Ronnie Landis: Greetings and welcome to another edition of the Life Mastery Podcast Show. I’m your host, Ronnie Landis. I am so excited about today’s conversation that you are going to get to listen to. This is one for the record books. This is one of the best recorded conversations that I have had in a long, long time.

This one definitely top of the list. And this is what two individuals that I have so much respect for and two individuals that not only are colleagues of mine, friends of mine, but are also mentors of mine. And I’ve known both these individuals for between 12 and 13, maybe 14 years. We have a lot of history together.

So Mr. Wade T. Lightheart and Matt Gallant are the CEOs and founders of a company called BioOptimizers, and they also have taken on a company called Newtopia, which you’ve heard me talk about both of these companies at scale if you’ve listened to any of my prior podcasts. Now, this episode is super special.

I’ve interviewed both of these individuals multiple, multiple times individually. This is the first time that I could get both of them together, and it took many months for us to line this conversation up. We go so deep into so many different topics. pieces of territory when it comes to optimal health, longevity, peak performance, advanced spiritual development conversations.

And ultimately the foundation of this conversation is about ending diet confusion, ending the diet wars. They both wrote an incredible book that recently came out that’s really the nutrition Bible. And it’s about ending the confusion and the conflict and the conflicting information of dietary hoopla.

You know, I’ve been in the diet world for 15 years as a nutritionist. I’ve seen everything. I’ve been all around left, right, back to center. And it’s such a unique conversation for the three of us to be able to share our, let’s call it consciousness filters that each one of us has been looking through the lens of this conversation.

And both of these individuals bring such a depth of wisdom, practical insight, incredible information and knowledge. And at some point in the conversation, it just morphed into this. Profound unpacking not only of health, not only of physical health and longevity and how to achieve peak performance in a physical sense, but how to develop yourself as a spiritual being and how to use health strategies, um, neurofeedback, nutrition.

as a way to develop yourself as a spiritual being. And both of these individuals have a lot of wisdom to share when it comes to that. So I know that you were going to get so much out of this episode. And after the recording, both of both Matt and Wade told me that this was the best podcast that either one of them has been on.

Because just the nature of the questions because I’ve known them for so long, and I’m such an inquisitive type of person when I’m on a podcast with someone, I’m essentially trying to peel back the layers of my own inquiry. I’m trying to figure out the the quandaries of my own thought process and then just record it in a public forum and share it with all of you.

And I think that’s what makes this conversation so unique and fascinating. It really is kind of like a, an adventure. It’s really like a journey that the three of us went on and this is the result. So I’m really excited for you to listen to this. And I want to make a mention of the company’s bio optimizers and Nutopia.

These are two of my favorite companies when it comes to full spread nutraceutical natural supplementation, brain, cognitive enhancement, nootropics from nootopia and the biological optimization tools that bio optimizers provides. You can go to bio optimizers. com and or nootopia. com. Use the code life mastery, tend to get a discount on your products and.

Wow. I’m just so excited for you to listen to this episode. It’s going to bring so much to your self optimization, health optimization journey. So without further ado, let’s dive deep with my friends, Matt Gallant and Wade T. Lightheart. Wade T. Lightheart, Matt Gallant, welcome to the Life Mastery Podcast.

Wade Lightheart: Great to be here. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Have 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. So this is going to be a really unique conversation. No doubt. I’ve had both of you on the podcast multiple times. And so we’re not going to go into your guys individual backstory. Um, we we’ve done that multiple times on other individual podcasts. All of us have some history.

We’ve known each other for a long time, you know, definitely in the, the kind of inception of my Career as a holistic health practitioner and author and speaker. And both of you have actually been very instrumental in the development of me becoming an author, you know, especially you, Wade, like you really inspired me and actually took me under your wing at one point and mentored me in like actually starting a business.

Um, and you know, I didn’t even really know. What I was doing just on a shoestring budget, running around the country speaking and, you know, profitizing and pitching my books and tonic herbs. And, you know, just kind of doing that. And then you really helped me organize. What I’d already done and start a business and start creating livelihood and freedom and that actually set me off on the path that I am now where I actually only do what I want to do whenever I want to do with whom I want to do it.

And I just want to credit you to that, um, credit you for that really supporting me and helping me on my path. And then Matt, like we’ve really, um, we’ve known each other a long time, but we really recently. Dropped in and connected more, um, at the different conferences. And then with your work with Newtopia, that lit me up when I found out about those products and then connecting with Mark and, um, I just, I have so much respect for both of you and I consider both of you, not just colleagues, but like big brothers, and I just want to say that before we go in, cause this is going to be a special conversation.

And, um, yeah, I just really appreciate having this moment with you guys. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. 

Wade Lightheart: Yeah. And, uh, you did all the work, so we just pointed some directions so, you know, you can take credit for your own efforts, write all the books that you’ve done and stuff. And to do all the things that you’ve done is, it’s, it’s no small accomplishment.

It’s not easy. Yeah. I 

Matt Gallant: think another point that always comes to mind, I think about the ripple effects over time. And. Everybody’s always influencing other people, and we’ve been influenced by our mentors. And, you know, if we can influence other people to get on the health path, and then eventually maybe they become advocates and educators, they’ll influence the next generation, the next.

So if we just fast forward over time, you know, we’re all having a massive impact, including you, Ronnie. So thank you. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah, appreciate that. So getting into the topic at hand, which is inevitably going to springboard into a many other subtopics, but you guys put together a book called the ultimate nutrition Bible, which is an interesting title and something I really want to unpack with both of you, because one of the interesting elements of the three of us coming together in this podcast is that both of you have been on Opposite sides of the diet spectrum.

And to best of my knowledge, still kind of represent those sides in your own individual health practices. And I want to dive into that with you. And what’s interesting, just thinking about my journey is that Wade, I’ve really been aligned with your path with raw foods and vegetarianism and for about 10 years or so, and then in 2020.

I made the shift into incorporating animal foods back into my diet, which I never thought that was going to happen. That was not part of my. You know, my thought process, it was something that I played with through people like Daniel Vitalis, and it kept kind of coming up for me when I had certain challenges, but I was going strong for the better part of 10 years.

And then something just happened inside. My body is a very shamanic experience and reluctantly, I decided to incorporate animal foods and I had like a whole shamanic experience, like a DMT experience, actually, when I. Ate my first, you know, bite of steak essentially. And that kind of shifted me more towards, you know, your side of the swings, Matt.

And so I think it’s an interesting, like, I’m kind of in the middle here, an interesting position, holding space for this conversation, because there might be a lot of people listening to this that are on opposite sides or toying with what really works best for them. Maybe they’ve been a vegetarian for a long time, but something’s not working.

Or maybe they’ve been. Paleo or eating a lot of meat and they’re feeling like I’m feeling a little lethargic or heavy or something’s not working there And they need guidance to find more of the middle way. So I I feel like that’s what your book is about um So i’m curious like what comes up for you when I say all that 

Wade Lightheart: Well, I, you know, I’ll give you a snippet of the last three days of listening to random podcast.

I heard one expert talking about how they were so into one meal a day programs, and then they found the consequences of it. Now they regret their decisions and are trying to work their way out of it. Then I listened to a guy that was talking about how carnivore diet that he went on fixed his heart condition of 42 years.

You know, then I read another piece where a lady was going on about how she, you know, in her spiritual evolution, she just, all of a sudden she started vomiting, having meat. And she started just to go to plant based and was inquiring about other people that had that. What’s the common element between all of those three people?

One, they got hooked into a diet philosophy for whatever reason, either ideological values, uh, an emotional connection to an influential people or the sense of tribal unity and three positive results from that diet. But those three things are not good enough on a biological level over time. In fact, they can impede one’s ability.

To go forward in a, in, in deploying a different strategy. And now everything that you learned becomes an obstacle for you to deploy that new strategy, because your sense of identification is wrapped up into the diet, into the emotionality, into the spiritual concept, into the tribal community. And now. The asset that got you into making maybe a positive choice is now the inflammatory agent for you to move something else.

So I would sum it up really simple, the courage to experiment without condemnation. 

If you 

have the courage to experiment without condemnation, which is the pre factor to scientific method. I was listening to Brett Weinstein the other day talking about science. So every single innovation that’s ever occurred in the world started with an N of one.

In other words, somebody had the courage to say, Hey, I tried this new thing. I saw this new thing. This was something new. And he was one. And so science recognizes that most of what people are going to have as an opinion is bunk, but you run experiments to see if you can produce the results. And you have a measuring agents.

