Episode 378: Mark Sisson: Why Everyone Should Supplement with Collagen and Practice Mindful Eating
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Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it! Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits & Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

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I want the non-negotiables. Like, what do you do every morning? I want to know your routine. Usually I wait till the end for this part, but I saw you. I'm like, I got it out. Like, this is the information people want to know, right? Because look at you. I mean, he literally is like, you would think he was 35. Okay, go on. Thank you. My gosh. Yeah, it's true. I appreciate that because I've spent a lot of time in the sun and I think my, you know, the face does not lie about that. But anyway, non-negotiables. I mean, like, I don't eat breakfast.

So you intermittent fast. I don't even call it intermittent fasting because I think it's more like intermittent eating, but it's a restrictive eating window, right? So what it means is I wake up and I do an assessment. I'm like, I have all this energy and I don't feel hungry. Why would I want to eat? So I have a cup of coffee when I wake up. I do... You put milk in the coffee? Cream, heavy cream. Heavy cream. Yeah. Okay. So I know you're also in the ketogenic stuff. But wait, can I ask you a question? Before we even go into this, I think this is an important thing to ask. Okay.

Are you someone who lives to eat or eats to live? Because if someone who lives to eat, like I love food, it's really hard for me to intermittent fast and to do all these things, right? Because I love food so much, right? There are other people who don't give a shit. Like they can eat, they forget to eat. I'm not one of those people. So it's easier for them. Are you one of those people? Yeah, no, I'm someone who I don't live to eat.

I eat to live. Right. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy every single bite of food I put in my mouth. So I don't eat stuff just because it's supposed to be good for me, for instance. If it doesn't taste good, like you could make me the best kale salad you ever made with a lemon, you know, vinegar, whatever dressing. I'm like, thanks.

Thanks, but no thanks, not having it. I eat what I want to eat and typically when I want to eat it. And then I think one of the great skills is to realize when it's time to finish. You can push the plate away and say, you know what? I don't need to finish that 12-ounce steak. I don't need to finish all of the salad that was put in front of me, even though it might be considered ultra healthy. Right. So you limit the amount of food intake. I don't do it out of some sense of...

anorexia, you know, whatever. Yeah, and orthorexia. Yeah, I just do it because I'm so in tune with when I'm no longer hungry for the next bite.

And it's, you know, so many people, you're a great example of what I would say most people who look at life and who really appreciate food and who would say, what's the most amount of this meal I can eat and not gain weight? What's the most amount of this dessert I can have and not feel like it's lying? Or I pick food that has big volumes. Sure. Or what's, you know, how can I really fill myself up here and not feel like a pig or not feel like I'm overdoing it?

it and feel good about myself. How can I gorge? No, no, no. And how can I gorge? And then over a lifetime, how can I eat a lot and not gain too much weight? Yeah. And so you see people who are, I've seen over the years, decades, see people at the gym and they're on the treadmill, like...

five days a week burning 450, 500 calories on the treadmill. I'm like, why? Like, first of all, it's beautiful outside and you could go run outside. Why are you in the gym burning, you know, on this treadmill? Well, I like to see how many calories I burn on the treadmill. Why do you do that? Well, I love to eat. So wait a minute, you're kidding me. So you would rather put yourself through all this struggle and suffering and sweating and misery so you can have a few more bites of something you probably shouldn't have in the first place? Like how, how bizarre is that as a, as a motivation to,

So true. But haven't you ever heard of the saying common sense isn't so common? Yeah. So I took an opposite approach a bunch of years ago and I said, instead of seeing what's the most amount of food I can eat and not gain weight, what about what's the least amount of food I can eat, maintain muscle mass or build muscle mass, have all the energy I want, never get sick, and most importantly, not be hungry. Because the hunger part of it

destroys everything. And if you do that experiment and you start to really pay attention to how much food you used to eat and how much you don't need to eat. And if you break it down, it's like nobody needs more than 120 grams of protein a day. You really don't. You don't need more than 150 grams of carbs. And even if you did, it would mostly be in the form of vegetables. And if the rest is fat, we're talking about less than 2000 calories a day. So most people could live on, and I could live

well and maintain my mass and my energy on 1,750 calories a day and working out for an hour a day. I can get away with more and I do, and I eat more, but I eat cyclically. So some days I don't eat that much. Some days I eat not twice as much, but I eat more. Right, right, right, right. But you're not eating for emotion. But I'm not, I'm not. And again, I'm back to this notion that if you appreciate when

First of all, if you understand that you don't need to eat that much to maintain all this stuff. So you don't need to. That's not a requirement. And so what

what it becomes is a luxury like, okay, how much can I eat and not gain weight? And how much can I eat? And so most people find out that the 3,500 calories a day that they're consuming, breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, they would be well served at 2,200 calories, 30% less than they're consuming if they were just a little bit more judicious about their choices, which also means more nutritious food.

