DAYP 9: Starve Yourself Properly / Heal and Bulletproof Your Knees

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This week’s content looks at best practices to use when intermittent fasting and how to heal and bulletproof your knees by walking backwards.

#1: Starve Yourself Properly (Best Practices for Intermittent Fasting)

Time restricted feeding is a beautiful way to create harmony with eating and create harmony with the reward pathways.

– Andrew Huberman

If you are a fan of Andrew Huberman, you definitely have heard of intermittent fasting (IF). It’s a great way to control your weight. Practicing IF not only improves your physical health and weight, but can also build your mental strength and increase your appreciation for meals. Huberman went on the Model Health Show to discuss how time restricted eating transforms your brain and biology. He shared some best practices on how you can incorporate fasting into your lifestyle.

Time restricted feeding best practices:

  • Set a specific feeding window. Set your eating schedule to a specific 6-8 hour window. Example: eat only from 12pm-8pm or 10am-6pm. The best window of choice is the one you will stick to 80% of the time.
  • Embrace hunger. Restrict yourself and feel a little hungry once in a while. In addition to our physical health, our dopamine system can be trained to look forward to, appreciate and enjoy food more through the practice of restricting yourself to eating at certain times.
  • Avoid processed foods. When you do eat, avoid processed foods which is a majority of the food being sold in markets. How to determine if foods are processed.
  • Eat fermented foods. Eat 2-4 servings of low sugar fermented foods like Sauerkraut, nato, or kimchi. This keeps your gut microbiome healthy which reduces inflammation and controls satiety hormones positively. Anecdotally, some people who start eating fermented foods lose their appetite for sugary foods immediately!

Notes:

  • Eating at a consistent time with a limited window every day is less stressful than thinking about eating every few hours. You also end up sleeping better.
  • Not constantly eating regulates your blood sugar in positive ways, improves liver health and heightens enjoyment of food.
  • If you enjoy something, whether it is the company of another person, place, thing or food, taking some time away from it will make you appreciate it that much more.
  • The United States is the most obese nation in the history of humanity. This can be blamed on the industrialized system and marketing. We create and market foods that have hidden sugars, chemical emulsifiers and other characteristics to get people addicted and to buy more.
  • Your gut is part of your nervous system and it’s telling your brain what you should eat more or less of.
  • Andy Galpin, professor and scientists found that a disrupted gut microbiome can prevent the benefits of exercise. Positive adaptation of the muscles from physical exertion did not occur. 
  • If you are falling asleep during the day, you are not getting enough sleep at night and need to focus on improving that aspect of your health.
  • The glymphatic system clears waste from your brain when you enter deep sleep.
  • By not getting good sleep for 3 nights in a row, you are entering “long term stress” , otherwise known as chronic stress.
  • The gut microbiome / brain connection is deeper and more related than we know. It affects how and what we eat and even how our body synthesizes muscles

References, sources and more:

#2: Heal and Bulletproof Your Knees

New data is always coming out, eventually, textbooks will reflect the benefits and protection of knees over toes training.

– Ben Patrick

Your exercises have 100% made my knees better.

Joe Rogan commenting on Ben Patrick’s knees over toes training advice

When people have knee pain they take this as a sign to avoid using the motion that causes the pain in order to let the knee heal. However, Ben Patrick (a.k.a “knees over toes guy”) in a recent Joe Rogan Experience interview, argues you should instead be strengthening and building up your knees. His theory why this works is that by using full range of motion at your knee joint you increase blood flow. Increased blood flow brings nutrients to the area and accelerates healing. Using his methods below, he not only healed his own knee pain (post several knee surgeries), but has helped countless other athletes do the same.

Methods you can use to help heal and bulletproof your knees:

  • Walk backwards. Next time you go for a walk try walking backwards. This forces your knees to go over your toes. Studies have shown that walking backwards reduced knee arthritis pain and improved quadricep strength.
  • Walk backwards on a treadmill. Once you’ve progressed from walking backwards with no pain, you can increase the benefits by adding resistance via a treadmill. With the treadmill turned off, flip around, and use your leg muscles to move the tread. The added resistance will help you build more strength. Note that if this is your own treadmill, that it could potentially damage it.
  • Drag and push a sled. One of the best options is using a sled as you can both drag it and push it using variable weight. It’s also very safe and has low-injury risk. Dragging a sled using a waist belt is one of the major things Ben attributes to fixing his knee pain.
  • Frequency over duration. With all the above methods he believes it’s more important to do more frequent sessions than one longer session a week. For himself, he sleds 6 days a week for 100 meters before his other workouts.
  • Be patient. Patrick estimates it takes about 100 miles of walking backwards or dragging a sled to fully know if your knee pain is not fixable using these methods. Time-wise he thinks this could take 5 years.

