and blackout curtains

• You breathe air every day → get an air filter and snake plants

• You shower every day (hopefully) → get a shower filter

• You eat every day → stay loaded on healthy snacks, don’t allow junk food in the house

• You work every day → get an ergonomic setup

• You use lights every day → get circadian-friendly incandescent light bulbs

Educate yourself. Most people are willfully ignorant to all the things getting in the way of their goals then make random excuses. That shit doesn’t fly anymore.

Example 2: Learning a New Language

I wanted to learn Spanish, so I lived in Spanish-speaking countries for three years. Instead of taking lessons, I did things I already wanted to do, just in Spanish:

• I journal every day, so I translated my journals into Spanish

• I socialize every day, so I started socializing with Spanish speakers

• I watch YouTube every day, so I put on Spanish subtitles

• I use my phone every day, so I changed my settings to Spanish

• I listen to music every day, so I listened to Spanish music (and sang along)

At no point did I grind. I just changed my routine, environment, and lifestyle to accomplish my goal via osmosis. I now speak Spanish muy bien and crush it at Cumbia Karaoke.

Example 3: Fitness Consistency

I have a hard time with consistency. I get bored easily and am particularly spontaneous. So instead of staying with a strict regiment, I took the opposite approach. I have no workout routine. I train what I want to train when I want to train. If at any point I don’t want to train, I figure out why and redesign my style to make it enjoyable. This has enabled me to keep S-tier fit for a decade.

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We are seeing a real-time fork of the human species. 95% of the population is actively turning into bots. They let LLMs and algorithms think for them. Their world revolves around a screen. They have no social skills nor ambitions outside of those on their Instagram feed.

We are losing what it means to be human. To think clearly, critically, and independently. Most don’t notice until its too late.

If you want to maintain your humanity and hedge yourself against the cattle-ification of mankind, you MUST make a deliberate decision to avoid the pull into AI-induced entropy.

This video goes over exactly this: how to not become a bot.

Godspeed,
Noah

Gm gents. I want it all. Size, strength, athleticism, mobility, endurance. What I call Jackedleticism. I have found a number of exercises that help me pursue my gym goals (strength + size) without sacrificing my martial arts goals (mobility, fluidity, coordination). Here are 6ish exercises from a session I programmed for a couple of pro fighters (hence the vulgarity and overall CTE behavior in the background of some of these vids) I personally run this once a week and will sprinkle in individual exercises shown below on regular training days.

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Hybrid Combat Training Philosophy

Traditional bodybuilding is all optics. Spend one week in a grappling/striking gym and you’ll see what I’m saying. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get jacked. If you want to look formidable and actually BE formidable, these are the core frameworks you should train from:

1. Fascia Integration → Building Elastic, Coiled Power

Train your body to act as a spring-loaded system. Faster recoil, smoother transitions, more kinetic chain efficiency. Kettlebell ballistic movements stress the fascia system via rapid stretch-shortening cycles, loading the posterior chain in a myofascial “sling” pattern. Lots of rotation and explosion out of coil. Athletics/combat all about explosive transfer of force through MULTIPLE planes, not isolated muscle contraction

2. Cross-Muscle Group Coordination → Neural Precision Under Load

Isolation is good for bodybuilding, bad for athletics. We train the nervous system to recruit multiple muscle groups in precise sequences. Essential for combat (and overall physical IQ). Kettlebell flows demand synchronization. Scapular control, core stability, hip hinge power, and grip. All under continuous dynamic load.

3. Explosiveness in Unstable Patterns → Making it Awkward

Some of these exercises will be awkward. Thats the point. Off-center & reactive position training is essential to mimic the mechanical scenarios of combat sports, we incorporate a lot of asymmetric loading, offset centers of gravity, and acceleration/deceleration cycles to force high CNS output. Barbells are stable & linear, kettlebells are dynamic and chaotic.

4. Rotational & Anti-Rotational Strength → Transferring Force Across the Core

Absorbing force is one thing, redirecting, rotating through, and exploding out of it is another. Every ballistic kettlebell drill involves rotational torque and anti-rotation stability. Mr. Miyagi wax-on/wax-off style, but under load for the extra gains

5. Conditioning Under Neuromuscular Fatigue → Intelligent Gas Tank

You’ve got explosiveness, you’ve got endurance, but what about explosive endurance? The ability to stay explosive when gassed is crucial. Complexes and chains like the one below train CNS output under lactic stress. Strategic fatigue conditioning teaches your body to recruit hard and fast after you hit redline.

Programming Kettlebell Movements

These are high-skill, high-vulnerability patterns. They require more coordination and explosiveness than typical lifts. Start light, prioritize form, and focus on reps under precision.

This workout is intense, and honestly too much volume for most. Exercises are best broken down into two warmup sets and two top sets. Any more than that and recovery might be impacted. Aim for 45 minutes total. I go a little over on reps here but aim for 8-12 range.

WARMUP FLOWS

Start with bodyweight movements to grease the gears. Focusing on hips and thoracic spine. 30 seconds each for two total walk throughs

Pancakes

Apply force into the ground through your knees. get a nice twist on the spine

Sit-Through Pancakes

Explode up at the end. You should feel a stretch at the top of the movement

World’s Greatest Stretch

Simple really. Really reach for the stars here. 30 seconds each side

Stone Throws

30 seconds each arm. One of my favorite movements. Watch the first video where I explain the movement.