How does this all tie to the book? So the book right here, this, this textbook, this Bible, this reference guide is essentially a step by step methodology to explain the pros and cons of every diet, the cycle of emotional, tribal, cultural influences that are holding you in one area or preventing you from other, or need to be accommodated within your diet.

Plus a wealth of every single type of problem that you could run into from a strategy standpoint and how to mitigate for it. And it doesn’t, and then here’s all the main diet strategies, get to work. So that was a long answer, but I thought it was important because you had the courage to make that change.

And you can, you know, the resistance that is happening when you’re part of a dietary tribe. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah, I don’t, and I just, I just want to comment very quickly on that just because what you said, you just opened up such a core principle to this. And as someone who’s has the experiential reference for that process, um, I’ll just share very quickly before I hand it over to you, Matt, I think you’ll appreciate this too.

So when I was sitting there about to eat my first steak, and there’s a whole process that went into that, like, I was like, Are you really doing this? Is this really? It was a whole thing, right? Very simple process. And I just saw all the programming and the ideology and the identification to a community that quite honestly no longer existed.

Actually, the community that I came from no longer actually existed in the way that I experienced it before in the height of like the raw food, superfood world, right? It was in transition. But this old identity that I was holding on to in terms of who I was in that was still hanging on. And then I just, I just talked myself through it.

I said, look, you’re running an experiment. It’s no different when you started the raw food thing. It was literally just an experiment to see what happens. And then when I did, this is an interesting thing, when I ate the first piece of steak, I had a rush of blood flow come through my body. I had a brain gasm.

It was so intense, like I literally took a hit of DMT. And I literally felt the vegan goggles fall off. No, no exaggeration. It was like a psychedelic experience. The actual goggles or the overlay fell off. And then after that, I wasn’t the same person. Like I literally started to go on YouTube and look at all my friends and contemporaries in the raw food world.

And I started to see. The malnourishment, the gauntness, the, the, the, like, I started to say, I looked myself in the mirror and I was looking over years of photos and I was like, Oh God, Oh, wait, whoa, wait a minute. Like I didn’t see that before. Somehow I just put it to the side, but all of a sudden I could see what I couldn’t see before.

So I just wanted to share that piece because it was the psychological identification that I had. to that that actually created blind spots to my physiological requirements. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah. On the note of ideology, it’s a great segue. First, Wade and I debated for a long time about what diet was the best. I think one of the things that Wade and I share is We want to find what the best thing is, you know, that continual pursuit of excellence.

And I thought keto is the best. We thought plant based diets were the best. And as we debated over time, we started to find common ground. And if we strip away the labels like carnivore and vegetarian, and we get down into first principles of nutrition, we’re left with calories, macronutrients and micronutrients.

I mean, yeah, we can add maybe a couple more layers, but those are the three fundamental things. And if we looked at those three things, Wade and I are pretty similar. Okay. We are right. So again, if people have spiritual reasons for being plant based or vegetarian or vegan, that is a completely different thing.

And we address that in the book, but putting that aside, it’s calories, macronutrients, micronutrients. And again, our protein intakes probably very similar. Wade eats a little bit more fiber than I do. I eat a little more fat than he does. But the rest of it is probably very, very similar. And as we were writing the book, I’d say one of our Nord stars was, how can we write the most complete, unbiased book on nutrition that’s ever been done?

And as we were writing the book, we had to question our thoughts and our beliefs and ask ourselves, how can we write Well, is this true? So for an example, you’re looking at, I’ll just use a really simple one. Like I thought that if you’re fasting, drinking carbonated water was a good idea, well, I Googled it and I looked at the research and it was the opposite.

It can trigger more hunger for the research shows. So like every single thought in the book, I, you know, We asked ourselves, is this true, look at the science, look at the research, there’s over 750 scientific references in the book because we needed to make sure that it was as solid as possible. And of course, the science, science changes, so we’re not saying the book is the absolute truth.

In five years, probably 20 30 percent of it’s going to be obsolete, and we might have to release another version. And that’s a really important point, is that so many things that I’ve believed over time have been proven to be inaccurate because we were missing a piece of the puzzle. Let’s use the intermittent fasting as an example.

Became a really hot trend. The hottest trend in nutrition for a while, but nobody was thinking about the, the consequences on an MTOR level. So you got guys like Peter T or Tim Ferriss saying, well, I was on intermittent fasting for a couple of years. And I’ve lost lean muscle mass. My body fat percentage went up, even though I’m pretty much eating the same amount of calories.

Why is that? Because there was a loss in anabolism and we talk a lot about how anabolism is one of the most powerful metabolic game changers you can focus on. You know, we have a whole chapter called optimized metabolism and maybe Wade, you can talk about. Uh, bodybuilders have really figured that out and, and Wade, maybe talk about just the gap that exists between what bodybuilders know to be true.

And then, you know, help nuts, because I think there’s, there is a gap where health nuts just focus on eating super foods and nutrient rich foods and kind of miss the picture on protein and calories. Whereas bodybuilders, it’s all about macros and calories, and maybe they miss the boat a little bit on nutrients and other pieces.

Yeah, so in the book we identify five specific outcomes 

Wade Lightheart: goals. So goals become your North Star Overlaying your values. So if you have spiritual values, you know That’s going to impact if you have a community values religious values social Constructs and I think you can’t underestimate the social community aspect of dietary practice whether that’s Picking out with your family at Christmas or being part of a cacao ceremony in Sedona.

Okay, you know that there’s a social component that very few diets address because a lot of times people break down because of the social context. Well, how do I know that? Well, I might be one of the most ridiculous people ever to walk in the fitness industry. So the bodybuilding industry has created an industry that has mastered both restriction and over consumption.

Ronnie Landis: Interesting. So, 

Wade Lightheart: so, so, so, so, and, and, and they figured this out decades ago. So you go to any bodybuilding contest at a local level, fitness and bodybuilding, I’m including both of those. Inside of that, virtually every single person in the show, the worst person in that show looks better than most people on their best day, as far as body fat and muscle composition.

Why is that? Because unlike the calories in calories out community that says you have to restrict calories solely as your way to, you know, get your body fat level, which is it’s extreme expression. Is in the fasting community or the intermittent fasting community. They’re just playing that game.

Bodybuilders say, no, I’m going to create strategic feedings that activate anabolic responses. Around my protein content in a calorie depleted state to hit my body fat levels. And I’m going to use exercise as the manipulator to keep my metabolism high. And I’m going to supplement high nutrient.

Ingredients that are specific to the growth of building muscle and losing body fat and they’ve mastered it. And now the number one goal people get on a diet is to lose weight. Well, and you know, there’s all these different communities. If it fits your macros is generally what bodybuilders use, right?

Which is the easiest format that they don’t care. If it comes from a bar, if it comes from a steak of beef, if it comes from a bunch of vegetables, it’s like, I need this much protein. This much carbohydrates, this much fat and this much fiber and fiber and protein are the primary manipulation tools on satiety and satiety is a factor that you have to address if you’re going to mean if you’re losing body fat is an objective and given the obesity crisis that’s probably the primary driver of it.

And then the final piece on the The bodybuilding side of the equation and why that’s relative to the counter arguments again. It’s what bodybuilders aren’t that healthy body built a lot of the bodybuilding community. You have to realize is using a variety of supplements or pharmaceutical agents.

Growth hormones, steroids, um, you know, beta 2 adrenaline, thyroid medications, anti cortisol drugs, painkillers, the list goes on. Basically, they’re just throwing a cornucopia about whatever to add a few more pounds of muscle or get so ripped you’re suboptimal for health. So bodybuilding is a sport and its outcomes.

Now, interesting enough, the entire anti aging community has broken out of bodybuilding, you know, the discoveries on it. Now, bodybuilders tend to do really well until they get into their mid 40s, 50s, and then beyond. And part of the drug usage around it is, can have impacts on cardiovascular health and things like that.

So it’s not a pursuit in health. Neither is going to play NFL football and getting smoked by 300 pound dudes that can run a four and a half, 40, you know, like that’s not healthy. You’re fit. So we mistake fit. For healthiness and bodybuilders are very fit relative to the sport, not necessarily healthy, but probably healthier than the general public.

To a certain point, the super food Terrians that are like nutrient, nutrients, nutrients, everything. Yeah. Okay. You’ve got all these nutrients, but you don’t have enough protein and to, to convert into the amino acids you need to maintain your metabolism. And then they run into metabolic issues down the road.

That wraith like look that kind of permeates the superfood, superfood philosophers. And very few people have the courage to actually objectively look at it without condemning oneself, the community they’re from, or proselytizing to the new community that is. And that’s the cult like dynamics that has emerged in dietary stuff that is an obstacle for people being successful or for people not being confused.