NOTE: If you are serious about fixing knee pain it may be worth checking out his online coaching program. It’s a lot cheaper and easier to try than surgery!

Notes:

  • Going knees over toes makes you more athletic and less prone to injuries
  • The farther your knee can go over your toes the less chance of knee injury you have (Charles Poloquin)
  • Dragging a sled backwards was the best thing he could do for his knees
  • Would use his car and push backwards
  • Attributes dragging sled backwards to Chinese wisdom of walking backwards to prevent cartilage breakdown to prevent arthritis in elderly
  • In Finland, forestry industry workers would drag trees backwards. Famous powerlifter, Louie Simmons, wondered how these Finnish lifters had such strong knees and backs and made the connection to their forestry work
  • Before he discovered “knees over toes” training he couldn’t jump as high as he did after training
  • Big difference with sled training is you move the sled, the sled never moves you… unlike weight training where the weight moves you and has more injury risk
  • 6 days a week he sleds… before every workout he sleds first which lets him warm up and get his cardio in
  • Benefits of pushing and pulling sled is you also work out the small muscles of your feet
  • Does more backwards than forwards sledding
  • Hard to overdo orvertrain sledding
  • If you don’t have access to a sled you can walk backwards on a powered treadmill (leave the power off) and move the tread on your own. Warning… it could damage the treadmill as in it’s “great for the human, not great for the machine”
  • You want smooth friction when using a sled… you don’t want choppiness
  • Likes the Rogue Dog Sled since you can push and pull it
  • Use a waist belt harness for pulling sleds instead of a chest for better balance
  • Theory why this training works is by pushing and pulling a weighted sled you are simulating in your knees the angles you would hit during sports or similar activities and strengthening that area… plus by going at those knee angles you are encouraging more blood flow which can improve natural healing
  • His methodology started spreading because of the results he got from training people at his gym and fixing client’s knee pain… hence he became known as the “knee guy”
  • For people who think their knees are shot and they can’t do anything, find a sled and start dragging it. The more damaged your knees the more you need to sled. It increases circulation and promotes healing. Start small and progressively overload… walk backwards, drag empty sled, add more weight, etc…
  • You need to put in at least 100 miles to know if it’s working or not… which can take about 5 years. Ben averages 100 meters a day
  • Rather than doing one longer session of sled dragging, he’s noticed shorter more frequent is better for promoting healing
  • Knees over toes creates more pressure on the knee, but ironically it’s been found that bodies that have more pressure on their knees age biologically younger and not the other way around
  • People thought because there was more pressure that it should be avoided, humans however need pressure and stress to strengthen areas…
  • By bending your joins in these position you get more synovial fluid in those areas which carry more nutrients to those joints
  • Just like we all want to be strong in certain movements like pull ups we should apply the same thinking to our knee strength and abilities
  • Nordic curls is another exercise you can use to strengthen your knees
  • Tib raises are also great for strengthening and protecting knees
  • Hip flexor training can improve vertical jumping and sprinting speed… natural athletes already has this ability, but for average people training these are can improve your athleticism
  • Icing doesn’t help with healing, but it can help with pain
  • He doesn’t do a lot of static stretching and instead wants to combine flexibility and strength together. Meaning no matter what position he’s in he wants to be strong in that position… weighted split squats to lengthen (stretch) the back hip flexor … or butterfly stretch with weights on his knees and using his groin to go up and down… strengthening that area. A lot of evidence points to being strong and flexible in an area prevents many common sports injuries
  • Being strong and flexible is better than being flexible and weak
  • Getting flexible doesn’t mean you will end up getting weak. You shouldn’t be afraid of getting flexible. Alain Ngalani or Tom Platz are great examples of extremely strong and flexible

References, sources, and more:

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