So when you're judicious about your food choices and you're not eating the bag of Doritos or the Ding Dongs, the Ho-Hos or the...

or the whatever, and you eat food that is nutrient dense, as they say now, you wind up not being that hungry anyway. Well, yes, but also there's a difference between need and want. Like I know I don't need to eat that much, but I want to because also I think what you were saying also, the treadmill situation, let's just use that whole conundrum, because the more you work out, the hungrier you get too. Yeah, that's an issue. Right. It's an issue. It's an issue. So what I've had to do

And this is like a trick, I guess, that I, you know, if I work, if I like run super hard, like I do like hard sprints, I end up eating way more during the day because I'm starving versus if I went like kind of slow and more moderate, I won't eat as much. So it actually makes more sense for my body to go slower. So I won't have that appetite that's like ravenous. I get it. I get it. But, you know, again, we talk about genetics. Yeah. You know, as, um,

Blake Shelton would say, you're so little. You know what I mean? So you have the genetics that allows you to get away with that. And you say, but you do. I mean, it's like, you know,

you know, how it can manifest itself in some people. It's pretty impressive how quickly people can gain weight with just a little bit of extra food daily over, you know, over time, over time. So maybe now we're talking about, uh, some mental adjustment to your emotional attachment to food. And what does it mean that you have to feel like you have to finish what's on your plate or you, or you look at a size of you, you look at, uh,

the buffet, which has 12 slices of cheesecake and you pick the biggest one because it's still one serving. A hundred percent. This is like a therapy session now. You're a hundred percent right. That's exactly what I do. But it's so true. It's all, a lot of it's behavioral and also psychological. What about your supplements? Like, are you taking, are you on, I want to ask, are you, you're not, I've heard you also talk that you're not into all the biohacking nonsense, right? So does that mean you're not a

Like, are you doing the sauna? Are you doing the cold plunge? What are you doing in terms of modalities? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so in terms of supplements, I do take testosterone, and I've been doing testosterone, you know, TRT for almost 10 years. Just a...

Oh, interesting. Only for 10 years. So when you were 60. I started when I was 60. Yeah. A little after 60. Yeah. So it's like, you know, that's become a huge craze now. Like people in their 40s. Yeah. My, like people are in the, even their 30s are taking it. Yeah. But you said you didn't start until you're 60. No, no, no. I didn't start until I felt like I held off as long as I could. Okay. Until I thought.

All right, now I'm at a point where if I don't do this, my muscle mass will decline at a rate that I can't keep up with. And it had more to do with the practical application of my being able to go play ultimate Frisbee or ride with the guys.

and to be competitive still in that regard. So did you see like your ability kind of getting less and less? And that's why you decided at 16? Yeah, I mean, I just, I saw my muscle mass go, my weight dropping a pound a year or something like that. And I knew it was all muscle because, you know, I've had the same body fat since I was 19. Wow. So you knew, so that's why you went on. So you started that. And then what did you see happen? Did you like become like

because now you look very muscular again. Did it make a big difference in your life? Five pounds. So over the course of a year, I put on five or six pounds. I worked hard at it. And then I just, now I've maintained that for almost 10 years. So you've been doing that for 10 years and you do a shot yourself every day, I guess? No, no, no. Once a week. Just once a week, yeah. Once a week, okay. And then I do collagen because I'm a big fan of collagen. I make

a collagen supplement. The reason I make a collagen supplement was because I'm such a big fan of it and I think everybody ought to supplement. Collagen should be a fourth macronutrient. There should be protein, fat, carbohydrate, and collagen. And collagen is different from protein because they're different configurations of diantripeptides. And you can't get them from organ meat. You can't get them from a chicken breast. You can't get it from lamb, beef, pork. You have to either eat the gristle, the skin, bone broth, chicken stock. Right.

And since we don't do that regularly anymore, I mean, we did a generation ago or two generations ago, but we don't now. I mean, there's a whole generation in the 80s of people, bodybuilders, who ate skinless, boneless chicken breast and white rice. Do you remember that? Oh, my God. Yeah. That was like whatever. By the way, people still do that. You know that. I know. I know. So collagen, I think, is important as a, and you need to get like 10, 20, 30 grams a day in bodybuilding.

in my estimation, because it's the only thing that really supports connective tissue. And so much of your body is collagen. It's the most prevalent actual protein in your body between fascia, ligaments, tendons, cartilage. So what do you do then? You just, you supplement for it? I supplement, sure. So that's a supplement. So I take the collagen supplement. But the supplement, wouldn't it be better for you to actually do the other natural things? Sure, you want to come over to my house and make some bone broth and do some chicken stock and stand over that stove and simmer all day. In my spare time, I'll be more than happy to do it.

Right. So you do that. You take how many spoonfuls of that? 20 grams a day.