Ronnie Landis: And I, I imagine too, one of the biggest challenges in the instant access, microwaveable drugified digital world that we live in is marketing. It’s all marketing. It’s to, you know, it’s, people are, are essentially marketing a product or a service or a, a program of some sort to make money. And the best way to do that is create a community, create a cult, create a following behind it.

And that’s something that I just want to throw in there because you two are also expert marketers, but you’re marketing truth, you’re marketing wisdom, you’re marketing common sense and basic principles with incredible products that actually work. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah, I want to jump in on that because truth is. If we would have packaged this in a different way where we would have pretended to have the truth 

And 

created a new tried to create a new diet philosophy diet cult.

We would have probably Been a lot more successful with the book sales and i’m very aware of that and we chose to Follow the truth and try to bring a new paradigm and it’s tough and it’s hard Cause as marketers, we know that tribal dynamics is one of the most powerful mechanisms you can use. And a lot of people use it.

And, you know, I think there are ethical cults, but the majority of them are very manipulative. And again, we’ve seen this in a dietary world. We’ve seen the rise and fall of diet called after diet called after diet called and within Instagram and social media. Yeah. Now you’ve got diet cult wars where one tribe is battling the other, right?

It’s just factions at war. So we’re trying to again, end the diet wars. It actually, that was one of the potential titles of the book was the end of diet wars. And you know, it’s really what we’re trying to do is instead of identifying the differences between what you’re eating and I’m eating, we’re trying to find common ground and it’s kind of like the glass half full glass half empty paradigm, you know, like I said earlier, okay, wait, does it eat meat?

He eats more plants than I do, but if we look at what we’re doing that’s similar, we’re probably 80%, 90 percent similar when we look at carb, you know, macros, calories, and micronutrients. So there’s 10, 20 percent that’s different. Are we going to go to war because of that? It doesn’t make sense. And that’s what we’re trying to figure out.

Bring to the world. But I think that’s a tough pill to swallow for a lot of people. Well, I’ll let Ronnie comment on any of that stuff. If you want before I 

Ronnie Landis: have a different thought process, but I want to, I want us to complete this thread.

Wade Lightheart: What does a, what does a person really want to get to? I think you have to ask the question and I would say you want to become a nutritional Jedi. And what does that mean? You’re able to correlate your intuitive awareness about dietary selection, compound it with your ability to discern the truth from the data presented to you, to be able to experiment Amen.

Systematically to integrate what works and to let go that wasn’t. So the Wu way Zen master Jedi nutritionist, which is a level beyond cult. So religion, which is very closely associated with what we’re talking about of dietary stuff, religion is a form of culture. Cults emerge out of culture. Religion has a set of do’s and don’ts and, and, and, and, and composites and reasons why and gods and deities or whatever within that structure to influence people ideally in a positive way.

And for the most part, it will get you to a certain part, but the, all religions cannot lead you, they can get you to a certain point, but then the limitations within the religion itself. becomes problematic to one’s true pursuit of the relationship with divinity, right? And We see this playing out now in AI worlds.

Like AI is the new religion and the new God. It’s when Fauci says, you know, I am the science. It’s like messianic prophecy stuff. Like, so science or people say the science is settled. The science has never settled. The whole process of science is you can’t settle it. You know, you’re, you know, like, so when you see these themes are like, Keto is the only way, or vegetarian is the only way.

Now you’ve moved from a beneficial process of self improvement and arriving to the truth that the, the tribal dynamics have now spent themselves in every single person. Who is following any kind of dietary philosophy is eventually going to come to this reality. You are going to come to the part where your dietary philosophy is diametrically opposed to that, which is.

In alignment with your cellular biology. And now you’re going to have a conflict between your indoctrination, what’s your body’s telling you and what the science says is the resolution. So how do you get past that? You got to step into the abyss of the experimentation beyond the cult, beyond the tribe, beyond the indoctrination, so that you have the courage and the capability to go do that experiment and see if it works for you.

Right. And that to me is the ultimate goal of the ultimate nutrition Bible. It’s to help people step beyond the cultification of their nutrition program and become a nutritional Jedi. Yes. Yes. 

Matt Gallant: And one thing I want to add that I think is really important is that, you know, there’s a part of the book where it’s like every diet decoded and we talk about the pros and cons.

And we believe, let’s use veganism or even raw veganism as an example, could that diet work for everyone? Probably not. However, if you’re really, really smart about it, meaning that you’re looking at your amino acid content, you’re supplementing with the right things. things, you know, you’re using enzymes or you’re supplementing the vitamin B’s that you’re missing, whatever it is that your body needs, you will be far more successful.

And I think Wade’s a great example of that where, you know, very few people could have pulled off what Wade has pulled off as a vegetarian bodybuilder. And he’s done that because You know, he’s used used enzymes for years, which helped him get the amino acids. You know, he’s been supplementing, he does blood work.

And I think where people run into problems is when they’re not using data to see their deficiencies and deficiencies will kill you over time. If you don’t take care of them, you know, there’s a lot of different deficiencies that will wipe you out. And I think if you’re smart about those. And you’re adjusting over time, then you’ll be far more successful.

So that was another piece of the book is like, well, how can we make, how can we give people the tools that they need to make, you know, whatever diet that they want to follow work. Um, and I think we did that. 

Wade Lightheart: One other caveat on that I want to put forward. For people who are really inside a dietary philosophy, and this isn’t what I would consider an elite conversation, but you’re in that category, Ronnie, so I want to throw it out there for because some of your followers, I would say, are in that elite conversation.

One of the things that, so why did I do a bodybuilding diet? With a vegetarian, you know, philosophy, except the limitations, except the attacks from within the community, except the conjectures and, you know, same thing as why, why did I do it again last year when I was 50 and went back to the world championships again, in my fifties, I wanted to create a set of positive constraints.

So that I could expose the common flaws within that dietary philosophy and then apply my brain to figure out how I could overcome the limitations of that dietary philosophy as a modus of service to the people who could never get out of the indoctrination. That’s my mindset around it. When I see a guy like, Jordan Peterson and his daughter, Michaela, who had extreme levels of problems, like, you know, genetic case for inflammatory conditions, and they, you know, are on the carnivore diet, you know, the lion diet, I think she calls it.

Who can argue with the results that they’ve produced? Is it the optimal diet for everybody? No, but they’re working within the constraints of that. And, and now when you dive a little deeper into their podcast, particularly with Michaela, she’s talking about many of the other things that we bring up in the book that they’re using to augment their health and vitality within the limitations of that.

So I’m encouraging people who are in a dietary philosophy to start forming up like Matt and I did. And start having productive conversations with people with diet, different dietary philosophies and taking the insights that an advantages from one diet and either incorporating it or finding a, a way that’s within their philosophy to replicate the results.

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. 

Wade Lightheart: So I’ll give you an example. Simple. Matt was really into fats. I was in the bodybuilding world back in the day, back in the eighties and nineties, you know, where like, like fats were the enemy and he came on a little longer and he was in a disqualify camp and they were like, fats are your friend and you know, like, I can’t tell you, can’t tell you how deeply we bumped up against it, but we were so convinced that we wanted to know the truth or prove the other guy wrong.

We just kept going at it for years and years, years. Yeah. But then when I incorporated some of the, when he, Matt would make a point with me, I was like, fuck, you know, he’s got that. Right. I got to like, God, I got to figure a way out. I got to figure a way out of it on the plant based side to counter that point.

You know, it’s like jujitsu or something. I was like, Oh, he’s got me in the arm bargain. What’s the rollout of this move that I can’t. And if you roll, if you’re in that long enough, I think you learn how to roll it, but you’ve got to put yourself on the mat and those compromised positions within your thing.

And be open to the criticism that someone might direct at you 

and say, 

yeah, give, criticize this, take this apart. And if it bruises your ego a little bit, good, you know, as Jocko Willink said, good, some good will come out of it for you being wrong about something. And, um, and I think that’s a, In a digitally connected world with civilization technology and the ending technology or civilization advancement technology, this is the kind of thinking we have to apply just in nutrition, but also as citizens of the world, because if we don’t, we’re not going to last.

Nobody’s going to be eating anything. 

Ronnie Landis: Yeah. Okay. So I’m bullet pointing a topic around metabolic typing. I’m just putting that to the side for now, because both of you, Are really articulating something that has been very present in my mind, because first of all, really what it sounds like this book is about is first principles.

You know, the context and the content, you, you have to have a context for the relativity of the content. Otherwise it’s just all over the place. You have to know what the form and function, what you’re trying to do with it. Right. What you’re communicating is a transferable principle to all areas of life and really the, the plight of humanity, not to get into too big of a macro conversation, but when you talk about religion, you talk about ideology, you talk about conceptual frameworks that are creating impositions on people’s liberation, their freedom of movement, their freedom of expression, their freedom of autonomy and sovereignty, I mean, it’s no different than talking about the diet thing.

