Become a Cyborg to Perfect your Diet (ft. LEVELS founder Josh Clemente)

If you’re a CrossFit trainer, you probably think you’ve got healthy eating down pat. That’s what Josh Clemente thought too – and he couldn’t figure out his crashing energy levels. When Josh began with continuous glucose monitoring, he began to realize his dietary choices were all wrong for his body. Today, Josh is CEO of Levels Health, a CGM software that shifts data into actionable behavior changes. And his energy levels are better than ever. On this episode of Total Fitheads, Josh talks to Max and Ali about tech, fitness, and the dirty secrets of pressed vegetable juices. Topics covered include the game-changing importance of glucose, the different ways individuals process sugar, and why Levels is more than a fad.

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• Connect with Ali on Instagram

3:15 – A decision-making app

With real-time glucose tracking, Levels helps users make data-driven decisions that positively impact their health.

“Really, what’s going on is we’re making decisions every single day. And those decisions are, essentially, if you poll people, based on nothing. They’re based on emotions, they’re based on some internet research, they’re based on something a friend said. They’re not based on data, they’re not based on the same decision-making process we use elsewhere, like with our financial accounts. This is a problem. I’m somebody who likes to quantify things. I like to at least have some concept of like order of magnitude – am I heading in the right direction? And that’s what we’re doing with Levels, we’re giving you an insight into your body in raw numbers along with scores that we’re developing…We’re giving you that number and allowing you to use that and understand patterns and trends and fluctuations associated with specific actions you’re taking.”

5:28 – Different strokes for different folks

Studies show that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to metabolic reactions in individuals – so personalized data is the only way forward.

“There was a study in Israel in 2015 that took 800 people that don’t have diabetes. And they put these CGMs, these continuous glucose monitors, on them and just recorded them eating the same meals, eating different meals. They did these calibration meals where they had everyone eat a cookie made of wheat flour and a banana. And then they recorded the responses. And what they showed was that two people can eat the exact same two foods and have equal and opposite responses. So like the banana spikes, one person and the cookie flatlines for one person and vice versa for someone else. And so you now have this situation, which we never –  we’ve always been looking for the golden ticket, but like one size fits all diet. And now this research is showing, guess what? That doesn’t exist. You have to know with this data, whether you’re banana guy or a cookie girl, otherwise you’re flying blind. It’s not to say that one person should only eat cookies and never eat bananas. It’s more like one person is sensitive to fruit sugars and the other is sensitive to grains sugars. It’s kind of like what that’s demonstrating. And this is unlocking huge potential for optimizations for people in their daily lives.”

8:12 – Multiple impact factors

Glucose levels can be tough to predict without data because so many aspects of diet and lifestyle can turn the dial towards or away from your goals.

“First of all, there’s the big four: stress, sleep, diet, and exercise. Those are the ones, the biggest levers you’re going to pull on every single day and have immediate effects that you can really see in your glucose levels. But beyond that, some of the most interesting stuff is little permutations of that. You can eat the same meal, so lay out a meal, let’s say you have a salad, you have meat, potatoes, and then you have a dessert. You can eat that same meal in different orders, right? So you eat the dessert first and then finish with salad. And start with the salad and eat through to the dessert and you will have a completely different blood glucose response. It’s not the case that spikes or glucose fluctuations have no impact on you. Glucose triggers, insulin triggers all of these downstream hormones that affect the way you feel. And it affects, like I said, the mode that you’re in. So whether you’re in a fat burn mode or weight gain mode is affected by hormones, which are affected by glucose. And if you’re trying to lose weight, eating that salad first and working your way to the protein, and finally, the carbohydrates is – and this has demonstrated – a better approach for you because it can control your glucose response.”

14:48 – Real data = surprising results

Levels’ CGM data often reveals insight into what’s actually good for you and what’s shockingly not healthy –  like Josh’s veggie juice choice.

“I don’t drink pressed juices all the time, but I certainly did not expect my response to be that extreme because it was primarily vegetable juice. This has happened for me so many times since starting this sort of life renovation process with glucose data. There are intuitive examples where you’re like, man, this just reinforces what I assumed was going to happen. And then there are counter-intuitive examples like that one where you’re like, people are making this choice. They don’t even enjoy it. Like nobody really likes drinking vegetable juice. So they would much rather have probably a milkshake. And guess what? If your glucose is responding the same way, it is possible that you’re having equally negative – and people may disagree with this – but it is certainly possible that in certain ways you are getting the same negative consequences choosing that press juice if you respond the way I do. So that’s what we want – to give people the information they need to make the choice that is optimized for them.”

16:34 – A quick success story

When Josh started exploring CGM and the impact of diet on glucose levels, he was soon able to regulate his energy spikes and crashes.

“At the time my assumptions about health – like I was fit, I was fast. I could lift weights. That’s health, right? I mean, I was like, I’m super healthy. I should have great energy levels. And it was the exact opposite…I read about continuous glucose monitoring and I was like, glucose is energy. I have poor energy. I gotta figure this out. Got myself a CGM, which I had to get basically illegally from Australia because you can’t get them here. And within two weeks I found that I was spending most of my time in the pre-diabetic blood sugar zone. And I was having these like huge elevations and then crashes and those crashes were when I was laid up on the couch or under my desk trying to nap. It was just a total life-changer for me, I just immediately started re-investigating diet, focused on moderate protein, higher fat, and salt, like a life-changing energy chain. I don’t have superhuman energy, but throughout the day I just do not have those crashes anymore. I have consistent energy from wake up to sleep. And that’s been the biggest change for me is just control of my decision-making and of the outcome.”

20:38 – Use it your own way

Continuous glucose monitoring can be leveraged for plenty of goals, such as weight loss, energy stability, and athletic performance.

“There are a ton of different variables about the actual response that you want to try and pay attention to, but it kind of depends on your goals.So if you are interested in longevity, for example. Glucose variability, which is the number of times that it’s spiking and crashing, is really closely tied to cardiovascular disease and metabolic dysfunction, like diabetes, type two diabetes, pre-diabetes. Heart disease in particular is something a lot of people are focused on avoiding. And so you would want to limit the number of big spikes and crashes through the day, for example. Average glucose is another one that’s tied to a long-term sort of metabolic dysfunction. So the longevity space you’d want to keep it low and controlled, like minimize the number of oscillations and try and maintain a good average. For someone who, for example, is trying to lose weight, you’re going to want to maintain a low insulin level, because while you have insulin circulating in your system, your body can’t burn fat. And what you want to do is obviously optimize for burning fat. So in those cases, insulin responds to glucose. So you want just keep glucose low, like try not to exceed a threshold because insulin is going to come out and you’re going to go into fat gain mode instead of fat burn mode. So there’s like kind of different little subtleties there. If you’re an elite athlete doing some crazy workout, you’re probably going to care less about this and you’re going to want to just fuel up and time your fuel so that you’re not seeing a spike and then a crash right before you go and work out. So it’s more about timing than it is necessarily like the exact levels.”

26:36 – Designed for everyone

No matter who you are, you’re in the target audience to use Levels and optimize your health, performance, and day-to-day feelings.

“I think what’s been really amazing and rewarding to be a part of this has been seeing all of the different types of people who have gotten life-changing value out of it. Like almost instantly. The first week, the first time that you eat a meal and you see your body respond in numbers, you see it speaking to you, it’s hard not to internalize that and not to have a light bulb moment there, like when you see a reaction to your actions. There are people who are in their late fifties who are kind of still trying to stay sharp and improve their health span and live a long, active life who are very quickly just honing their diet. There are people who are trying to lose weight and have been struggling with it for 30 years. There are people who are elite athletes and have research studies on ketogenic long-duration ultrarunning who are using this to hone their current COVID-related, extended off-season. There’s all of these different use cases and it’s all the same technology, but really what it is is just seeing your body and listening to what your body is telling you in terms of what’s good and bad for your own personal goals.”

28:55 – Snacks are still here to stay

With personalized CGM data, you don’t have to cut out treats – but you’ll know which guilty pleasure is best indulged and how.

“This is actually one of the common concerns. People are like, well, I’m gonna put this thing on and it’s going to tell me everything sucks. And I can’t do what I enjoy. And as I said that’s totally not true. That’s the beautiful thing, there is positive reinforcement built into this. One of the things I’ve noticed is, like, I love cheesecake. And I had this real fear that this was going to be like one of my no-gos. Cheesecake, if you think about it, it’s actually a pretty mixed meal. There’s a lot of protein, a lot of fat, and there is some sugar. So cheesecake for me is no problem. My glucose is rock solid. If I allocate the calories for it, I can eat cheesecake and not have this crazy glucose response. Whereas in college and a few years after that, I had a legit candy addiction. I would eat a pound of candy in a sitting. I had these extended engineering labs that I would do in college of five hours long and I would bring candy there and I’d eat. This probably did some serious damage to me, by the way. But since using CGM, I have not touched legitimate candy. I’ll eat dark chocolate, but I do not eat candy anymore. And it was because I had like one little trial size piece of candy with a CGM on, and my glucose responded. It was like, second worst response I’ve ever had from a single piece. And the realization is I can have a really rich, rewarding dessert – that I love by the way – ice cream or cheesecake. And it’s just better for me across the board.”

