There are two times in my life that I remember for always being tired.
I was making big mistakes that would prevent me from using energy correctly.
One, When I was a swimmer in college and trained 20 intense hours a week and Two the year after
I stopped swimming.
This year I hardly did any exercise, but it was just as exhausted.
Now I finally understand why I felt tired.
At 32 I feel more energetic than when I was 22.
Quite the opposite of what 32-year-olds told me when I was younger.
And thanks to what I researched for this video, it is likely that at 62 I will have even more
energy than I do today.
Thanks to this channel I have met some of the most energetic 60 year olds in the world.
They have a lifestyle full of physical activity and an insatiable hunger for new challenges.
I have also known children as young as 9 years old who have the minimum energy to be active
1 or 2 hours a day, then they are exhausted.
This is not normal.
In this video I share some of the most common mistakes we make when it comes to finding
energy.
Two weeks ago we went on vacation.
I spent 11 straight hours driving.
I just sat in the car all day and yet I ended up exhausted.
The next day, I exercised 3 times in less than 12 hours and according to my phone I
walked more than 10 km.
I know, I have vacations a little different from most.
Again at the end of the day I ended up exhausted.
Those two days were a mini version of my tired years.
Clearly I moved a lot more on the second day than the first and, but I was exhausted at
the end of both.
There's something weird here.
That's not how I thought energy worked.
I did a lot of research on how the human body uses energy.
I felt like an alien trying to understand humans.
As an alien I discovered that humans make decisions that go in the opposite direction
of their goals.
One of the most obvious examples is how we try to find more energy for our everyday lives.
We make big mistakes that make us more tired, lazy and depressed.
Some of the biggest mistakes I have made to find energy are eating sweet things, drinking
coffee, working out and sitting down.
Sweet things have a lot of simple carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates will give you energy immediately but for a short time.
Based on my initial research by osmosis being married to a sports nutritionist: marathon
runners drink a lot of simple carbohydrates because they need the energy right away.
But they know that this will only last a few kilometers.
So they have to drink or eat more carbs every few miles.
Eliud Kiptchogue, the world's greatest marathon runner, drinks his carefully prepared carb
loaded drinks 13 different times throughout the two-hour race.
In his fastest run he drank 200 grams of carbs.
That's the highest formally recorded carbohydrate intake by a marathon runner.
Just as interesting, the man who delivered his drinks is a 56-year-old German named Claus-Henning
Schulke.
AKA Bottle Claus
If I were an alien and knew only this fact, I would say that humans are like simple robots
that only need a battery full of carbohydrates and can move for a few minutes.
After that they need another candy to keep going.
I have already tried this tactic.
Unfortunately it doesn't work the same way if you're not running a marathon.
The food you eat is very important to your energy levels.
But food is not what tells your body to move!
There is something more powerful that controls the amount of energy your body uses or stores
for later.
In this world, some animals seem to have a lot of energy and others seem to be resting
all the time.
Some of them get tired after a short burst of vigorous exercise, and others can walk,
swim, or fly for many hours without getting tired.
In their natural habitat, none feel lazy.
They all do what is best for them or for the species.
Interestingly, there is only one creature that can run for many many hours, but chooses
not to.
Humans have many physiological adaptations that allow them to run long distances.
One of them is that they do not have much hair and can lower their temperature with
sweat.
Why is it that some humans have the energy to run a lot and others don’t?
This one, for example, has a lot of hair, has flat feet and does not have enough motivation
to hunt in the wild for food.
He lives a comfortable life.
His shelter has already been built, the food he eats has already been gathered and hunted,
and he mostly moves for an hour or two a day to make up for the lack of movement he has
the rest of the day.
I'm sure if he didn't have this comfortable life, he would be able to run and search for
food, even though his vision is not good.
According to the data, the activity that you would most likely choose to obtain food would
be spear fishing.
Energy for these human creatures seems to come from environmental factors rather than
from their food, rest, or exposure to sunlight.
But the invisible difference of those very energetic humans vs the low energy ones is
inside the scull.
My mom and aunt have A LOT of energy.
When there is a long physical task, they can outlast any of their nephews.