MAIN BLOCK

These are the heavy hitters. Maximum focus, force, and effort. 2 warmup sets for higher reps, focusing on form. Then two top sets of 8-12 reps. Form over weight

Technical cues:

• Grip the bell with intent like you’re going to throw it

• Use the swing to project you

• Focus on the coil, land soft and loaded

• Drive from the ground. Push the earth away don’t pull the bell through space

• Exhale sharply on swing. Load, explode, reset

• Don’t collapse the spine. Keep it braced like someone’s trying to punch you

Ape Swings

Like a kettlebell swing, but more ape-like. As I’m coming out of the pocket, I’m pulling the kettlebells up & back, like a combination of curl and back row. You’ll feel this in your lats and traps if done right. Redirect the force like a coiled spring. Every step loads the next. Land soft and absorb through the glutes and core.

Double Swing and Half Clean

Same swing pattern, but instead of pulling in you’re pulling up. You really want to feel this in your shoulders. Get elastic, explode OUT of the movement like you’re lifting somebody into the stratosphere

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Gm Gents,

Everybody talks nutrient density, nobody talks nutrition variety. Nutrients operate in a continuum. Too much of one depletes another. Not to mention we’re playing the nutrition game on “hard” mode:

• Most foods are depleted of their mineral content thanks to industrial farming practices

• Our guts are so compromised we only absorb a fraction of the nutrients we normally would

We’re starting rough out of the gate. Combine this with a caloric deficit, IIFYM dieting, and strenous physical activity and you literally cannot escape nutrient deficiencies.

Any individual nutrient deficiency will have negative systemic effects. These symptoms overlap one another and are hard to pin down. I recommend everybody do an audit of their average food intake over the last few years and superimpose that with the most common deficiencies (and any other subjectives like medical history, symptoms, medication etc. Plug this into GEEKBOT 3.0 and you’ll get some better insights

This was in part why I built the shredmaxxing protocol: upregulating your metabolism means you can eat more food. More food means more opportunity for nutrient allocation. But this sparks a new problem:

The hotter your metabolism, the more nutrients you burn through. Turning food into fuel isn’t cheap. It requires loads of co-factors, most notably:

• Iodine and Selenium (ramping up thyroid hormones)

• Zinc and Copper (training, stress, testosterone optimization)

• B-Vitamins, especially B1 (Burnt up in the Krebs cycle. Needed for ATP production)

• Magnesium (universal co-factor, used in everything from protein synthesis to nervous system regulation)

• Antioxidants (higher metabolism = more oxidative stress)

• Electrolytes (more heat production = more sweating)

Deciding to embrace the Shredmaxxing is deciding to upgrade from a Camry to a Ferrari (cliche analogy, but it works). You run better, faster, hotter, cooler, but it comes with a cost. And that cost is NUTRIENTS.

You can’t put 87 octane and get your maintenance done at Jiffy Lube anymore. You need optimal inputs otherwise back to Toyota dealership you go.

If you want to optimize vitality with longevity you need to start doing nutrient side quests. This is the Ubermensch approach to optimal biology: no weak links, give your body everything it needs to self-actualize.

I don’t eat like a bodybuilder, I eat like an epicurean. My foundation may be consistent and monotonous, but my application is varied and novel (I’ll get into this later).

This, in my most humblest of opinions, is the difference between working hard and working smart. Hard work isn’t a differentiator, its a prerequisite. For every Andy Elliot type that attributes their success to hard work, there are 99 average Joes working just as hard.

Resting your laurels on hard work is ego. You give yourself no competitive edge. Smart work takes luck out of the equation, it gives you access to outsourced returns. Once you work smart, you never go back.

Why Nutrient Variety is Important

Its not controversial that we are seasonal eaters. Unless you lived on the equator, your meal prep looked drastically different depending on season:

Spring: Different plants emerging, specific game animals, fish

Summer: Berries, different meats, varied vegetation

Fall: Nuts, root vegetables, fattier animals preparing for winter

Winter: Stored foods, different hunting items, preserved items

This constant rotation meant bodies never fully adapted to a single nutritional protocol. Metabolism stayed high because the system never knew what was coming next (and we were stayign active outside all day, lesson in there).

I hate to bring up “bUt tHe hAdZa tRibe”, but modern nomadic populations show significantly higher metabolic rates compared to settled agricultural societies, even when controling for activity levels. Nomad maxxing wins yet again.

The Metabolic Adaptation Mechanism

When you feed your body identical inputs repeatedly, several things happen under the hood

1. Your gut starts producing exactly the enzymes needed for those specific foods and not for anything else

2. Thyroid function downregulates. Your system recognizes it doesn’t need peak metabolic output to handle predictable inputs.

3. Mitochondrial efficiency increases, which is a mixed bag considering “efficiency” here means “burning fewer calories to process the same food”

4. Gut microbiome diversity halts. Different food feeds different bacterial strains. Your microbiome is as cool or as boring as your diet (considering how much your microbiome impacts who you are, this should be something you hold to heart)

Mechanisms aside, you simply can have too much of a good thing. Switching up your food sources reduces risk of nutrient imbalance. We also live in a world of supply chain opacity. Cycling food sources hedges against contamination risks (metals, plastics, whatever).

I go insofar as to cycle my culinary styles. I’ll spam italian ingredients for a month, then greek, then persian, then southeast asian, then mexican. On & on. Quite enjoyable.

Main Quest vs Side Quest Nutrition

Main quest is macros. Side quest is micros

Main quest is consistency. Side quest is variety.

Even the main quest needs variety. Create your “Macros roster” and build your strategic cycle. Opt for what is financially feasible, easily digestible, and accessible. Have your “main”, then deviate from that when fit.

Protein Source Rotation:

Each protein source has unique amino acid ratios, fat compositions, and micronutrient profiles. Even though ruminant meat is a clear winner, there’s so much variety within that. You can change up the cuts, the cooking method, the type of ruminant, the source. You name it.I typically cycle between:

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