31:13 – Not just a number cruncher

Levels’ intuitive interface makes it easy to connect choices to consequences and implement change.

“We take the data and we provide analysis and scoring. So we don’t just give you the numbers raw out of the machine. We provide lifestyle scores, zone scores. We don’t have to get too deep into this, but like you make a certain number of actions and if they’re close together, they will affect how you respond to the other actions. So like I just said, you eat a meal and then you go for a walk. That’s going to be a totally different response than if you just eat that meal, or if you just go for a walk. So we take all that into account and we provide these composite scores that see how you’re actually responding. So that spike, how fast you spike, how long you stay elevated all of this stuff and give you a score. That’s much easier, I think, to track than trying to look at all these little fluctuations and figure it out yourself. Really what we’re doing is we’re trying to make the data actionable.”

32:56 – Twitter sharing is caring

The visual and surprising nature of CGM data leads to widespread sharing & discussion on social media.

“It’s been amazing to see the social element of this. It wasn’t clear to us how people would kind of respond. I love talking about it. Like, yeah, you know, you’re wearing a patch, you’re wearing this disc on your arm and we have covers on it. These black adhesive covers and you know, so you’re wearing this thing continuously for 14 days. You don’t take it on and off and we weren’t entirely sure how people would respond. But the response has been overwhelmingly: ‘This is something I want to share with everyone.’ Like if I have a really irresponsible blood sugar spike because I cheated, I want to share that. If I have a day of awesome streaks and my glucose stays within range a hundred percent of the time, I want to share that. It’s really cool because this I think is going to trigger these sort of almost network effects where other people get in on the action and want to learn about their own bodies and may discover something that’s really valuable.”

38:40 – Awareness + improvement

For the user, Levels can do two key tasks: raise awareness of your choices and help you start the long road to metabolic fitness.

“We use two terms that we really lean on. One is metabolic awareness. And that’s like that moment where you have feedback. So you go from an open loop, which is like making decisions and not getting any response – so not having any data on whether that was good or bad – to a closed loop, where each decision you make is influenced by other decisions you’ve made and the feedback that you got from them. So every decision you make gets better because of the decisions you made in the past. So a metabolic awareness is you now have the data, you can make better choices. And then metabolic fitness is really the sweet spot. The way we think about physical fitness, you don’t expect to go into the gym and be able to bench press 400 pounds if you’ve never been in a gym before, right? The only reason that you should be able to bench press 400 pounds is if you have put in years of effort repetition and focus. Like you got to put the work in to be physically fit. Same with mental fitness. If you want to develop a meditation practice, it takes time. Like you’re not gonna be able to sit down and, and hit that flow state on day one. And so the same goes for metabolic fitness.”

50:04 – Why Levels is more than a fad

There’s no ulterior motive behind the CGM device – just tools to get to know your own body and empower your personal choices.

“It’s definitely the case people are going to point at this and say, this is another fad or something, this is like some other crazy effort to get people to do things that aren’t healthy for them. But I just want to reiterate, we don’t have a philosophy at Levels. The philosophy is that glucose dysfunction is one of the number one causes of concern in the world today. If you look at the rates of diabetes, the rates of heart disease, all these metabolic conditions that are rising at a rising rate across the world. And our theory is that this is because people just don’t have information. That’s not what they want. Nobody wants to get sick. Nobody wants to gain weight. Nobody wants to feel horrible every day. And we’re not telling you that you have to eat some specific supplement in order to get out of this. We’re just saying, use your own body’s information to make the choices that you’re already going to make.”

54:35 – Let’s drink to that

Proof that plenty of health data may surprise you? Alcohol – like salt – is a treat our body actually needs in moderation.

“You can kind of overdo almost anything. And certainly alcohol is one of the easiest to overdo. There’s tons of data that over-consuming alcohol is really bad for you, especially the liver – we  just don’t give it enough credit. Like the liver is one of the most important organs in the body. We got to care for it. It’s very connected to metabolic health. So if you destroy your liver, you get fatty liver disease. So there’s this disease called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is really affecting obese children at rates that are completely unprecedented. It’s because they’re consuming a huge amount of fructose and sugary beverages. So if the liver breaks down, it’s disastrous. I think that’s one of the biggest concerns with alcohol is the liver damage you can do. But there’s also this other data that shows that if you consume zero alcohol, you actually have a higher likelihood of having metabolic dysfunction than if you consume something. So it is not true that less is better. And this is the case with so many things, there’s a dose dependency –  like a U shaped thing – with salt, same thing where people are very afraid of eating too much salt because they think they’re gonna have a heart attack. Well, guess what, your likelihood of death is actually much higher if you have too little salt, then if you have too much.”

Host: [00:00]                           Hey, fit heads. Today, we have Josh Clemente of the company Levels and it’s been mind blowing. Oh my goodness. Levels is showing you what’s happening to your blood sugar in real time, which you don’t know that it’s going up and down and it’s all connected to how healthy you are and how good you feel. And we haven’t been able to get that information until now.

Josh Clemente: [00:24]    Yeah. It used to be like an, “Like I feel crappy or I feel good because I don’t know why.”

Host: [00:29]                           A banana is good or a cookie is not. And we don’t really know actually a banana might be good for me. And a cookie is good for Max, but they’re showing us all of this information on wonderful graphs by test showing your blood sugar going up and down, or, you know, staying healthy. When you get feedback, you can control it. Okay. It’s awesome. Just stay tuned.

Host 2: [00:55]                      Welcome to Total Fitheads.

Host: [00:56]                           Serious fitness for not so serious people. Hey, fit heads today. We have one of the founders of Levels. Josh is here to talk with us about what Levels is and it’s mind blowing, and I’m not even going to attempt to describe it in this intro. Hi Josh.

Josh Clemente: [01:13]    Hey, how’s it going? Good to meet you.

Host: [01:14]                           Welcome. Thank you so much for coming on.

Josh Clemente: [01:19]    I’m happy. I’m excited.

Host: [01:20]                           Okay. I was going to hack through like what your company is doing, but how about you do it? ‘Cause I don’t have better messaging.

Josh Clemente: [01:29]    Of course. Yeah. So, Levels is focusing on being the connection between actions and reactions in your body in a sort of a deeper sense than the traditional wearable device. So, we’re bringing what we call bio wearables, which are existing devices that measure molecules in the body. And we’re bringing those to a wider audience. So the general health and wellness space, performance optimization, people that want to find an edge and sort of improve their own lifestyles daily in an ongoing sort of sense. And so, what we’re starting with is continuous glucose monitoring. So this is a technology that’s been around for a long time for the management of diabetes primarily, but has recently, due to some really cool advancements in the hardware space become quite convenient for use and reasonable for use in the performance wellness space. And so, we’re developing a Levels program which brings continuous glucose monitoring to a wider audience and, yeah. And bringing it to the performance world.

Host: [02:33]                           Okay. I’m going to broad definition, glucose monitoring. So like when you eat something, your blood sugar goes up. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. We can talk about like fluctuation versus keeping it continually low, but basically diabetics have been testing their blood sugar for a while, but people that are non-diabetic, there’s not a lot of data about that. That’s just not normal for people to be testing their blood sugar, but it’s actually a really good indicator of a lot of things. And also a way to work on anti-aging. But yeah, basically you want less sugar in your blood and you never know until Josh tells you with his device.

Josh Clemente: [03:15]    That’s a, yeah, it’s a really great way to make it more understandable. I mean like really what’s going on is we’re making decisions every single day. And those decisions are essentially if you pull people based on nothing. They’re based on emotions, they’re based on some internet research, they’re based on something a friend said. They’re not based on data, they’re not based on, you know, sort of the same decision-making process we use elsewhere, like with our financial accounts. Right? And, this is a problem. And in my opinion, I’m somebody who likes to quantify things. I like that at least have some concept of like order of magnitude, “Am I heading in the right direction?” And, that’s what we’re doing with Levels. We’re giving you a, we’re giving you an insight into your body in raw numbers. Along with scores that we’re developing, that are taking your blood sugar Levels, which by the way, glucose or blood sugar is the primary energy molecule in the modern human. So this is like, you know, we can dig a little deeper on to why that is the case and what’s happening there, but not just assume, you know, glucose is your energy, it’s your fuel. And so we’re giving you that number and allowing you to use that and understand patterns and trends and fluctuations associated with specific actions you’re taking. So rather than again, making decisions and sort of feeling and emoting your way through whether or not that was a good choice for you. You can now see in raw numbers. Like, quantitatively that was, or was not a positive decision. So, that’s high level. It gets, it gets much wider, broader, and more exciting than that. Like, you know, fueling strategies, dietary philosophy is all of this stuff can now be based in data rather than in, yeah, emotion and feelings. So that’s the exciting part.

