Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimised practices for waking, working, learning, eating, training, playing, sleeping and sex. Aubrey Marcus

There’s no wrong way to eat it.

      Without good fat in your diet, you are going to be setting yourself up for some serious problems—problems made all the worse when fats have gone AWOL during breakfast roll call, and sugar and refined carbohydrates have taken their place.

      Universal Nutrition Principle #3: Skipping Is Better Than Cheating

      Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. I don’t care how great the tale is you’re being told, or how old the wife is who is telling it to you. Most days I eat breakfast. But if I cannot gain access to good fats, and only have sugary shit and refined carbohydrates at my disposal … it’s an easy choice. I skip it. You’re going to be far better off skipping breakfast altogether and waiting until you can get a good lunch or a snack with actual nutrients involved, rather than eating a bunch of sugar.

      If the body does not have adequate fuel from your food, it will pull it from all tissues, including lean muscle mass. This process is so efficient that morbidly obese people have been put on long, medically supervised fasts with no ill effects as far back as the 1960s. Most famously, Angus Barbieri, a twenty-seven-year-old Scot who tipped the scales at more than 450 pounds, spent 382 days on a medically supervised fast. Yes, you read that right, no food for over a year. His body just broke down all the extra fat and protein, utilizing his own nutrient stores for survival. His body metabolized not only all of his excess fat but also the protein in his excess skin to remodel the svelte young man who was emerging. The result: he lost 276 pounds.

      This is not just some overly restrictive, zero-tolerance measure I’m advocating here so you avoid sugar at all costs. I’m into living optimally, I’m not a crazy, unreasonable zealot. There is a time and place for sugar—it’s just never going to be at breakfast. While the classic breakfast options are perhaps the worst of any meal, the advantage is that it is probably the easiest meal to skip while complying with a principle called intermittent fasting (IF). The basic structure of intermittent fasting is that you do all your eating in an eight-hour period (for most people, noon to 8:00 p.m.) and effectively fast the other sixteen hours of the day, some of which you’re sleeping through. The idea is that when the body doesn’t have food, it starts to metabolize excess tissue (fat and protein) to burn as fuel, which is a good thing.

      Contrary to the shitty advice that became popular over the last decade, you don’t want to be eating small snacks throughout the day. That is only good for athletes training at extremely high intensity. For us mere mortals, you want turnover in your fuel supply, just like you want your body to burn off that belly fat before bikini season. Interestingly, to get this effect you don’t need to fast for long periods. Even better, by simply compressing your feeding window to eight hours per day, you can get the benefits of fasting and still have lunch with your friends and dinner with your family. Every day.

       Caveat: IF and only if …

      The structure of Own the Day is built to accommodate intermittent fasting, and the best way to do it is to skip breakfast. But intermittent fasting isn’t for everyone. If you are struggling with hormone issues, or already have trouble keeping on weight, then intermittent fasting can do more harm than good. But for a lot of us who are interested in weight management and overall health and longevity, it is worth trying for a few weeks at a time.

      WEIGHT LOSS

      When it comes to health and fitness, the one thing people want most is to lose some fat and keep their muscle mass. Intermittent fasting is one of the few protocols that seems to do both, and it’s probably the simplest. You lose fat because fasting works on both sides of the metabolic (energy burning) equation. It increases your metabolic rate, which helps you burn even more fuel. Then on the other side, by compressing the available window for eating, it typically restricts the amount of fuel you are putting in your body. Studies have seen intermittent fasting produce weight loss of 3 to 8 percent (a huge amount) and waist circumference reduction of 4 to 7 percent over periods that range from three to twenty-four weeks. That means a 200-pound man might drop to 184 pounds, just with intermittent fasting! And for those worried about losing muscle or performance, other studies have found less muscle loss from fasting than from long-term calorie restriction. And as a bonus, growth hormone levels can increase dramatically during fasting, which helps the body repair, recover, and rebuild muscle, aiding in peak performance.

      HEALTH AND LONGEVITY

      Obviously being overweight is antithetical to a long life. But beyond just the weight loss advantage, when you aren’t eating, the body takes the opportunity to jump-start cellular repair processes, such as removing waste material from cells. Just as having an oil change extends the life of your car, cleaning out your cells can help extend your own lifetime warranty. Intermittent fasting also reduces oxidative stress and inflammation, which, as we learned in chapter 2, are some of the leading causes of disease.

      Prescription

      The biggest mind-set shift that we need to make is away from the idea of “breakfast foods” and more toward the philosophy of breakfast as a foundation for a set of nutritional habits. Think of your breakfast choice as an act of love toward yourself for the rest of the day. It was the Buddha who said, wisely, “To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.”

      I’m not going to give you a set time you need to eat, or a set amount you need to eat. There is so much fuss about portion size, but if we ask ourselves honestly, we know about how much is the right amount for us, and how much is overeating. You don’t want to be hungry, but you don’t want to feel stuffed either. (We’ll learn in chapter 8 how using calories as a measure of anything is a problem.) As far as your macronutrient balance, just focus on substituting good fats for the sugar and simple carbs. Eat whatever protein and fiber you like; as long as you add fat and cut the sugar, you are going to be in good shape. It is also generally going to be better to reserve the more complex and hard-to-digest foods for later in the day, since the morning correlates to the lowest levels of digestive enzymes and gastric acid. Eggs are easier to digest than red meat, for example. This is also why I like smoothies for breakfast, as everything is already premasticated by the teeth of the blender.

      If you decide to give intermittent fasting a shot beyond those days when you simply have no quality breakfast options available to you, the easiest way is simply to skip breakfast every day and wait until lunch to have your first meal. But there are other ways. One way is to eat normally for six days and fast completely for one day. During any fast period, it is fine to drink liquids that don’t have calories, and even an MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) oil or coconut oil is acceptable as a fuel source (see chapter 6 for more information on these valuable oils). Another way is to eat normally for five days, and then for two days eat a very restricted ketogenic diet. This could include bone broth, butter, MCT oil, half an avocado, some low-sugar green veggies, maybe a chia seed slurry, but not much more. Supplements are also fine to take on fast days, though some supplements can be harsh on an empty stomach. Whichever method works best for you is the one you should pursue. Just remember, it never hurts to give yourself a full break.

      Below are four choices for your owned breakfast.

Classic Breakfast with Greens

      SERVES 1

      FOR THE EGGS

      2–3 free-range eggs

      1 teaspoon water

      1–2 tablespoons grass-fed butter

      FOR THE BACON

      4 rashers of uncured bacon

      FOR THE GREENS

      75–150g of mixed greens

      3 tablespoons Balsamic vinegar

      1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

      1 clove garlic, minced

      120ml olive oil

      Salt and pepper to taste

      FOR THE EGGS