And I would even, I would even go venture to save for everyone listening. How you decide to feed yourself is the first base principle on all the other rippling elements of your life, because the thing that you’re doing more than anything is putting food in your body. And it’s actually the most essential thing that you do as a functional human being, you’re eating something, right?

So, you know, I just think that’s, I’ll leave it at that, but that, that’s just kind of what came up. 

Wade Lightheart: Yeah, let’s comment on that comment. Um, one of the things that Matt and I are extreme guys and we like extreme conversations and radically test each other. So one of the great mustard tests that you can do on any belief you have.

So how do you self correct your thinking? Well, number one, it’s probably helpful to get someone else because it’s almost impossible to get past your cognitive biases and someone that is going to challenge you. That’s the whole point of debate, but run an extreme experiment on yourself, like you take something to the radical point.

Let’s let’s take fast food. Everybody talks about fast food as the bad thing in the, you know, that’s, it’s damaging. It’s killing you. It’s doing all this sort of stuff. Okay. Well,

you haven’t eaten for two weeks. The only thing around is fast food. You’ve got an issue with fast food. You say, screw it. I’m not going to eat the fast food because it’s bad for you. You go another two weeks. There’s only fast food. You know, how long are you going to play that game? You can die. And people have died for their beliefs.

We know people who have died about extreme receipts within the, within our community. 

Ronnie Landis: No, Pete. No. I was going to say, I know dietary legends that have died because of that. Yeah. Yeah. 

Wade Lightheart: So is fast food evil? Is it bad? Is it wrong for you in that situation? No. Fast food will keep you alive. You know, that, that, that burger, that’s going to keep you alive.

Totally. So, so, so is it truly evil? So you’re looking at degrees of optimality. And if that becomes the, the, the, the, the point of reference, as opposed to the vilification or the aggrandization of food, then you’re going to have a much easier time of moving away from these moral judgments or these ethical proclamations on people and dealing with it.

Because every single person here has got vegetarians. In their gene pool, they’ve got carnivores, they got, like, we are single cells in the human body throughout all time. And our responsibility is to form our function as a cell inside that human body. And number one is to feed ourselves and number one is to protect ourselves from all sorts of agents that are trying to take us out.

And number three is to put those genes forward in time. That’s the human story 

Ronnie Landis: and the imperative of our time right now. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah, just to share a really disturbing story to say the least. There was a woman that killed her baby because she was trying to, well, she fed it only vegan food. So, you know, that’s, that’s the consequences of trying to force a belief onto a biological, a biological reality that obviously did not work out.

So, but, you know, as far as the entire book, if we were to summarize it into a single framework, it’d be chapter six. which is the pyramid of nutritional decisions. I was going to rip through it really quick and we can jump into it. But the, you know, it’s like the tiers of decisions, you know, if you were to try to create the perfect diet for you, the me diet, the Ronnie diet, how would you do it?

Like what, what decision matrix would you go through? So the first layer is spiritual and cultural commitments, which frankly doesn’t apply to probably 90, 95 percent of the world, but You know, we have a lot of Muslims that work for us. And as an example, did just finish Ramadan. So for them, essentially doing intermittent fasting for 40 days is a devotional thing, right?

Did you dry fast every day and eat at night? And. You know, we’re very supportive of anything that’s spiritually oriented in any act of devotion is a beautiful thing. So we’re here to support these people. Second layer, emotional and psychological needs. You know, and Wade kind of described what motivated him earlier.

To become a vegetarian and to prove all of these things, and that’s just part of Wade’s makeup. He likes that rebellious side, loves a challenge, you know, that contrarian side, loves to prove people wrong. And that drove him, you know, it drove him to the world stage. And for me, for an example, I’m more motivated by, you know, scientific truth, and I love science, and I try to find, um, you know, what, Science says is the thing so very different there and then probably the biggest ones in terms of what’s going to shape your diet as goals.

We touched on it earlier muscle building fat loss athletic performance cognitive performance and then health span life span longevity. Those are the five goals and based on what your goal is it changes everything right if your goal is building muscle mass need more calories need more protein your goal is fat loss.

You need to be, you know, in a calorie deficit. So it just changes based on your goals. That’s the third tier, fourth tier, calories and macros, which is defined by your goals. Next is nutrigenomics, which is using genetic tests to determine, and I think we should circle back to that topic because it’s such a big deal, um, you know, what types of foods you should eat or not eat.

And just to use, to give you a quick example. I have bad genetics for saturated fats and I just found that out relatively recently. So now I’m replacing a lot of my saturated fats with monosaturated fats. And these are the things that will probably have a massive impact on my health span, my lifespan. So these are really important changes.

Gut biome, which obviously that’s kind of what launched by optimizers gut health. I think we have probably the most complete suite of digestive products to optimize gut health on the market. Supplements, which a lot of people don’t think or believe that they need supplements, but to really be optimal. to push your health to its pinnacle.

We think it’s impossible to do with food alone. And then number eight, food allergies and sensitivities. And this is something that’s so overblown. You know, there’s so many people, again, these are unscrupulous marketers that know that if they generate fear by attacking kale, attacking oats, attacking phytic acid, attacking fast food, whatever.

Whoever the enemy is, seed oils, that they’re going to generate a lot of attention and you know, it, it works, but the problem is that’s only an issue for a very small percentage of the people, and of course, those people should be very mindful. And then the last thing is lifestyle. You know, can you sustain whatever it is that you’re doing for life?

both psychologically and physiologically. And for you, Ron, as an example, you know, on some level, you, you didn’t feel that what you were doing was sustainable for the rest of your life. And you shifted. So kudos to you for that. But there’s, I’ll stop there and let Wade fill in some gaps if he wants to. 

Wade Lightheart: I think that was well done.

Um, and I think one of the coolest emerging areas and we dedicated a couple of chapters near the end of the book on it is genetics and epigenetics. In other words, using nutrition, using biohacking technology or biological optimization technology we like to use or using, um, different strategies to activate genes.

The positive expression of your optimal genes and to delay or deactivate the activation of the negative side of your genes. And that’s where the future is, uh, about optimizing healthspan and lifespan. And, you know, at the end of the day, wherever your dietary strategy is, most of it starts off as cosmetic, aesthetic kind of things.

I want to look a certain way so I can be attractive to the others. You know, bisexual preference. I guess I got to use those terminologies in the world. But actually, it would be that is primarily based in biological replication, right? Extending your genes into time. Okay. And then let’s say you get into family life.

So now you’ve been successfully able to do that. You’re likely going to move more towards a performance based diet. How do I have enough energy to deal with the kids, do my work and keep okay. And then the third phase is typically happens in the course of a person’s lifetime is like, okay, now I’m suffering.

From some sort of compromise health from the collective group of choices that I made during however many years before. Based on my genetics and lifestyle insurance and now I got to make adjustments in those areas. If I want to extend. You’re or, or either improve the quality of my life or extend the length of life, or ideally both.

Unfortunately, most people start there. In other words, they’re already seriously compromised and they start playing that game early and they don’t understand the other points of the game. What this book identifies is to understand the whole game from start to finish. You know, from, you know, from, from birth to tombstone.

Okay. And to, to, to recognize that you are a different person throughout that process. Jordan Peterson says you are a community unto yourself throughout time. You’re a kid. You’re a teenager, you’re an adult, you’re a responsible adult, you have a family, then maybe a grandkids, and then all these sort of things.

You’re a person in society, you’re collected, then you’re a producer, and then you’re a dependent, and you’re a decrepit dependent, and then you’re dead, okay? Like, so if you can’t treat grandma in your street with some compassion and empathy, what’s the likelihood you’re going to be able to do that for yourself?

Right. 50 years from now and largely in part your awareness about your community or who you’re dealing with is directly proportional about your awareness. So as it is internally, the discipline that you apply on yourself, the awareness you put on yourself, the process that you put in yourself is going to determine how you interface with the rest of the world.

And I, we advocate compassionate empathy for yourself. We’re all struggling people in this piece of dust floating on the edge of the universe, right? It’s a miracle. Like the likelihood that we’re even alive is incredible. And the fact that we made it this far, whoever you are, that’s incredible. It’s something to celebrate.

Like the human body is pretty fragile and yet it has all these crazy biological mechanism and all these, uh, I’ve been doing this my whole life and the more I learn about the body and the more I get into this, the, the, the, the, the more fascinating it becomes, it just, it just becomes a whole trip. It’s like, it’s like being in a psychedelic road trip for life.