Host: [04:48]                           And what’s mind blowing to me is that it’s not just data because I’m getting data from Instagram of some dude eats a banana and feels like crap. And so now I’m like, “Hmm, I guess I shouldn’t eat bananas.” But that’s his data. And my data might show after I eat a banana that my blood glucose doesn’t spike and that actually bananas are good for me.

Josh Clemente: [05:10]    Yeah. And what’s wild and it’s the cool secondary effect of this technology becoming more available is that there’s a whole section of research that’s recently become possible with these devices that has shown exactly that effect. So there was a study in Israel in 2015 that took 800 people that don’t have diabetes, and they put these CGMs, these continuous glucose monitors on them and just recorded them like eating the same meals, eating different meals. And so they did these calibration meals where they had everyone eat a cookie made of wheat flour and a banana. And then they recorded the responses. And what they showed was that two people can eat the exact same two foods and have equal and opposite responses. Okay. So like the banana spikes one person and the cookie flatlines for one person and vice versa for someone else. And so you now have this situation, which we never, like, we’ve always been looking for the golden ticket, but like one size fits all diet. And now this research is showing, “Guess what? That doesn’t exist.” You have to know with this data, whether you’re a banana guy or a cookie girl, otherwise, you know, you’re flying blind. And so, I mean, it’s like, of course we can, it’s not to say that like one person should only eat cookies and never eat bananas. It’s more like one person is sensitive to fruit sugars and the other is sensitive to grains sugars. It’s kind of like what that’s demonstrating. And this is unlocking like huge potential, you know, optimizations for people in their daily lives.

Host: [06:36]                           It’s crazy. And it makes perfect sense why there is not a diet book and we’re all super fit, right?

Josh Clemente: [06:43]    Yeah, exactly. Like, how have we not figured this out yet? Well, that’s because you can’t. It’s a, there’s all of this personalization and it could be microbiome, you know, like the gut bacteria, it could be genetics. It could be just honestly your stress environment. Like it’s wild. To me. One of the most fascinating things for me is seeing the effect of stress, on my blood blood sugar levels, you have this fight or flight response, which is triggered by stress hormones, and adrenaline. And that has a direct effect on your glucose levels. Because again, as I was saying, glucose is your fuel. So if you, if you’re in a stressful fight or flight scenario, your body’s going to prep you for flight. Like it’s going to release a ton of energy. And, if you are sitting at your computer getting stressed all day, because you’re in a stressful meeting, you’re on calls, that energy is not being used. And so for many of us, like the alternative for that, all that blood glucose is to store it as fat. So for people who are trying to, who are struggling with weight gain, like this is truly demonstrating that stress is your enemy if you’re trying to lose weight. And could be directly combating your goals. And so like maybe a mindfulness routine is like truly quantitatively useful in certain cases.

Host: [07;49]                           Oh my God, you can meditate yourself thin. You heard it here.

Host 2: [07:55]                      Have you guys started to map out which sort of things, categories that the person, diet, sleep, stress, regularity of diet, regularity of- Do you know what I mean? Have you started to map out all that stuff? Is that also?

Josh Clemente: [08:13]    Yeah, absolutely. So, some of the most interesting stuff- Well, first of all, there’s like the big four. So stress, sleep, diet, and exercise. Those are the ones like the biggest levers you’re going to pull on every single day and have like immediate effects that you can really see in your glucose levels. But beyond that, like some of the most interesting stuff is little permutations of that. So like, you can eat the same meal. So lay out a meal, let’s say you have a salad, you have meat and potatoes, and then you have a dessert. You can eat that same meal in different orders, right? So you eat the dessert first and then finish with salad. And start with the salad and eat through to the dessert, and you will have a completely different blood glucose response. And, you know, there is truly an optimal. Like it’s not the case that just, you know, spikes are, or glucose fluctuations have no impact on you. Glucose triggers insulin and triggers all of these downstream hormones that affect the way you feel. And it affects, like I said, the mode that you’re in. So you’re whether you’re not you’re in a fat burn mode or weight gain mode, or is affected by hormones, which are affected by glucose. And so like if you’re trying to lose weight, eating that salad first and working your way to

Host 2: It’s not crazy at all.

Josh Clemente: [09:49]    It’s such a big difference, like, you know. And then when you sleep four hours and wake up and eat the same breakfast you had yesterday after eight hours of sleeping, your blood glucose skyrockets, you start to realize like the power of rest and the short-term insulin resistance that can cause these like negative responses is really like way bigger than you might’ve otherwise assumed.

Host: [10:08]                           So when you’re saying like salad, protein, dessert, what you’re really saying is like fiber first. Yeah. And then the satiating meal part and then maybe you’re like spiky stuff at the end. Is that the same for most people, like that order?

Josh Clemente: [10:25]    Yeah. Sorry. Sorry to cut you off there. There are some trends, you know, some like common themes, and one of them is a fiber and the other is fat. And so really what it is is mixed meals. So if you eat just a pro or sorry, just a carbohydrate on its own, a large serving size, and then you eat it again with a combination of like a little bit of healthy fat and some protein, you’re going to see a completely different response typically. And the classic example of this is oatmeal. You know, Google the healthiest breakfast out there and like top five, always, it’s going to be oatmeal. And, you know, for me, and this obviously is not, it doesn’t apply to everybody, but for me, when I eat a bowl of oatmeal, my blood sugar goes into the diabetic zone. And so if I take that same bowl of oatmeal and add some chia seeds and almond butter, some fiber and fat, I can eat that and my glucose is like 60% improved. And for me, it’s like a tastier meal and more fulfilling. And like, so there’s all these like downs of it. You’re like, man, this is, it kind of makes sense. A mixed meal, like why overload on a single macronutrient? Well, this is like giving you the data to back up that choice.

Host: [11:31]                           Well, that’s so crazy that people are making active choices and they’re wrong. You know, it’s not even like they’re lazy. They’re like actively trying to eat well, and it’s not the right thing. Have you experimented with white vinegar or cinnamon?

Josh Clemente: [11:46]    I’ve done both. Vinegar has a pretty strong effect on me. So I’ll put vinegarette on everything. I love. I have like this weird carnal approach, like attraction to pickles and vinegars. Like I just I’m obsessed with vinegary things. And I think it’s, I don’t know, maybe there’s something there where, I definitely see a positive effect on glucose levels if I have vinaigrette, you know, with it, or like have some pickled stuff with it. So I now pickle tons of vegetables. But then, you know, for me, the cinnamon thing has been more miss than hit. Several people have told me that it makes a big difference for them. And there are some studies out there that show that cinnamon controls glucose levels, but I have not personally seen any effect. It could be one of those personal things.

Host 2: [12:28]                      So are you a success story?

Josh Clemente: [12:34]    Yeah.

Host: Show us your before photo.

Josh Clemente: I am.

Host 2: [12:36]                      I guess my question is like, obviously you’re tracking this stuff and if you know, I would all, I can only imagine it was so exciting to actually be able to quantify stuff and have like an actual GPS and how to do that GPS that be, but you know what I’m saying? Like actual information on how to do this. What has been something in your experience that like you didn’t think would be a big deal that was, or what was something that was confirmed as like, “You know, I always sort of felt that, but now, like I know for sure,” about you specifically, or your body.

Josh Clemente: [13:05]    So, I’ll kinda lead in. Well, here’s a really good anecdote. So I’ll start off with this anecdote. This is about probably about a month into my, into starting this project. I got a pressed juice at a, there was like this organic juice cart in Manhattan, and they were, you know, I went to it, to the cart and I was like, I’m going to get the healthiest thing on the menu. And there was a drink called Health Drink.

Host 2: [13:37]                      How did it taste? Little bit like water?

