Peter Attia's Longevity Routine (sleep supplements, diet, exercise, and thoughts on alcohol)

There are a couple of personal questions that I'm going to ask you just at the very end of this that I know people are also very interested in. One being your ideal diet and exercise routine and other factors that you're doing for longevity or maybe for the day or for the week, whichever way you kind of bunch them in. What's ideal for you to improve your longevity? I know that's a very general way. With respect to nutrition and exercise? Nutrition, exercise, and anything else. Sleep, sauna, whatever is your ideal program. Well, I will say this. I'm sure that everything I'm about to say is going to make me sound really rigid and people are going to be like, that guy's a psycho. So I'm always a little hesitant in talking about what I do. Well, people want to know what you do. Okay. So look, probably compared to most people, I am considered quite regimented. Um, I'm way less regimented than I used to be. Um, but nevertheless, here, here's sort of how I think about things. So, uh, let's start with sleep. Um, I really take my sleep seriously and I'm, you know, someone who believe, who functions best with a consistent bedtime and wake up time. So I am in bed usually for eight hours a night and that's typically 10 to six. Um, and that usually results in probably seven and a half hours of sleep. Um, I'm going to just rattle off the names of things I use because I don't have any affiliation with anything. So I use eight sleep as my mattress cover. I love what these guys have done. Um, it's a fantastic cooling product and it's made an enormous difference for me. I've been using it for the last three years. Most of our patients are using it. Uh, there are other products out there and I've tried them and they're good. This one I just happen to fancy the most grade. Um, I'm also very particular about what I'm doing before bed and what I'm not doing before bed. So I really, and I'm not perfect with this. I'm not perfect with any of these things, Rhonda, but I really go out of my way to not look at anything that's going to, um, activate me. So I try not to look at email for a couple hours before bed. In fact, I have two separate phones. I have like my regular phone that has email and social media and junk on it. And then I have what I call my bat phone that literally has nothing. It's just, uh, it has like the remote to the TV, you know, and it has like a phone and email, but like, Oh, sorry, a phone and text, but only like two people know the number, my wife and my daughter. And, um, that's about it. And the camera. So it's basically an excuse to have a camera and a phone if I'm going someplace and I don't want my phone with me. Um, so that's kind of the phone that's with me if I'm watching TV downstairs or something like that. But it, I can't even be tempted to look at social media or look at email. So it's, it's all in the spirit of like turning the system down before bed. Um, even little things like I'll brush and floss my teeth before I go in the sauna. Cause I saw him before bed as well. So that once I'm done with that sauna and shower, like I'm just going straight into bed. Um, so for me, that's also a very productive sleep trick. Uh, there's certain supplements that I use to sleep as well. So I'm a fan of glycine. Um, ashwagandha, um, magnesium L three and eight and, um, and just straight mag oxide as well. I don't use melatonin or phosphatidylserine unless I'm jet lagging. If I'm time zone hopping, I'll use those as well. Uh, so that's sleep. Um, on the nutrition side, I don't follow any particular diet. I, I guess you could say I eat what's what's called, what would be called a balanced diet. So I'm an omnivore who, um, will probably always struggle with food in the sense that like if left to my own devices, I would eat everything and too much of it. So I do need to be mindful about what I eat. So what do I pay attention to? So I just generally pay attention to not eating junk. That's, that's like the most important credo of my diet I would say. And I say this as someone who's done everything right. Like I've been vegan, I've been keto, I've been like the most, you know, um, you know, hardcore fasting, intermittent fasting, time restricted eating. Like I've done, there's no diet I don't think I've, I've, I've done for long periods of time. And I have found benefit in one form or another from various different aspects of these things. But, um, you know, right now I'm mostly optimized around energy balance, which, you know, stay in energy balance, um, and protein intake. And so most of my conscious effort around my diet goes into making sure I'm getting 40 to 50 grams of protein four times a day. Um, and a lot of times at least two of those are in meals that are just like just, just venison or just, you know, eggs or something where it's just a protein and you know, there's not a lot of other stuff in it. Um, I do make sure I stop eating at least three hours before bed. It really makes a difference going back to sleep that I go to bed a little hungry. Um, if I ever go to bed with my belly two, two full, it feels nice, but I don't sleep as well. So I really try to err on the side of going to bed a little hungry. And that's, you know, I'm really lucky because we have young kids. So we eat early. So we're eating at six. So I'm going to bed typically with four hours between when I last ate and, and when I, um, um, when I go to sleep, we can talk about alcohol. I, um, I'm in the camp that believes there is absolutely no benefit to alcohol at any dose from a purely, you know, biochemical standpoint. Um, however, I acknowledge that there are probably some pro social benefits to it. And I happen to really, really like alcohol. So I probably have, well, I don't know. It depends. I mean, anywhere from zero to seven or eight drinks in a week. Um, probably net. I don't think there's a time that I can recall in the last five, six years where I've had more than two drinks in a day. And I also try to do my drinking early. Now by that, I don't mean two in the afternoon, but I mean with dinner so that again, um, alcohol is completely functionally, the alcohol doesn't factor into my sleep. And I know this because I track all these things and I know exactly how alcohol negatively impacts sleep in me. And I know that as long as I have that drinking done by six or seven, uh, it doesn't show up anywhere on any metric that I'm tracking with respect to sleep. Okay. Exercise most important, uh, thing from a physiologic standpoint for me. Um, I exercise every day and it's an, you know, it's much of what I do revolves around it. So even here being in San Diego this week, I mean it's like I have a membership at a great gym when every time I'm here and I just know that I'm going to get up first thing in the morning and I'm going to go and I'm going to do my workouts and they're going to be completely, you know, they're not going to be the exact same workouts I'd be doing at home, but I'm still generally doing, you know, four hours of zone two a week with one sort of higher intensity workout that's geared towards VO two max a week and then four strength training sessions a week. Um, so that's kind of the foundational pillar of everything I do. And then there's other things that get layered on top of that, like rucking and recreational activities that are also physical as well. Um, so, and then the, the, the last thing I guess I would say on that, which we didn't talk about, but it's an equally important part of this is, you know, mental health. So everything that we've talked about factors into, so, so the right sleep, the right nutrition, exercise, all of that factors into creating, you know, what I kind of describe as a wider buffer zone around distress tolerance. And then, you know, therapy, which I do at least one session a week, sometimes two plus journaling, um, and, and, and, you know, doing something called dialectical behavioral therapy. These things have been enormously important at increasing kind of the quality of my life in the past five years.