When you get into the nutrition industry at this level, it’s great. And, um, and I think that’s, that’s the idea. So the good news is if you’re young and you’re in that. you know, influential stage, then this provides a, a complete perspective that will be revealed to you before you go through those stages and you can plan accordingly, preemptively.

Ronnie Landis: Wow. Okay. So first of all, I just want to say the combination of both of you and this conversation is really profound. And for all the listeners, if you’re on the nutrition, holistic health optimization journey. I just want to recommend that you go deeper into the conversations on other podcasts between Wade and Matt, and also the bio optimizers podcast, because you don’t really actually need to look at too many other options on the menu board of podcasts and other, um, teachers, not to say that don’t, people don’t have incredible value, but what both of these gentlemen are communicating is, is something so, um, Central and and they’re tying together to what would seem diametrically opposed perspectives and frameworks, but it’s actually something that’s so critically important for everybody that’s on this journey and they both have multiple decades into themselves of experience.

Um, I want to go deeper into some of the, the. The technical stuff, but there was two ideas that came up that both of you brought up in the synchronicity of this conversation. You mentioned the psychedelic, uh, you know, experience of this whole thing. That’s what I’m actually having right now. Um, one of the things that came up, Matt, when you were talking and then you just elaborated it, Wade, is that when you’re talking about chapter six of this book, what came to me was that, oh, this is actually just about self acceptance.

Like what you’re actually talking about from a psychological and emotional, physiological, social, Um, breakdown it’s like, Oh, actually we’re talking about learning to love yourself. We’re talking about how to accept all the parts and pieces of who you are and then to organize your nutrition and lifestyle factors around a deeper sense of self love and self acceptance.

That’s, that’s really actually what came up for me. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah. I think the most important chapter related to that is chapter 11, which is like clearing the emotional blocks to victory. And both Wade and I have done tremendous amounts of work to do that, whether it was through, you know, round, multiple rounds of neurofeedback and doing forgiveness work.

I am a certified EFT practitioner. Some people love EMDR. Some people are using psychedelics. There’s a lot of tools in the toolbox, but When you really want to feel at peace with who you are and a lot of people with food issues, which means they’re using food to cope with life, they’re driven by their traumas.

So anything people can do to help clear these traumas out of their nervous system. And I think The Body Keeps The Score is definitely one of the best books on this topic. And, you know, there’s been so many people that are advocating to clear your nervous system. There’s a lot of great educational resources.

It’s a lot of great tools, but pick something that you resonate with and do the work. You know, I think it’s been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I think Wade would say the same. And when you clean house emotionally and I’ve noticed it in myself, like I’m just less driven to. overeat and use food as a drug.

And it’s important to realize that when you’re eating high fat, high sugar, hyper palatable food, you get a massive dopamine serotonin response. So it is like a drug, the same centers in the brain that get lit up by heroin, get lit up with high sugar, high fat foods. And there was times where, you know, That was my strategy.

It was just, you know, these massive, uh, high calorie, high sugar, high fat days. And it was like a drug like experience. And in the last couple of years, I’m just less attracted to that. I still do it once in a while, you know, have a big feast with friends, you know, it’s one of the things Wade and I love to do together, but yeah, I’ve just noticed I’m just less compelled to do those types of activities.

And again, EFT has been researched for weight loss. It is very effective to reduce. food cravings, and what we’re seeing with the success of GLP 1 drugs, as we touched upon earlier in the podcast, you know, you got to manage hunger and cravings. And those are two different things. Hunger is more biological cravings, more psychological, and you need good tools.

And, you know, EFT for me has been one of my, my top tools. When I feel any sort of emotional disturbance and sensations in my body, my nervous system that don’t feel good, that’s really my go to 

Wade Lightheart: tool. Another tool in the toolbox that we use and deploy is, uh, Kinesiological testing. So for example, and I’m going to, I’m going to reveal something I haven’t revealed ever before on any podcast.

Every single year I meet with my, uh, my number one kinesiological test, or do I call them the wizard? Because I know I can test really good, but some things on your own self, you’re going to have biases. So I test. My vegetarian bias every single year is it served the highest good for me to continue on as a vegetarian or not?

And every single year I get a yes If that changes at some point in the future i’ll change like that So that’s going you know and for people want to know about that Go check out power versus force, uh, and all the David Hawkins books. And I want to tip our hat to David Hawkins 

as 

a spiritual teacher.

And his, his books are incredible. The whole series power versus force kind of sets the table and the rest is the buffet letting go probably a great point. It was one of his last books, and that book is really good for letting go of the past, or things that were disruptive for you. But I think the influence of his work was really helped us in the book is that there are unifying theories that are beyond the, the ordinary public purview.

And these have immense power. Uh, and transformational power, and we wanted to write a book from that perspective of how do we unify all of the great people and all of the different dietary philosophies and structures and cultures and how can we unify because if I looked at all the people that I’ve met in the nutrition industry that whatever their dietary regimen.

The one common element I find within them is number one, they’re taking responsibility for their health. Number two, they’re doing the work on all level. And three, they’re advocating that philosophy to other people. In the context is they want to help them, right? And that’s universal between all of those people So how do we write a book where they can all come together under one unified format to say we are all helping people In our own way So if I want to be a keto guy and be in the keno community and all that sort of stuff I don’t have to hate the vegan community or the vegan community for that And what’s happened is that’s the thing is now we’re we’re pitting the people that have figured out You Dietary metabolism, lifestyle, like, like regardless of if you’re implementing any of these positive constraints on a diet, the level of health that you have over and above the general public is going to be light years ahead on probably every single metric you use.

We’re preaching about, no, no, there’s there there’s levels to this game. We’re wanting to take you to the absolute pinnacle of understanding. And as. Advocate advocates for dietary philosophy in the first place. We’ve all made our living out of it. We made careers out of it, all this sort of stuff. We also have to own the fact that we haven’t done a great job of getting that message to the public.

The message to the public is they’re getting fatter and sicker and all causes mortalities going up on the large scale. And then there’s a small percentage of people that I would classify were probably in that group. Which is the breakaway group, which is living their best life. They’re super vibrant.

They’re going to live longer. They’re overcoming their genetic weaknesses and diseases that would take up. They’re preemptively addressing negative side effects. And they’re going to be the people who live to, You know, healthy, a hundred and beyond. And so the invitation is in order to get more people in that camp and to change the model for the generations to come, we need to have a unified message across the board and create dialogue of that.

Matt and I had to go through is let’s go from condominium condemnation. Let’s go to, you know, congregation where we can test and experiment with these ideas. That is the enlightenment era that ushered in the scientific revolution. And we need this on a human revolution of consciousness. And the book is a guideline for everybody, whatever their dietary philosophy might be of how they can bridge that gap, how they can reduce the stress and, and, and problems in their own life of trying to get their way over someone else and actually learn system and bring the value that you have extracted from that to a wider audience and not get the baby thrown out with the bath water because is.

You decided that you could only talk to, you know, paleo people. If you’re not paleo, you’re a loser. You know what I mean? Like, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re dumb or all these proclamations that we use, I call it the schoolyard condemnation, you know, about whatever your difference is, as opposed to leveraging that into a positive way.

Ronnie Landis: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like what was just coming to me and I don’t want to digress too much because there’s a few key things I do want to, I want to dive into with you guys, but like what just came up for me again is like what I’m hearing from you, what I know from both of you, this book actually feels like.

A very practical, dare I say, even spiritual roadmap for self optimization and, you know, in the great, the great Vedic text Bible, the Upanishads, there’s a great quote that comes out of it. The subtle energies of your food becomes your mind. So what you eat influences your state of being your vibration, your frequency, your energy field, your emotional state, your psychological state, which influences your decisions, your behaviors, your nervous system state, how you show up in your life and how you treat other people as a by product of how you feel inside yourself and your, your state of being in your, your, your health.

So it’s like, it’s just, I just, I just see the profundity of. Something that’s so simple and I just want to, yeah, I just want to, I just want to make that point.

Yeah. Okay. So now I’m going to, I’m going to pull in a few, a few technical threads that I really want to get both of your perspectives on. Okay. So the thing that I’ve been, the one thing that I’ve been holding in my mind is around metabolic typing. And I don’t remember where this came up in the conversation, but.

I was thinking about Dr. Gabriel Cousins, and you know, Dr. Gabriel Cousins, like the, the, really the godfather of the raw food movement. He’s been a mentor of mine. Um, we’ve done like four podcasts together. I, I just hold him in such high regard. He’s obviously like an advocate for the vegan movement, but he said some really key distinctions early on in my journey that really stuck with me.