Josh Clemente: [13:41]    So it was carrots, celery and green apples. And I saw, you know, the person take them right out of the basket and press them in this, you know, juice presser and give me the juice. So there was no additives, no nothing whatsoever. And I drank this rich, healthy, delicious vegetable and fruit juice. And my blood sugar went to 210 and stayed there for an hour and a half. And so I’m going to give some quick ranges here. If you exceed 140 milligrams per deciliter, as the units, that’s considered the pre-diabetic zone. You shouldn’t exceed 140, except rarely. If you exceed 180, that’s considered a diabetic response and you should, if you do exceed these things, you should try, and, you know, optimally, you will be back to normal below 140 as quickly as possible. My glucose was above 200 for over an hour, which would be considered a diabetic glucose response. And I was, at this time, I was at an office and there was a, you know, there was a girl there who was like, seeing this go down. I was showing people the numbers and stuff, and she was like, “I get that every single morning, instead of going to Dunkin Donuts. That is,” she was just like, you could see the entire screeching moment happening. And I was kind of experiencing the same thing. I mean, I don’t drink pressed juices all the time, but you know, I’d certainly did not expect my response to be that extreme because it was primarily vegetable juice. And this has happened for me so many times since starting this sort of life renovation process with glucose data. And, you know, there are intuitive examples where you’re like, “Man, I, this is so like, it just reinforces what I assumed was going to happen.” And then there are counter-intuitive examples like that one where you’re like, people are making this choice. They don’t even enjoy it. Like nobody really likes drinking vegetable juice. So they would much rather have like probably a milkshake. And guess what? If your glucose is responding the same way, it is possible that you’re having equally negative, you know, and people may disagree with this, but it is certainly possible that in certain ways you are getting the same negative consequences choosing that press juice as another way of, if you respond the way I do. And so that’s what we want, is we want to give people the information they need to make the choice that is optimized for them. I certainly am like a super I’m a carb sensitive, hyper responder. I don’t know what the deal is, but this whole project, to your question, started because I first experimented with CGM and found that I was pre-diabetic. And, at the time, you know, I’m a CrossFit trainer. I, at the time-

Host: [16:00]                           What level? One or Two?

Josh Clemente: [16:02]    Level two. I was working at SpaceX on life support systems and was like, kind of just realized, overtime was realizing, like, I don’t feel great during the day. Like I’m kind of irritable and tired and I’m always like just chugging coffee and trying to keep my eyes open and trying not to just lash out and like, just not feeling like I have the energy I need to get through the day, let alone get home and like get a workout in. And this was really annoying me because in terms of, you know, like my, at the time assumptions about health, like I was fit. I was fit. I was fast. I could lift weights, like that’s health, right? I mean, I was like, “I’m super healthy. I should have great energy levels”. And I was the exact opposite.

Host 2: [16:45]                      How hot were you?

Josh Clemente: [16:47]    What’s that?

Host 2: [16:47]                      How hot were you?

Host: [16:50]                           Go show him your instagram.

Josh Clemente: [16:50]    I was hotter than I am today. No, but it was like, it was pretty frustrating because I’m like this, my assumption about health was entirely related on this, to aesthetics and performance that had nothing to do with diet. I ate whatever I wanted because I wasn’t like putting on weight. And, anyway, I  started looking around for like ways to improve my understanding of my own health. And I came across blood sugar monitoring. I started pricking my finger obsessively, like 60 times a day. And the numbers are like all over the place. Yeah, exactly. I have that same one, actually.  Yeah, so I’m pricking my finger excessively and I’m like not seeing real patterns. It’s like all randomized. And so I read about continuous glucose monitoring and I was like, I, you know, glucose is energy. I have poor energy. I gotta figure this out. Got myself a CGM, which I had to like get basically illegally from Australia because you can’t get them here.  And put it on. And within two weeks I found that I was spending most of my time in the pre-diabetic blood sugar zone. And I was having these like huge elevations and then crashes and those crashes where like, when I was laid up on the couch or like under my desk, trying to nap. And it was just total like life changer for me, I just immediately started re investigating diet, focused on like moderate protein, higher fat, and so like life-changing energy change. You know, I don’t have like super human energy, but throughout the day I just do not have those crashes anymore. I have like consistent energy from wake up to sleep. And that’s been the biggest change for me is just control of my decision-making and of the outcome. Like, it’s been amazing.

Host: [18:25]                           To get real.

Host 2: [18:26]                      Did you say, sleep under your desk?

Josh Clemente: [18:30]    I have a couple of pictures of this. Yeah. That was pretty common. Back in those days.

Host: [18:33]                           What! I thought that was like an exaggeration or metaphor.

Josh Clemente: [18:37]    No, no. Yeah, this was when I was at SpaceX and then things are, things are crazy there. So if you’re going to sleep, it better be under your desk ‘cause you’re not going home.

Host: [18:46]                           What’s crazy to me is that you’re saying that, like, this wouldn’t work. I was prepared to, you know, every 30 minutes stab myself. But I mean, I guess connected to food, it’s a little more effective, but I wouldn’t have picked up on the stress thing that you’re talking about because I wouldn’t just be sitting at my desk, like freaking out at emails and then testing. But you were, had trouble like quantifying the data when you were just doing it.

Josh Clemente: [19:11]    So I was seeing, my problem is that the things change so quickly and I was following sort of the guidelines I was finding online and like, I was pricking a lot, but there’s so much data and it’s like, it’s amazing what happens overnight. It’s amazing what happens, like I said, during stressful meetings. It’s amazing what happens when you’re exercising. And you’re not pricking your finger for the two hours that you’re going on an extended run or that you’re like doing a crazy wad in the gym. And the things that are happening.

Host: [20:27]                           Oh, not so, and yeah. And you’re talking about this, like up and down. The goal is not necessarily just like, keep it low, but just keep it less up and down, right?

Josh Clemente: [20:38]    Yeah. So there’s a ton of, there are a ton of different variables about like the actual response that you want to try and pay attention to, but the ones that, you know, and it kind of depends on your goals. So if you are interested in longevity, for example, like glucose variability, which is the number of times that it’s spiking and crashing is really closely tied to cardiovascular disease and metabolic dysfunction, like you know the diabetes type two diabetes, pre-diabetes. So, heart disease in particular is like something a lot of people are focused on avoiding. And so you would want to limit the number of big spikes and crashes through the day, for example. Average glucose is another one that’s tied to a long-term sort of metabolic dysfunction. So the longevity space you’d want to focus on. Yeah, again, basically you want to, you want to keep it low and controlled, like minimize the number of oscillations and try and maintain a good average. For someone who, for example, is trying to lose weight, you’re going to want to maintain like a low insulin level because insulin, while you have insulin circulating in your system, your body can’t burn fat. And what you want to do is obviously optimize for burning fat. So in those cases, insulin responds to glucose. So you want just keep glucose low, like try not to exceed a threshold because insulin is going to come out. You’re going to go into fat gain mode instead of fat burn mode. So there’s like kind of different little subtleties there. If you’re an elite athlete doing, you know, some crazy effort, like some crazy workout, like you’re probably going to care less about this and you’re going to want to just fuel up and like time your fuel so that you’re not, you know, seeing a spike and then a crash right before you go and work out. So it’s more about timing than it is necessarily like the exact levels. And that’s something that, again, we’re just scraping the surface. Like there are very few athletes out there who are not currently treating diabetes, who have this technology at their disposal. And so one of the big, interesting things I’m looking forward to is figuring out how, you know, a person who does not currently have diabetes can tune and like optimize their athletic performance with this tech. It’s just like nobody’s doing it. And it’s going to be such an interesting and fascinating space.

Host: [22:47]                           Yeah, it seems like I was reading some stuff on your site about like, if you are doing steady state cardio or like below 60% of VO 2 max, versus like intervals or like going higher and for how long is your all, you’re figuring out how you should fuel based on what you’re actually doing. And when you’re talking about elite athletes, what is this mouth rinsing thing? Have you tried this?

Josh Clemente: [23:14]    I have not.

Host: [23:14]                           Max, are you familiar?

Josh Clemente: [22:17]    Yeah, so there’s an article on the blog that talks about it. It’s by Colleen Gulick, who is a, she’s a professional cyclist. And, you know, she’s going into the fueling strategies that are currently in place. And some of the ways that like CGM could really, you know, renovate this. And it’s amazing how the human body works, and I’m learning so much throughout this project, but literally the, because glucose is the, it’s the fastest acting source of energy that we have, so, you know, if you need to do something immediately, you’re going to do it on glucose. Your cells are going to operate on glucose, not on fat. That’s just, you know, that’s the anaerobic energy system is what it’s called. But your body is so sensitive to glucose that you can just rinse your mouth and it will create a hormonal response that primes you for an endeavor, like for an effort. That’s how quick your body has to get in. Like when you’re about to do something crazy, carbohydrates are so like, so powerful in terms of the energy it contain and the speed that it’s released, that just rinsing your mouth will cause an energy boost. Like will give people a performance, but it’s, and this has been tested apparently like with elite athletes. And so this mouth rinse thing, I guess, for people who don’t want to actually like, you know, they have stomach sensitivity issues and you don’t want to like consume a bunch of calories. Like you can just spray like a sugary drink into your mouth, rinse it around, spit it out, and like enjoy a performance boost from that, which is just like.