When they are in the zone, they hate eating and sleeping because it means less time doing.
One thing they have in common with the 60-year-old athletes we've met is that they always have
the motivation to keep moving.
This broke my brain a little when I thought about it.
It does not seem logical from the point of view of physics.
The more energy you use, the more energy you have?
What is this?
Are we living in a simulation or what?
Let's go back to the analogy of a simple robot with a battery.
This time we find out that the robot has three types of batteries.
Carbohydrates are one of them.
The other two are fats and protein.
Some people have more batteries than others.
The number of batteries is not directly related to the amount of energy the little robot can
use.
Sometimes too many batteries are too heavy for the robot to move.
Sometimes the joints of the robot are rusty from not moving enough.
So even though the battery reserve is there, the robot cannot use the batteries to move.
The joints begin to rust after just a few hours without movement.
But even if the joints are fine and it has enough batteries, it is useless if the cables
do not send the signal to move.
And this is where the analogy breaks down.
Because robots don't have feelings.…
Yet.
When we say someone has a lot of energy, we don't mean it literally.
In fact, people with a lot of energy are the opposite of what we think of as someone with
a lot of energy.
When I said that I met some of the most energetic 60-year-olds in the world, I meant that they
are not lazy in any way.
They have enough motivation to do just about anything, and their bodies are capable of
amazing things.
Having a lot of motivation is what I want when I have something to do but I feel tired.
I know that my body will find the necessary energy with enough motivation.
Even if I was almost starving.
Feeling motivated is created by a molecule called dopamine.
This is what we have been looking for all this time.
According to Andrew Huberman, dopamine isn't the main molecule of pleasure as many people
thought after the initial studies on the brain.
It is now known that it is the molecule of desire and motivation!
The system of dopamine might be counter intuitive but once you understand it, it makes perfect
sense.
When we think about something that has the potential to make us feel good, our dopamine
spikes and here is the important part, then drops below where it was for a while until
you're about to get what you want.
It will then rise again when it reaches the desired point, and depending on how good the
result was, it will go up if it is more than you expected, it will go back down to the
baseline if it was what you expected, or if it was not a disappointment, it will fall
still lower than it was.
I am going to tell you a good example from my childhood that perfectly illustrates the
dopamine reward system.
My mother's side of the family is artistic.
I remember seeing drawings of my older cousins and how even the adults were amazed and proud.
So, when I was 9 years old, I took up pencil and paper for the first time to make my first
drawing, imagining that adults would be proud of my drawing.
This created a small dopamine spike, but more importantly, it created a "drought."
I mean, I went down.
And to raise it I knew what to do.
I finished my drawing and was about to show it them.
Just before they saw it there was another spike.
When they saw it and weren't impressed at all, the dopamine level dropped even lower
than before.
We don't consciously notice these changes in dopamine, but they affect our entire lives.
Out of 20 cousins, about 11 of us study or practice some type of art.
I don't know about them, but my dopamine levels went back to pre-9-year-old only after my
brother ranked me in the top 3 artist of the family.
According to Huberman, this is what we must do to be more motivated and more energetic.
If I feel lazy, procrastinating, or tired, I should look for discomfort.
This is the opposite of when we usually do.
We usually seek comfort and easy rewards without effort.
We’ve talked about the difference between discomfort and pain in other videos.
We don't want to look for pain.
We want to look for a level of discomfort that is safe.
Examples of this may include: cold shower, 5 minute meditation (especially if you hate
the meditation), run, hold your breath for 30 seconds, or do nothing, just watch something
boring (not your phone).
If anything on this list almost made you cringe, then you have your answer.
Doing uncomfortable things (like saying the word "uncomfortable") will LOWER your dopamine
so fast that once the activity is over, you'll brain will overcompensate and you'll have
more dopamine than before.
So, more motivation and energy to do anything.
You have to go down, doing boring or difficult things, in order to go up!
After spending 12 hours driving and then spending a full day working out, I was exhausted by
the end of both with one major difference.
My body was in a lot of pain after sitting.
But the day after exercising?
I was full of discomfort but also full of energy.
If you want to know why I, and most people, stop exercising, watch this video.
See you there!
Swim FAST!