One thing he said is that, The exception is not the rule. So there’s a lot of people like fruit, fruitarianism and high carbohydrate, um, people where he was making the point that like, look, the exception can work for a lot of people in the extremes, but the exception is not the rule. And we have a lot of people that are exceptional that are trying to make the rule for everybody, and it’s just messing a lot of people up.

That’s 0. 1. The other point that he made around metabolic typing, and he arguably had the highest success rate for reversing. Type one, type two diabetes with his, you know, diabetes reversal protocol. He made the point that 70 percent of people are typically going to be fast oxidizers metabolically speaking.

So that means people that are going to do better on a higher fat, moderate protein diet, we might think that of ketogenic metabolism, and then there’s going to be other people that are more slow oxidizers. So that’s more of like a glycolytic. Um, carbohydrate dominant metabolism. Then there’s going to be sub oxidizers somewhere in the middle.

Um, and I thought that was an interesting point that he made as a veg or as a vegan, he was making that point to the vegan community. And that’s an interesting thing that I’m just, I’m just mapping onto both of you and your own unique experiences that you were articulating how you come from different ends of the spectrum, but you aligned on this conversation around essentially metabolic requirements.

So I just want to, I just want to bring that forth in a conversation around metabolic typing. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah. So I think metabolic typing was. Kind of the first attempt to make sense of genetic differences. I think that nutrigenomics, which is the science of using genetics to make informed nutritional decisions, is the evolution of that.

And I think somebody like Gabriel who works with a lot of people, if you have good pattern recognition skills, you just start to see that, oh, this, you know, with Caucasians they do better with higher fats. And maybe, you know, less, uh, they can fast better. And then you look at people with Mediterranean genes, they become hyper stressed out.

Their cortisol goes through the roof when they fast. So anybody that works with enough people over a long period of time. I think we’ll start to see certain patterns. And of course, now we have DNA kits that we can do. And right now, um, we haven’t released our own kit. Hopefully, maybe next year. But, you know, last year I did three different genetic tests And they were all revealing kind of different, different things, not, not opposing things, but they tend to focus on certain sets of genes.

And I was able to build a really good composite picture for myself with those three tests. So maybe we can get a little deeper into nutrigenomics. I’ll just wrap up with saying, you know, again, the saturated fat thing was really big deal for me. Um, again, am I going to live a lot longer because of it, because I’m switching more to monounsaturated fats reduce my risk of heart disease.

Probably. And Wade, you’ve got a couple of great examples as well, uh, related to nutrigenomics. 

Wade Lightheart: Yeah. Before I go down to the nutrigenomics, I want to present another point in that much of the research, uh, that people are applying is around overcoming a disease state. 

So 

the goal is essentially health. And the state that the individual is already compromised.

You have to factor that into there because there was a whole lot of actions that happened before that, that may have activated suboptimal genes. It might’ve taken you out. Now let’s go the opposite direction. I and Matt and both and I qualified for this. We got started out. We were on the performance side out of the gate day one and most performance based people mistake health, like fitness for health.

Fitness is. your capacity to do work relative to a given sport. Now, it turns out that bodybuilding, both of us were into that early on, is probably the most difficult outcome other than disease states. It’s the inversion of a disease, disease state, because you’re trying to overcome your own genetic and metabolic limitations.

Ronnie Landis: Interesting. Okay. So 

Wade Lightheart: I didn’t have the genetic, like I, like, When I saw Ronnie Coleman walk on stage, I was like, okay, my, my bodybuilding career’s over, there’s nothing I could do ever to even do that. There’s nothing that, no, like drugs, meat, genetic manipulation. It doesn’t matter. It’s not happening. Okay.

Like it’s not going to happen. Does it mean I don’t like the sport? Does it mean like, so. We grew up in a world where you would be looking at, for example, I remember getting ready for the Mr. Universe contest in 2003. I’m single digit body fat levels and I’m eating rice cakes, a high glycemic carbohydrate with a protein shake.

Just pure protein. And this guy walks into, I’m sitting at the training thing. A guy walks into me and says, you can’t get ripped on, you can’t get ripped on rice cakes. I’m shredded to the bone on rice cakes. Okay. No, I know. Is this an advocation for rice cakes and protein shakes? No, what I’m saying is, is.

We were using high glycemic carbs to be a delivery agent for the amino acids that I was consuming and I was suppressing my caloric intake overall. Now, was I starving all the time? Did I have a brain fog all the time? Oh yeah! Was I in pain with my joints? A hundred percent. And did I run into digestive problems after the, after the Mr.

Universe? Yeah. After the Mr. Universe. Okay. Like I made it to the goal and then now I had to deal with the consequences of the goal of that strategy. So I got clear. When I was 31 years old about the complications of a performance diet versus a health diet and the interactions that you might do on that.

From the longevity side of the equation, it’s settled. Muscle mass is one of the most important. Determining factors for length of life and quality of life. So all those bodybuilders, you still got an option to live long and live strong. Cause you got the first part of the equation, whatever you suffered over there, you might be able to come back from, and we hope to encourage that.

And similarly, If you’re late in the game, well, then you might be a candidate for using anabolic agents that in, in a, in a control type of way from the, from the medical community, 

Ronnie Landis: to boost up that 

Wade Lightheart: muscle mass and create that bone density and create the metabolism that allows you to get into optimal fitness state and then recalibrate again.

With these things. And so that’s why you need a dynamic perspective to where you are in the equation and what’s the most relevant goal in the book covers all of it. 

Ronnie Landis: Dang. That was so, that was both of those were so good. How much, how much time do we have by the way? 

Matt Gallant: Like another like 20, 

Ronnie Landis: 25 minutes. Okay.

Amazing. Thanks. All right. I’m just taking a, taking a moment here. Cause like, I’m just like, Oh, like everything just, uh, so much coming in and. Okay. This is, this is the thing I want. This is where I wanted to go. So I would be remissed if I didn’t have both of you here and I got your expert opinions on, on the two kind of approaches that I see.

There’s the technocentric biohacking gadget pathway. Um, there’s actually three, then there’s the entheogenic psychedelic pathway, right? And then there’s the, the naturalistic, you know, everything’s natural. And then there’s, there’s kind of now in our world, there’s a, there’s an interconnectivity, there’s a crossover between all of it’s basically just one smorgasbord of experimentation, right?

So without, I don’t want to get so much into the psychedelic piece, but like what’s been coming up for me is that The techno centric aspect to me, I have a turnoff to it, but I also have a gravitation towards things that actually work and help the body to self produce and to repair and get us back into an optimal state.

Anyways, I wanted to ask you guys, um, first of all, what, what, what comes up for you when I bring this up? And then I also want to get both of your perspectives on things like neurofeedback. Wade, we talked about that in the beginning. I have a sensei device coming to me for the first time. I’ve never really done neurofeedback.

I know of it. I’ve done a lot of. Entheogenic work. I’ve done a lot of, you know, a lot of psychological work, but I’ve never actually done neurofeedback. I’m really excited to go into that pathway. I’m going to explore what that has for just calibrating my brain state, my nervous system, just all the things.

So I know I’m throwing a lot out there, but I really want to open up that thread. 

Matt Gallant: Yeah. There’s one of the chapters we talk about the biological optimization process. So what you want to do is hypothesize tests. And then reiterate and you’re doing this feedback loop. And I think for people in any field that really want to push things to its full potential, that feedback loop is the key.

Now, when it comes to biology, you know, some of the tests that we talk about in the book is body composition tracking, heart rate variability, body temperature, sleep tracking. You’re using lab tests, like spectra cells for micronutrients, using Dutch tests for hormones, cortisol, gut biome tests, and, and genetics.

And I guess the question is, can somebody without these tests be able to figure you know, to intuit whether they’re on track or off track, whether they’re doing the right thing and the wrong thing. I think the odds of that is near zero. Okay. They might be able to intuit a couple of things, but one of the things that Wayne and I are big advocates of is that is connecting that data to subjective feedback.

So for an example, body composition, we could probably guess within, you know, a couple of percentage points, what his body fat percentage is, why Because he’s done tons of DEXA scans that he was able to correlate to how he looks. I’ve been tracking my sleep and by the way, I’m actually not tracking sleep anymore, but I tracked it for over a decade.

You know, I was using the Zio, I got the oral one. And at this point I know, you know, I’ve got enough subjective. experiences that I’ve correlated to data that I can within range guesstimate. Okay. I had a lot of REM last night, or I had a lot of deep, or I didn’t get enough sleep, or I wasn’t able to fall asleep.

So like all the parameters that it gives me, I’m able to, to see where I am. So I think that with time using data, you can build a better intuition around all of these things. 