Host: [24:40]                           That’s so nutty.

Host 2: [24:42]                      That’s so weird. We used to do that.

Host: [24:45]                           Oh, you did it. For wrestling?

Host 2: [24:47]                      We used it with Gatorades and stuff. Yeah. So I wrestled, and a lot of it was, so half the sport was the physical and the other half the sport was a lot, honestly like figuring out nutrition and how to like, you know. Obviously I didn’t, I had no data whatsoever other than my own and you know, how I felt. And like I figured out that I really, did really well on bananas, you know, but I did terrible on peanut butter and jellies. Or I couldn’t drink a full Gatorade. I had to like cut it with like 80% water. A lot of times I would swish and spit out Gatorades because, like I wouldn’t, I just, you know, it’s one of those things, I’m sure that, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but it’s one of those things it’s like, I don’t know. I just didn’t feel right. But you are now quantifying all those things, which is bizarre.

Josh Clemente: [25:38]    Yeah. It’s interesting that the, you know, I’m no elite athlete. I certainly push myself in the gym, but I’m not somebody who ever thought about this sort of, this degree of performance optimization where you’re like, yeah, you’re rinsing with carbs. And you know, imagine having a real time sort of dashboard for your glucose energy levels.  I can just, the sky’s the limit. I don’t know what is going to happen in the performance world with this, but it’s going to be crazy. Like, I truly believe it’s going to be paradigm shifting, like having this available for athletes, in the off season and the on season. It’s going to be like, it’s going to be a real game changer.

Host 2: [26:12]                      It’s like when basketball players realized they shouldn’t smoke cigarettes and sit on like coach flights every other night ‘cause they’re 6’8’’.

Host: [26:24]                           Yeah. So then let’s talk about like your trajectory for Levels. Like it seems paradigm shifting just for the average person too. I feel like everyone needs this. You, your target market is the entire planet.

Host 2: [26:35]                      Are you alive?

Josh Clemente: [26:36]    I say it though. People always question me, but yeah, I like it when you said it. No, it’s true. I think what’s been really amazing and rewarding to be a part of this has been seeing all of the different types of people who have gotten life-changing value out of it. Like almost instantly, you know, it’s- The first week, the first time that you eat a meal and you see your body respond in number, like you see it speaking to you is kind of, I think, it’s hard not to internalize that and like not to have a light bulb moment there, like when you see a reaction to your actions. And so this is, there are people who are, you know, in their late fifties who are kind of like still trying to stay sharp and like improve their health span and live a long, active life who are very quickly just like honing their diet. There are people who are trying to lose weight and they’ve been struggling with it for 30 years. There are people who are elite athletes and I’ve been in research studies on ketogenic, long duration, ultra running, who are using this to hone their current COVID related, extended off season. You know, there’s like, there’s all of these different use cases and it’s all the same technology. But really what it is is just seeing your body and listening to what your body is telling you in terms of what’s good and bad for your own personal goals. It’s like, that’s really all it is. It’s just a, it’s a tool that, you know, Levels itself doesn’t, we don’t give, you know, some sort of coach life plan. We’re not telling you, like eat this every day for the rest of your life. What we’re doing is giving you a tool and a grading system, essentially, to understand the information that’s coming out of it. And then what you do with that is entirely up to you. It’s part of your, you know, your specific goals where you’re trying to accomplish. And you know, I just think it’s really awesome that it can equip people to hopefully like really make better decisions every single day. And that will stack up over the years to make them healthier long-term, I hope.

Host: [28:23]                           Yeah. It depends on what you do with it as an interesting thing. Cause I’m like, I’m scared to try this because I feel like I’m going to learn a lot of my habits should be changed. But what I really want is to still be able to cheat day, you know, like, is that, how, what are your thoughts on every two weeks? You know, spiking really poorly?

Josh Clemente: [28:46]    Well, this is actually one of the, that’s a common concern. People are like, “Well, I’m going to put this thing on and it’s going to tell me everything sucks. And I can’t do what I enjoy. And that’s going to make me upset.” That’s totally not true. That’s the beautiful thing is like, there is positive reinforcement built into this. One of the things I’ve noticed is that I’ve always kind of had this, like, I love cheesecake. And I had this real fear that this was going to be like one of my no gos. And cheesecake, if you think about it, it’s actually a pretty mixed meal. It’s, there’s a lot of protein, a lot of fat, and there is some sugar. And cheesecake for me is like, no problem. My glucose is rock solid. If I allocate the calories for it, like I can cheesecake and not have this crazy glucose response. Whereas like in college and a few years after that, I had a legit candy addiction. Like I would eat a pound of candy and I’m not exaggerating, in a sitting. I had these extended engineering labs that I would do in college of five hours long and I would bring candy there and I’d eat a pound of it. And, this probably did some serious damage to me by the way. But the month, like I do not, I have, since using CGM, I have not touched legitimate candy. I’ll eat dark chocolate, but I do not eat candy anymore. And it was because I had like one little trial size piece of candy with a CGM on, and my glucose responded. It was like second worst response I’ve ever had, from this time a single piece. And the realization is like, I can have a really rich, rewarding dessert that I love by the way, ice cream or cheesecake. And it’s just better for me across the board than this toxic stuff that like, I actually don’t even really enjoy when I think about it. It makes me really feel really sick. And so that’s the optimization. It’s like, it’s not that you don’t have, you have to get rid of dessert or sweet things forever. It’s just, you’ll be able to hone your choices and also time them, you know, like the power of walking is another big one. You know, if you have a dessert and you know, you’re going to have a response because you’ve tested it before, going for a walk like 10, 15 minutes long, right after your meal is amazingly powerful in terms of keeping your glucose response controlled. It’s wild. Oh yeah.

Host 2: [40:43]                      Yeah. It’s the Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving stroll.

Josh Clemente: [30:48]    Yeah, exactly. Seriously. Yeah.

Host: [30:58]                           Tim Ferriss talked about like going into like the bathroom of a wings place, doing squats in a stall. And that was like some hack that came up. I don’t. This was a while, like it was in his four hour body thing. So I imagine he didn’t have it yet. He just knew that that worked like, or maybe, I don’t know. Has he done this with you guys?

Josh Clemente: [31:13]    He hasn’t. He experimented with CGM a few years ago. And I remember reading about it and I think he, like, he definitely saw some similar stuff to what we’re doing, but one of the focuses of Levels is adding- Really what we do, our core competency is we take the data and we provide analysis and scoring. So we don’t just give you like the numbers raw out of the machine. We provide lifestyle scores, zone scores, so like. You know, we don’t have to get too deep into this, but like you make a certain number of actions and if they’re close together, they will affect how you respond to the other actions. So like I just said, you eat a meal and then you go for a walk. That’s going to be a totally different response than if you just eat that meal. Or if you just go for a walk. So we take all that into account and we provide these composite scores that see how you’re actually responding. So that spike, how fast you spike, how long you stay elevated. All of this stuff. And give you a score that’s like much easier, I think, to track than trying to look at all these little fluctuations and figure it out yourself. And so that’s really what we’re doing, is we’re trying to make the data actionable. So bringing it down to like, “Okay, I’ve seen this response. I need to make a, you know, a better choice today. How do I go about doing that?” Like, is it a timing thing? Is it a content of the meal thing? You know, we guide some explorations so people can start to understand the whole space and choose a set of lifestyle decisions that will support their goals.

Host: [32:36]                           Yeah. I was talking with your co-founder Sammy. He sent me some examples of people that have used your product and then like screenshot of their score and put it on Twitter or whatever. And I’m like, mind blown. This is like the next thing, you know, you share your run and like, “Look at all the miles I did.” And now I can be like, “Look how I gamified my blood. I’m in health today.”

Josh Clemente: [32:56]    Yeah, no, I absolutely love it. It’s been amazing to see how the people, the social element of this. Like it wasn’t clear and, it wasn’t clear to us how people would kind of respond. I certainly feel, I love talking about it. Like, yeah, you know, you’re wearing a patch, you’re wearing this disc on your arm and we have like covers on it, these black adhesive covers and, you know. So you’re wearing this thing continuously for 14 days. You don’t take it on and off. And we weren’t entirely sure how people would respond, but like the response has been overwhelmingly, “This is like something I want to share with everyone.” Like if I have a really irresponsible blood sugar spike, cause I, you know, I cheated, I want to share that. Yeah. If I have a day of like awesome streaks and my glucose stays within range a hundred percent of the time, I want to share that. And so, it’s really cool because this is like, you know, this I think is going to trigger a, you know, these sort of almost network effects where other people get in on the action and want to learn about their own bodies and may discover something that’s really valuable and really long-term, like sets them on a better path. And also it improves the quality of our understanding. Like the more we know about the, just like the crazy diversity of responses that are out there, the better our, sort of actionability, sorry, the recommendations we can make about the data gets. So like as the data set gets larger, we learn more and we can help people make more optimized decisions for them. And this is just because this is such a poorly studied space. We know, I think, quite a bit about how to help people manage their diabetes with this technology, but no one’s really studied the rest of the metabolic space to this extent. So yeah, it’s going to be like one of the big benefits I think is as more people get interested and start doing it, like we’re going to learn some crazy stuff about what’s going on out there with glucose levels and metabolic function and dysfunction.

Host: [34:45]                           Well, when you were talking about yourself personally, how it’s protein and fat are really good for you, it almost sounds like carnivore diet. Are you familiar?

Josh Clemente: [34:55]    I am. I’m familiar. I have not done it though. I’ve not done a carnivore stint. But yeah. I mean, what we, what we’re doing here at Levels is like just, I think there’s so many dietary philosophies out there and we don’t want to, you know, we don’t choose like some philosophy and say like, “This is the optimal one.” Again, because truthfully like Casey, for example, one of my co-founders is all plant-based. You know, she’s a vegan plant-based. And for me, like, it would be really tricky for me to pull that off. But Casey has some of the best glucose control on the team. Like probably the best and she’s eating nothing but plants all day, which is amazing. And really her weapons of choice are healthy fats and fiber. You know, she goes, she does a lot of tahini. She does a lot of beans. She does a lot of leafy greens. Like she has a, actually a really cool Instagram page where she like kind of documents how she builds these glucose optimized plant-based meals. And it’s pretty amazing because like again, if I eat some of the things that she eats consistently, I have a really, but really significant response. So I definitely biased more towards the paleo. Like I don’t really eat many grains, I avoid rice and stuff like that. Eating more meats and you know, avocados and green vegetables primarily. But yeah. I don’t know. I might try it. I think I’m going to kind of experiment with all the different dietary philosophies while I’m doing this because the data is super valuable and interesting to me. But I just don’t think I could do carnivore long term.

Host: [36623]                         Yeah. You got to eat like the end trails too, right?

Josh Clemente: [36:27]    Apparently.

Host: [36:27]                           Oh yeah. For our fit heads that aren’t familiar with carnivore diet, it is what it sounds like. You only eat meat, like nothing but animal, but also you’re supposed to have like the bones and the liver and heart and brains because we have to, like, we can’t get everything we need unless we do that. So just like-

Josh Clemente: [36:45]    Is it mostly like red meat? Like, like primarily beef, I think.

Host: [36:51]                           Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like high-fat too.

Josh Clemente: [36:54]    Hi fat, yeah.

Host: [36:54]                           Yeah. I think it’s one-to-one fat to protein is the goal.

Josh Clemente: [36:56]    Oh really?

Host: [36:58]                           Like eating guts and stuff. Well, I mean, I don’t know. We should probably have a carnivore on Max, but I mean it’s just like I would absolutely love to experiment with as many of those things as possible, especially getting that feedback. I mean, I know you, your mission for, Levels’ mission isn’t to be like, you know, be keto, be whatever, be vegan, but what about like metabolic flexibility, being able to go into ketosis like that? How does that affect glucose levels and is that important?

Josh Clemente: [37:31]    Yeah, a hundred percent. So, with, just real quick on the diet thing, you know, again, we, this is glucose is really important and it is associated with all of these long-term dysfunctions. If glucose gets out of control, typically, you know, chronic illness follows. And so, it’s definitely important to focus on, but it is only one metric, right? So there are other things people need to focus on in order to really optimize and nail their health overall. So we do want to be mindful of that. Like it’s important and it’s great to have structure around there, but like you could certainly build a poor diet with good glucose metrics. So, you know, that’s one thing that we do try to be sensitive to. You know like you just like drink canola oil all day long, you’re going to have good glucose levels, but you’re probably not going to be overall healthy. So, that’s important to keep in mind. But yeah, again, that’s not typically, that’s not typically the problem we’re facing right now. What we’re facing is really a lot of sedentary living with high processed carbohydrate loads. And that’s where you start to see like real bad glucose dysfunction. So, to the metabolic flexibility question, this is like, “Yeah, I love this space.” So we at Levels, we use two terms that we like really

Host: [42:32]                           That’s fascinating. Are you, a lot of them like working on fasting? Have you fasted and?

Josh Clemente: [42:39]    I’ve done. I really, I like to experiment with this stuff. I’ve done, longest I’ve gone is a little over 72 hours and-

Host: [42:46]                           Oh, dang.

Josh Clemente: [42:48]    I am not elite, but it’s really interesting to see because you know, a lot of people and certainly me before I started doing this, I had this preconception that I’m, if I don’t eat like every four hours, I’m going to die. Like my blood sugars’ in crap, I will die. My body can’t do that. And I just had this like, idea that you have to eat to stay alive realistically. Like I really genuinely thought that I, that this was necessary to eat three times a day, at least. And, so now with my, you know, more informed understanding of how my body works, what actually happens is I go into like this optimal space where my glucose levels stay perfectly flat. Ketones get produced from my body fat to like make up for the energy I’m not bringing in from food. And I just cruise all day long. Like my hunger levels are like, you know, they kind of come up and down, but generally speaking, it’s totally doable and I can go for three consecutive days without eating anything. And that realization is like, it’s pretty powerful. Like you’re no longer sort of chained to this like eating schedule and specific habits. You can start to make decisions based on like, what works best for, I don’t know, what you’re trying to do. I mean I like to do it. I play with it for kind of like the one drive thing. You know, I listened to Peter Attia, and so I sort of got into it for that like autophagy effect, you know, if that’s real, but-

Host: [44:11]                           That’s real. We need something to wear to test your autophagy.

Josh Clemente: [424:18] Exactly. Yeah. That would be the, that’s the next level.

Host: [44:21]                           So you’ve tried it out for like, what? Like quarterly kind of things or-

Josh Clemente: [44:26]    Yeah.

Host: [44:26]                           You like intermittently. Okay. That’s cool.

Josh Clemente: [44:29]    So, I kind of, yeah, I definitely probably intermittent fast. I mean, I don’t typically eat before noon now. But I don’t do any extended fast unless it’s kind of planned because it’s really important. One thing I have noticed is if you just jump into a fast for an extended period of time and you haven’t been, or at least if I haven’t been eating sort of a higher fat keto style beforehand, it will be like the hunger will be pretty intense for the first 24 or like 36 hours, before it dissipates. Whereas if you go from like ketosis into fasting for me, I’ve seen like almost no hunger when done effectively. Like you just, your body’s like already burning fats. This is the metabolic flexibility thing, like you’re already burning fat. And so it’s much, it’s a much easier hormonal transition to go from fat to fat than it is from glucose to fat. Especially if you’ve done it before.

Host: [45:20]                           And what have you seen? And this is kind of just like a self-serving question because I fast every day for a long time and then eat a huge meal. Like what have you seen after coming out of a fast, or what does your glucose do?

Josh Clemente: [45:32]    It definitely depends on what you go for. So one thing that seems to be the case is that when you don’t eat glucose, when you like go into either ketosis or you fast for awhile, your body makes your muscle insulin resistant, is what’s it called. So like, it’s called acute insulin resistance. And the reason it’s doing that is like, your muscles are saving the glucose that’s in your blood for your brain. It’s kind of like, yeah the theory. And so if you, since your muscles are most of the energy usage of your body, besides your brain, if you jump from this insulin resistance state, and then like dump a bunch of sugar into the bloodstream, because insulin resistance prevents you from being able to effectively use the glucose that’s in your blood, you can see like a pretty significant blood sugar response. Like your blood sugar will spike pretty significantly because your muscles can’t like, soak it up. The way that, like, I guess the, what I’ve read is that you can kind of taper your way out by sort of introducing carbohydrates back somewhat slowly. So what I’ll usually do is eat like chili or something. So it’ll have like some beans or something in there along with a lot of meat and fat, and that’ll be like my first meal. And then, you know, a few hours later I’ll have, like, you know, if I’m eating more carbs I’ll have probably, in most cases, it’ll be like a sort of a soup with more beans. Typically like, beans are kind of my go-to carb and some vegetables that I have like maybe some carrots or something that’s like pretty fibrous, but still has sugar in it. So I usually don’t go at it from a fast, like, straight into a huge like carb laden meal because my blood  sugar doesn’t like it.

Host: [47:13]                           Interesting. Okay. And what about length of a fast? Does that seem to affect things or is it?