Ronnie Landis: Key point. 

Matt Gallant: Yes, however, the diet boogeyman is real. We talk a lot about it when it comes to starvation survival mechanisms. And I think, you know, most people, if they’re not weighing themselves daily, for an example, they’re going to drift up.

And then two years later, they see a picture of themselves at Christmas, like, oh, damn, I just gained like. What did I do? I just gained 20, 30, 40 pounds. So I think the data helps people keep, stay on track. Like, would you, would you prefer being on a plane where the pilot is using tools or he’s trying to intuit how to go from Paris to New York?

I’m going to go in with the parrot, the pilot that’s using a dashboard of data. That’s just me, but back to Wade. 

Wade Lightheart: Yeah. So I’m going to go on a. So I’ll concur with Matt on a lot of those things, but I’m going to go and address all our intuitive nonlinear. 

Ronnie Landis: That’s what I love about this. Yeah. 

Wade Lightheart: I’m going to go down that road.

Because I would classify myself more in that nature than I would on the data. And I would say, Matt’s more data. oriented. Matt wants the proof. I’m like, I don’t need the proof. I’ve got the feeling the proof will come later. Okay. That’s the division. That is the fundamental delusion, the division. And, you know, my mentors and my masters are like, you know, far East Indian mystics.

who don’t need the plane, they just show up in the place in the other dimension so they can abandon the plane because the plane is the limitation. And I want to speak to those people because that’s, you know, if there was a tribe I was in, that’s the one I want to be in. That’s the one I want to stay in and I like it.

I like, you know, that non linear Eastern mystic The mystic philosophy, if I was to look to look at my own definition and I’ve lived that life. 

Right. I’ve 

lived. I always call it, you know, I think I’m myself, more of a muscle mystic than an actual bodybuilder, you know, it’s like I’m. I’m on this kind of spiritual journey as a, as a guy that, you know, works out with weights and, you know, experiments with weird things.

That intuitive nature is what leads to the development of data sensors to prove it. Wow. Okay. So it’s an essential component. You have to have those balancing agents because You said that not the exception isn’t the rule when you have an exceptional intuitive genius That can figure things out like a tesla in the world Well, then you got to listen to them and you you need all the the left brainers to go in and compress that into something That is usable to the general public that doesn’t have access to that state Simultaneously, to use a Bruce Lee component, is if you become too data driven, you become a mechanical man, you become scientific, you become rigid and compressed without You’re a robotic.

And he said, martial arts is the blending of the animal nature, that intuitive aggressiveness with the, the scientific application of muscle science. I’m paraphrasing here in that, that version of water. It’s the same thing for all of us. We are, we, we all tilt one way or the other neurologically when you do neural feedback scans, like a proper, you know, EEG brain scan and look at your brain, you’ll actually see.

Which areas you’re more dominant in which areas aren’t lit up which areas so you can develop executive decision making, you can develop intuitive capabilities, everybody has an inherent different brain and so one of the thing, the fascinating breakthroughs. And it certainly helped Matt and I is neurofeedback training has helped us have a more 360 degree because we changed the mechanism of observation and we changed the way that we looked at the data because intuitively, we understood that we already had biases that we couldn’t see and want to eliminate because we didn’t like the leftover effects of those biases, and that is, you know, problems in your relationships or you know, arguments in your world or emotional distress or uncontrollable behaviors based on traumas, and we all have those.

It’s like, okay, well now I’ve got a tool to actually strap on some technology to give feedback on my brain. So in the normal realm, I’m not my physicality because I can observe my arms. I’m not my emotions because I can observe my feelings. I’m not my brain or my thoughts because I can observe my thoughts.

So who am I? Well, neurofeedback is a way to slap on, you know, a Silicon brace, a Silicon based tool to give you feedback on your biological perception machine. Okay. So even intuition is a data point out of a biological process. It’s just using a biological machine at, you know, a carbon based machine versus a silicon based machine.

And I’m using that as an example between two polarities of intuition and technicality. Both are valuable. 

Matt Gallant: And I think neurofeedback is the perfect example is to add a little bit more color commentary. There are many, maybe not that many, but there are many Zen masters that never used neurofeedback technology.

They spent tens of thousands of hours. To be able to go into a high gamma state or a deep theta state and they just got there by doing a lot of sets and wraps. However, using neurofeedback technology probably accelerates that by a hundred X. And now, because I’ve done enough of it, I know if I’m in deep beta, I know if my gamma is elevated.

I know if my alpha is high or low. I know if I’m in a super high beta state and you know, I’m bordering on anxiety. Like I’ve done enough neurofeedback that I’ve got awareness now. I don’t need the device. I still use a device to keep training and keep going to the next level. But as we’ve, you know, talk about tying data to intuition and to awareness.

Um, with enough neural feedback, I think you develop that ability quite, quite well. 

Ronnie Landis: This, this is by far the best conversation of all time I knew is going to be. And just the, the synchronistic emergence of just my consciousness through both of you. Um, if this was just for me, then, you know, amazing. I hope everyone else is getting incredible value out of it.

I want to make a point and I want to go deeper into this, but I wanted to make an, just a reflection. How much I can relate to both of you. Like the two diametric, like not opposed, but the two sides of my personality that I’m actually are as somehow reconciling through osmosis in this conversation, I relate to both of you, like Wade, I think we’re just kindred souls, like I’m sure like through many past lives, I relate to your, your sense and what you just shared about like.

You know, developing that intrinsic endogenous intuition. And I don’t need gadgets. I don’t need things outside of me to tell me about myself. I think that’s been my aversion to the, the techno centric side. But then as I listened to you, Matt, I’m thinking. Damn, like those are my blind spots. Those are the areas that I can develop and work on to develop a more competent, more capable, more solidified version of myself that can operate in this 3d world that can develop a legitimate business that can develop things tangibly through.

Through, you know, deduction and actually seeing the numbers and then, and then creating a more optimized version of myself and the things that I want to create in this reality. So I, like, I I’m getting incredible value just like listening to the, the two of you cohere together. 

Matt Gallant: One last thing I want to talk about is, you know, Wade touched on, it’s using muscle testing, which is an incredible tool to assess things.

It is a skill, uh, I would say not everybody can be that accurate, but some of our favorite health practitioners that Wade and I rely on use it as an additional source of data. And again, they’ve done enough muscle testing. where they can muscle test something, get the hard data and correlate the two and see if they’re accurate.

And that’s one of the ways you get better. So I think muscle testing is a great tool. Uh, I wouldn’t ever have absolute belief in any muscle tests, but It’s a good data point to add to the matrix. And I think at the day, this goes back to what we, you know, same mindset in the book. I just use every tool.

Like why judge tools? Why condemn tools? It’s really always about using the right tool at the right time. And that’s using mindfulness, awareness, education to figure that out. 

Ronnie Landis: And I, I suspect too, you know, we started this whole conversation around, you know, You know, the process of deduction when it comes to nutrition and, and like figuring out essentially what actually works for you at the different stages of your development.

And Wade, you made the point that you’re going to be a different person and a different makeup at every stage of development. Ideally, some people stay the same. They stay a 10 year old child till the, you know, till they’re 60. Ideally, You’re going to continue to reinvent yourself and you’re going to have different needs at different stages.

But eventually, as you practice these principles, you do land on what works for you, right? You figure out what generally works for you. And so you don’t need the same You don’t need the same kind of rigid approach, but maybe you need that in the beginning because you need a roadmap. You need a blueprint.

Otherwise, if you’re too much of an intuitarian, you know, you could spend 10, 20 years just kind of floating around, but never fully land on what empirically works for you. 

Wade Lightheart: Yeah, 100%. I concur with that 100%. And each stage requires some foundational principles. We address those foundational principles. You know, particularly whatever diet you are engaging in adherence to the diet is number one and the biggest challenge around adherence is satiety.

If you don’t address and then from a health perspective, it’s nutrient deficiencies that’s leading to, you know, adverse inflammatory responses and degenerative conditions up and and applied to your genetics. And so, but the foundations, like Matt said early on is, is 80 percent the same for everybody.

Like the common elements are very, eat real food, you know, ensure that you say satiate it through either high protein or high fiber, depending on your genetics, pick a genetic component supplement with the dietary supplements that are going to be hard for you to absorb and utilize because of your unique genetics or that aren’t addressed inside your diet philosophy, incorporate muscle building exercise.