Josh Clemente: [47:21]    That’s a good question. I actually don’t have enough data to know that. I think you could probably see this, like insulin resistance thing happen within about 24 hours, like you’ll- We’ve seen people who have come out of fast, like with a carb, a carby meal and have been like really shocked because those same foods like didn’t cause them any problem, you know, in normal life and then eating it right after a fast does. So there’s definitely something there. And there’s definitely an optimal way for every person to like come out of the fast.

Host: [47:50]                           Well, it also sounds like you shouldn’t be lifting on a fast, which is something that I do, because your muscles are turned off, basically.

Host: [47:57]                           Well, it’s not that they’re turned off. It’s just that they’re biased towards burning ketones. So burning, you can use that for energy. It’s that they will save the glucose for the brain. So, I think, you know, a lot of people will describe like, having, they just don’t feel as strong or like they maybe hit the wall a little bit earlier when you’re fasting. I kind of get that myself. I won’t do any like super intense exercise when I’m fasting. I’ll kind of go for, you know, either cardio or like a lighter like body weight type thing if I’m fasting.

Host 2: [38:29]                      Something light, like a five-hour run or a-

Josh Clemente: [48:32]    Yeah. It’s like, exactly like something real basic.

Host 2: [48:35]                      Pick up an elephant. Yeah.

Josh Clemente: [48:37]    The intro stuff.

Host: [48:40]                           All right. Well.

Host 2: [48:43]                      It’s so crazy interesting because it feels like everything everyone’s ever done is based on general feeling and not, they’ve never been able to quantify or at least in a way that they’re used to it. Maybe like, “Oh, I had a crappy workout because, you know, I ate crappy last night.” But in reality it’s because you didn’t sleep or just because you got into a fight with your mom or, you know what I mean?

Josh Clemente: [49:08]    Yeah.

Host 2: [49:08]                      It’s crazy to think, like everything you’re actually putting numbers on things and having us be able to track stuff in real time or in not even in real time, like in reality, do you know what I mean?

Josh Clemente: [49:23]    Yeah. It’s putting, you know, this stuff is happening. This is the interesting thing. It’s like it’s happening, whether you’re measuring it or not, it’s just that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Right? So this is just showing you.

Host 2: [49:32]                      And you can’t make the decision. It’s possible we’re making decisions based on the wrong information or the-

Host: [49:40]                           Probable.

Host 2: [49:41]                      Probably, yeah.

Josh Clemente: [49:42]    It’s probable. Yeah, yeah.  I mean, there’s, there are certainly people who are extremely, you know, they’re hardliners, and they say like, “Everyone needs to do this to be healthier.” But when you start-

Host 2: [49:51]                      Yeah, are you worried that the entire fitness community is going to like beat you up because you know, they’re selling snake oil or an apple flex or, you know what I mean? Yeah. Bananas  and bowl flexes, you know, they’re just going to just.

Josh Clemente: [50:05]    Banana in bowl flexes. That’s tough. That is what we’re afraid of. Big bowl flex. It’s, you know, it’s definitely the case. Like people are going to, you know, basically point at this and say, this is another fad or something, you know, like this is like some other crazy like, you know, effort to get people  to do things that aren’t healthy for them. But, you know, again, I just want to reiterate, like we don’t have a philosophy at Levels. Like we, the philosophy is that glucose dysfunction is one of the number one causes of concern in the world today. Like if you look at the rates of diabetes, the rates of heart disease, all these metabolic, these are metabolic conditions that are rising, at a rising rate across the world. And our theory is that this is because people just don’t have information. It’s not that they want, nobody wants to get sicker. Nobody wants to gain weight. Nobody wants to feel horrible every day. And we’re not telling you that you have to eat some specific supplement in order to get out of this. We’re just saying, use your own body’s information to make the choices that you’re already going to make. You’re going to sit down for lunch tomorrow and you’re going to eat something. What are you going to pick and why? That’s a question that most people honestly can’t answer with anything other than, “Well, I like the way it tastes.” And that’s okay. Like you can eat something that you like the way it tastes, but you should have, if you’re trying to get healthier, a rationale that goes deeper than that. And so that’s what we’re trying to do.

Host 2: [51:25]                      It will change the world, man.

Host: [51:27]                           I love the company mission, but also whenever you first intro Levels, it wasn’t specifically about CGM. Like what, are you thinking about other products or are you going to look into my autophagy?

Josh Clemente: [51:42]    So our goal, like the broad vision for Levels is to make metabolic health possible. So to make your daily decisions, really it’s to make your behavior changes that will make you healthier, actionable, like allow you to make that happen. And so the goal is to reverse the trends in metabolic dysfunction that we’re seeing. And so you know, like I mentioned earlier, glucose is really important and  it is the, I think, obvious first choice to improve. If we could improve one, you know, sort of molecular dysfunction that we have, it’s glucose dysfunction, I would say. And then beyond that, like, if you want to improve our ability to do that or improve, you know, a specific, you know, performance space or weight loss space, we shouldn’t be able to measure it. We should be able to bring more data to that problem. And so being able to measure like, you know, ketones, for example, in real time so you know which energy source you’re using- triglycerides, cortisol, like your stress hormones, you know, potentially even insulin someday, which would be a real Holy grail. Like there are all these other analyzers that really matter. And that if we could introduce them all like into a single uniform scoring system and data system in your pocket, it’s, in my opinion, the way that we will make, you know, health information more like financial information. Like if I can check my bank account balance in my phone, you know from my phone every day and know like what I’m spending on and when, and how much I’ve got in the bank, I should be able to do the same thing with my health information, I think. You know, it’s way too hard to get access to your own body’s data. So we will not stop with glucose.

Host: [53:19]                           That’s awesome. Yeah. Please keep going. Okay, we have one subject we didn’t touch on that we do with every guest. As a fitness or health professional, and a CrossFit trainer, what are your thoughts on alcohol intake?

Josh Clemente: [53:36]    Hm, this is interesting. We wrote a blog article on Level’s blog kind of about this.

Host: [53:42]                           Yeah, I know. And I haven’t slept since I read it.

Josh Clemente: [53:47]    Okay, good. I’m glad you read it. You know, I personally feel that there’s-

Host: [53:54]                           Is that a beer?

Josh Clemente: [53:54]    A right way to do alcohol. What’s that?

Host: [53:56]                           Max is drinking a beer?

Host 2: [53:59]                      No, no, no. That’s the coffee, everybody calm down.

Josh Clemente: [54:00]    You got to be relaxed.

Host 2: [54:03]                      It’s two o’clock.

Host 2: [54:05]                      It’s five over here, so. No, I think there’s a right way to do alcohol. You know, if you’re going to, if you’re getting, if you’re choosing to have alcohol, there is certainly a right way. And there’s a, there are a lot of wrong ways to do it. And I think,  you know, for anything, I think people just need to be mindful about the way they’re going about it. Like, what is, what role does this substance have in your life? And for me, you know, a lot of things, I can kind of go aggressive on a lot of different things, caffeine being one of them. You know, you can kind of overdo almost anything. And certainly alcohol is like one of the easiest to overdue. There is tons of data that over consuming alcohol is really bad for you, especially like the liver is kind of, by the way, we just don’t give it enough credit. But liver is one of the most important organs in the body. And like, we got to care for it. It’s very connected to metabolic health. So if you destroy your liver, you get fatty liver disease. This is what’s making kids. So there’s this disease called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is like really effecting obese children at rates that are like completely unprecedented. It’s because they’re consuming a huge amount of fructose and sugary beverages. So like if the liver breaks down, it’s disastrous. So I think that’s one of the biggest concerns with alcohol is like the liver damage you can do. But there’s also this other data that shows that if you consume zero alcohol, you actually have a higher likelihood of having metabolic dysfunction than if you consume some. So it is not true that less is better. And this is the case with so many things, like there’s a dose dependency where we’re like a U shaped thing with salt. Same thing where it’s not like people are very afraid of eating too much salt because they think they’re gonna have a heart attack. Well, guess what, like your likelihood of death is actually much higher if you have too little salt, than if you have too much, much higher. Like the rates of, or the risk to you increases non-linearly. And so this is the same thing that we’re, that we’re kind of seeing with alcohol. It’s not nearly to the extent as the salt. So, I personally think like, yeah. I mean, if you’re going to choose it, choose something that treats you well in terms of how you act and then how your, I think your likelihood of making good choices. And you know, related to glucose information, like I will typically pick like a pretty light beer or just a straight spirit, like sip on something on the rocks and that will cause no problems for my glucose. Red wine also is like pretty good for me. I avoid the sweeter stuff like champagne or like, you know, real mixed cocktail stuff, like typically.

Host: [56:30]                           Yeah. Got it. So no beer miles. What was crazy about that article is that they talk about drinking and ketosis or like after a fast could like make you hypoglycemic, which I did not know. And also I do that all the time.

Josh Clemente: [56:46]Really?

Host: [56:47]                           Yeah. I mean, I’ll break a fast with several beers.

Josh Clemente: [56:50]    Oh, wow. I mean, I think you should see what the, you know, what the data says.

Host: [56:56]                           I may. Terrified.

Josh Clemente: [56:57]    So, I’ve done the beer mile.

Host: [56:59]                           You have?

Josh Clemente: [57:00]    Oh yeah, I’ve done the beer mile. I should do the CGM. I haven’t done since I started the measuring.

Host: [57:04]                           Don’t worry.

Host 2: [57:05]                      That’s perfect.

Josh Clemente: [57:06]    Yeah, we totally should.

Host: [57:07]                           Before we go?

Josh Clemente: [57:08]    Let’s do it. We seriously should. We’ll compare data on this one. This is something that has to happen for science. Yeah, I don’t know. So alcohol will definitely, in certain cases, lower your glucose pretty quickly. And so I could see it being a problem if, you know, the data shows that like you can go hypoglycemic, especially if you’re already in ketosis, like your glucose levels are baseline low.  I just don’t think this has been studied well, it’s probably not. I’m certainly not going to give any advice here, like at all, but you know, I just, I don’t think there’s enough for me to say one way or another, whether that’s like actually causing hypoglycemia or not. Like some people have beer and like their blood sugar rises. So, I mean, I guess it kind of depends on the beer.

Host: [57:53]                           Well, I’m excited to find out.

Josh Clemente: [57:56]    I didn’t tell you to do any of this.

Host 2: [57:59]                      One of the worst physically I’ve ever felt in my life was I was trying to get all the salt out of my body and it’s crazy how terrible I felt. I had, I couldn’t, I could barely stand up at the end of it.

Josh Clemente: [58:13]    How did you do this? Were you like, you were wearing trash bags and running or something  or like?

Host 2: [58:18]                      Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I drank, I ate and norm, healthily, what I thought was healthily. And then I drank a ton of water. And then for a couple of days I cut out anything that could be slightly salty and I drank as much water as I could to flush it all out, flush it all out. Again, these are college kids science terms, so please take it with a grain. And then, the last couple of days I, yeah, I was doing trash bags and saunas and rubber suits trash bags suit. And I got all of the liquid, you know, I, in theory, washed it all out, got on the scale. It was the, I was the weight that I was trying to, you know, I was trying to weigh in. I was super light. And then I started exercising and I couldn’t lift my arms. And then I, like, I got thrown down and I couldn’t stand up. And I was like, “Well, perhaps, this was the wrong thing to do.”

Josh Clemente: [59:23]    That is crazy.

Host 2: [59:24]                      But the salt, you know, the one I focused on salt, like, cause I thought that was the best way to get as light as I could was to get all the salt out of me. And I was just trying to lose water weight. But I guess to anybody out there, like be careful trying to get rid of one thing or be careful trying to, too much of one thing. You know what I mean? It’s just, it’s crazy.

Josh Clemente: [59:45]    Oh totally. Like you could definitely, you know, just orienting around the single metric, you know. And this is something we want to run a lot. It’s just like, you know, be moderate. There’s still, it’s not, like with glucose, it’s not better to have lower glucose. It is not true. Like below a certain level again, like you’re going to become hypoglycemic and that is immediately risky to life and limb. So, yeah, it’s all about like balance, I think. So salt man, that one’s scary. The cutting in general, like cutting in sports, cutting weight, especially in obviously martial arts and wrestling, like. It’s crazy how, like, I just don’t, I don’t know how we don’t have more sort of like serious injury or a regulation.

Host 2: [01:00:27]               I mean, in my opinion, it ruins most of those sports. And I love those sports more than anything in the world and the weight stuff and the cutting of weight stuff. It almost ruins it. And especially ruins it for kids. I mean, high school kids, middle school kids, it’s a disaster. But what’s nice is it taught me to like look at what I’m eating or when I’m eating or how I’m eating or how often. And because we were sort of, I guess, now that I’m thinking about it faster, that like it really, you could hone in on one change, then you realize, “Oh, that’s the thing that makes me feel this way.” And so there’s a sort of an informed decision.

Josh Clemente: [01:01:08]Yeah. It seems like you like, maybe just averaging the weight for like three days prior to the  match. It’s kind of like. That’s how you should have to cut weight. But you shouldn’t be able to crash that.

Host 2: [01:01:18]               I mean, you should have to average that for the six months of the season or whatever. Maybe if I’m wearing the patch, you know, let’s just slap that on there. An extra feature.

Host: [01:01:30]                   Know your weight real time.

Josh Clemente: [01:01:31]Yeah. Hydration is one interesting space. Like there’s some interesting tech coming to board, like for hydration. I think it’s like, it’s really short. Like you can’t, it doesn’t last, very long. You wear the patches, like sort of disposal style, but yeah, I think you should be able to measure hydration levels in the near future and know like with pretty good certainty.

Host 2: [01:01:51]               Yeah. Not just staring at your pee the whole time. You mean?

Josh Clemente: [01:01:55]Yeah. Classics spectrogram.

Host: [01:02:01]Well, thank you so much. It’s been eye opening. Such ideas. I just thought that you’re changing the face of biofeedback.

Josh Clemente: [01:02:13]Yeah. I, you know, it’s a big space, you know, there’s a lot to do here. So we’ve, looking forward to hearing what you learned. And Max, we should get you in there as well.

Host 2: [01:02:22]               I’m in. Can we, can I get it implanted so that I have it forever?

Josh Clemente: [01:02:27]You can, it’s only going to measure it for 14 days. But if you want to do something. Yeah, we’ll make that happen for sure.

Host: [01:02:37]                   Sweet. And, if our fit heads want to find you guys and learn more on your awesome blog, where should they head?

Josh Clemente: [01:02:44]Yeah. So the website is levelshealth.com. The blog is levelshealth.com\blog. You can sign up on the homepage, by the way, throw your email in there. We’ll keep you in the loop as we get closer and closer to our big launch, which is going to happen later this year. So right now we’re still in beta phase. We have kind of a closed early access group that we’re working with right now to improve the product. It’s all about feedback and it will be, we’ll be doing that full launch like I said, later this year. And then follow us on Instagram, Twitter, at @unlocklevels. And, we’ve, yeah, we’re looking forward to connecting and bringing this thing mainstream to the world.

Host: [01:03:23]                   Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Josh Clemente: [01:03:26]Yes, absolutely.

Host: [01:03:27]                   Alright. And thanks to the fit heads and subscribe on Apple podcasts. We will see you next week. 217w 1m15.450s

[END]

Levels brings bio wearables, CGM like technology, for the wellness space and performance world.

Levels give you the raw numbers of glucose, which is the primary molecule in the body, for better decisions.

Individuals vary in responses to the same food, so personalized data is important.

Stress affects blood sugar levels by setting you on fight or flight mode.

The order of your food intake may improve your glucose control.

The biggest levers on glucose levels are stress, sleep, diet and exercise.

Sleep also affects blood glucose. Rest has power.

Combination  of food or mixed meals improves glucose levels.

Having the right feedback is important because your body might be responding negatively to some intakes, even healthy ones.

Watching your weight or figure is not complete health. Diet can have a life changing energy change.

You can accurately see what’s  happening with your levels with continuous measurement, versus periodically checking.

Managing glucose depends on your health goals, like longevity, losing weight, athletic performance and etc.

The body is so sensitive to glucose, the fastest acting source of energy.

Real time glucose energy levels data will be game changer for athletes.

Levels gives the data for reaction of people’s action, to support their health goals.

Levels let you know actually what you respond positively to, like food you think you would react.

Levels’ competency is providing analyses and scoring, not just the raw numbers.

The sharing of Levels’ users triggers others to also want to learn about their own bodies.

Levels lean on metabolic awareness and metabolic fitness.

There are other things people need to focus on for over all health, and not just glucose levels.

Metabolic flexibility allows for your body to quickly and efficiently between energy sources, which are food source and fat sources.

When you fast, ketones are produced from body fat to make up for lack of food intake.

Being on keto is a good preparation for a fast because it’s easier than switching from burning glucose to fat for energy.

Because your muscles are in insulin resistance after a fast, it’s best to break with carbohydrates.

Muscles are focused on producing ketones when on fast, so you’re not up for intense actions.

Levels has no particular philosophy but encourages people to use their own body’s information for decisions they’ll make.

Levels’ vision is to make metabolic health possible. Possibilities are wider, beyond glucose.

We need to consider what roles the substances we take have, especially for our liver.

We shouldn’t be single metric oriented. Balance is very important.