Into your life for metabolism, for body fat loss, for longevity, for virtually everything. Add cardiovascular as you get older, it becomes more, it’s easier to do when you’re older than building muscle. And then look at augmenting your physiological or metabolic agents as you age past the optimal level so that you systematically incorporate some of these other agents which can extend the quality of your life as you go through the inevitable.

degenerative conditions of aging. That’s, that’s what it is. And, and we’re excited to do it. I love all the questions that you’ve given us that they’re, they’re really good. They’re really thoroughly, you know, kind of illuminates the depth of your own journey and awareness and interactions with literally the who’s who inside of the industry 20 years.

So it’s, it’s, it’s, uh, I really appreciate the questions that you put forth to us. I think it’s the best questions we’ve had in an interview. So thank you for that. 

Ronnie Landis: Thank you for 

Matt Gallant: that. Ronnie, your interview is always fun because you’re always learning. You’re always driven to, to go deeper. And a lot of times the podcast we’ve done together, including this one, is you fleshing out these questions and bouncing them off of us, which is, you know, that’s part of the process.

I mean, that’s basically what Wade and I did together. Um, and, you know, kudos to the PhDs that helped us. Right, sort of the chapters like Dr. Natha, Dr. Monia who runs our lab, Katrin, there was just a lot of people that helped us create the more technical chapters in the book. Those were way beyond Wade and I’s expertise and, you know, together we can form much better opinions and help people a lot more.

Ronnie Landis: Yeah, thank you guys. Um, and I, just the thought that came up and I’m sure you both will appreciate this. I I stopped taking notes years ago, and I stopped kind of proposing these, these questions. I like to be prepared, but I like to just be organic. And I remember listening to Jordan Peterson, and I was listening to him talk, and I realized what was happening.

He was thinking out loud with the audience. He didn’t have a pre planned thing. He was literally wrestling with his own thought process out loud. And it was just such an enrolling thing. And I realized, oh, that’s. That’s basically what I do all the time. So I, it just kind of gave me the freedom and I, I appreciate that you guys appreciate that.

And I hope that everyone listening appreciates that. Um, and, uh, with that said, one final question, but before I get to that, can we tell everyone about bio optimizers, the book, and also maybe Newtopia for people that don’t know about it? 

Matt Gallant: Yeah. So if you go to buyoptimizers. com forward slash life mastery, use the code life mastery 10, you’ll save 10 percent off any purchase.

Um, I think you’re going to get access to the book. Not only did we film, not only did we write the book, which took us three years, we spent a week recording a video version of it. It is professionally edited. It’s beautiful. Access it while you can, because we were also building out a certification program.

Off of that, you’re going to get three cookbooks for free, a carnivore, one, a super food, one, and a paleo one. The super scientific nerds. We actually wrote summaries of every scientific reference that’s in the book. And there’s a 200 plus page supplement book that you get for free. Like that we had to pull out because the book was going to be over a thousand pages.

So all of those bonuses for free. Uh, if you go to that site, And yeah, Bioptimizers, we started by being hyper focused on nutrition, on digestion. Our motto used to be, we fix digestion. So we have probably the most complete suite of digestive enzymes. And different types of probiotic blends from, you know, probiotics that will actually improve your brain function, like cognitive biotics to probiotic blends that will film that will build healthy biofilm.

It’s called microbiome breakthrough to P3OM, which has been our longest standing probiotic product. Of course, we’ve evolved since that. We have magnesium products, sleep products. And then as you mentioned, we have another company called Nutopia, which Ronnie is a super fan of, where we build. Personalized nootropic blends that enhance your brain function, that enhance your neurochemistry and help you be the best version of yourself.

So, Wade, maybe talk about our guarantee as well. 

Wade Lightheart: Yeah, with all our products, it’s a 365 day guarantee. Money back guarantee. So for any reason that you don’t like it, something didn’t work for you. We offended you. I don’t know We give you your money back. And why do we do that? Because at the end of the day We want everybody to be happy with their purchase.

We don’t want your money for some reason We’re not trying to slick you into something or anything like that But the other thing is is if you’re one of those exceptions that one of our products or services or didn’t work for you We don’t want that to be the end of your journey. There’s so many nutrition companies please That do a disservice to the, uh, the, the entire industry by selling a mishmash of maybes in a bottle trending on some white label iteration that happened on a, uh, on, on a podcast.

And you can see those trends coming. And the problem is, is maybe that product would actually work for somebody, but there’s so many brand bamboozlers in the business. Thanks. That the value of that product is actually lost. So a lot of the condemnation that comes from the medical community around nutritional supplementation, right, is warranted because they’re classifying everybody in the worst companies.

But 

guess what? We don’t do that. We give you 100 percent money back guarantee. We’ll deliver the product to you We’ve got real people on the phones that answer that the text messages the chat bots. There’s no machines running This is real people real things and we actually get in to answer the questions if we if If our staff doesn’t know and they’re very well trained final piece on that.

How many pharmaceutical companies are offering money back guarantees on their products? And how many pharmaceutical companies have been sued because they didn’t inform people? We’re not here to condemn pharmaceutical industry. We’re here to show there’s a different paradigm for health. We’re a different type of company.

We treat people with respect. We can’t solve all the problems, but the problems that we do solve, we’re very confident in it. In fact, we give you a money back guaranteed for it. 

Ronnie Landis: Incredible. And I would just add my two cents that unlike some institutions and the ivory towers of society, these are actually safe and effective and they have a 365 day guarantee to prove that, which is incredible.

And it probably takes some time for some people to actually test something to figure out if it works. Um, So, yeah, thank you guys so much bio optimizers. I’ve, I’ve seen you guys since the inception, that original enzyme bottle that didn’t even have any branding on it. I mean, way back in the day, I’ve seen it from the very beginning and what you guys have been able to do.

inspires me on, on many levels. It’s an honor and a pleasure to just like be connected with you both beyond the journey. My last question for both of you is because this is the life mastery show, and I don’t think it’s possible to truly master your life unless you master your health, your physical body.

Um, what does life mastery mean or mastering your life mean to you? 

Matt Gallant: Yeah, I think it’s something that both Quaid and I are, you know, I mentioned earlier that continual pursuit of excellence and yeah, I think we’re, we’re attracted to being super human. You know, what does that mean? Great body, great relationships, spirituality, you know, how can we have it all?

And something that I contemplate a lot on is, you know, how do you win at the right games? And I do think that the most important decisions we make as human beings. Is picking the right games. Cause even though you’re winning at the wrong game, you just lost. And for an example, people that are, you know, trying to build wealth at all costs and sacrifice family, sacrifice, spirituality, sacrifice their health, they dominated one game, but they missed out on the real game.

So to me, that’s what life mastery is, is really making sure your health’s in order. You have good conscious contact with God on a daily basis. You know, spirituality is a way of life. Great relationships. And, you know, that’s the majority of it. And of course, you know, financial health is important as well.

Um, I think when you have money, it first of all solves the problems that not having money creates. And also if you have good intents, it can help you do good things and have fun Um, for example, you know, I brought my family down to, to Panama and to Europe last year. To me, like the value I got on a spiritual, emotional relationship basis was 10 times the money I spent to do that.

But if I didn’t have the money, I couldn’t do those things. So anyways, that’s it.

Wade Lightheart: Self mastery requires integration with the human body throughout time. There is no self, and that’s a really hard concept to get. And you have to do a lot of work on yourself to ultimately realize the truth within that. There is no way it is a composite, an algorithmic of biological and intellectual decisions within the human body at some set point in time with the start in an end and ending with The decisions I make will echo for 10, 000 generations to come the quality of those my own self directional component with the idea of how do I contribute to the human body over time, the more selfless I become in my pursuit of understanding myself, the more.

I, I separate from myself. So it’s big self, little self conversations. You want to get into that, go to Dr. Hawkins, and he explains that better than anybody else. So we’re these little human single cells is 10, 000 generations before us, all your biological decisions, all your, all every single biological function that you have in your body that gives you these end points, it is you inherited.

From a, from a long billions of years, at least of evolutionary components. So what formed all that was consciousness itself. I do not believe that biology generates consciousness. I believe that consciousness generates biology. The advantage of that is I don’t have to be attached to form to find its best.

Option for it. And the only way I can find the best option for it. is if I’m not attached to the form. That’s what the book’s about. Don’t be attached to the form. Be formless. Be shapeless. Like water. When the water enters the cup, it becomes the cup. When under, when water goes into the teapot, it becomes the teapot.

When it goes into the glass, it becomes the glass. Now water can crash and water can flow. Be water, my friend. 

Ronnie Landis: And we are going to drop the mic. On that point. Thank you, gentlemen. This has been an honor and privilege. I can’t wait to see you in the near future, wherever and whenever that may be. 

Matt Gallant: You got it.

Thanks, Ronnie. We’ll see each other soon.