I eat a lot of sugar.

Yes, I know you’re upset.

But let me explain, you might learn something.

Like most kids, I would inhale anything remotely sweet in my vicinity. Candy, pastries and juices were a staple of my diet.

But as I got older, I noticed the cost of my sweet tooth.

• Brain fog

• Lack of motivation

• Constant exhaustion

So as a natural reaction, I decided to cut out all sugar.

I threw away my sweets, turned my head when I walked past bakeries and put a strict limit on my carbohydrates.

I was dead set on sugar being the devil and avoiding it at all cost.

After all, that’s what everyone had told me.

And life started to feel better. I could actually focus and was no longer carrying around that burning sensation behind my eyelids.

But it always felt like something was missing.

Life just didn’t feel the same. Everything had this terrible sense of emptiness. As if someone had turned down the lights over my existence.

Sure I could focus — but the work I did felt completely mechanical and lifeless.

Sure I wasn’t carrying around that chronic sense of exhaustion — but I didn’t feel like I was completely there either.

One day, I indulged in a teaspoon of honey. And all the thoughts about inflammation, tiredness and fat gain started rushing through my head. I sat down expecting the worst.

But the funniest thing happened…

Life started to regain its colors. A surge of energy rushed through my body and the motivation to actually do shit came back.

I felt more alive during my workouts, my creativity skyrocketed and I could actually hear the hum and buzz of the Universe.

That’s when I started questioning the health dogma that had gotten me to fear sugar in the first place.

Were the people likening sugar to the devil really talking about the same thing I’d experienced?

Had they come to the conclusion through rigorous experimentation and research, or had they simply jumped to it chasing the illusion of certainty?

It took a while, but I think I’ve finally come to conclusion.

An argument good enough to justify my honey addiction.

Navigating The Poles Of Life

People are too quick to accept absolutes.

They jump between myopic perspectives desperately trying to avoid the messiness and unknowingness that is reality.

But as a result, they lose the nuance and truth that only exists in between.

Because they’re always convinced they have the ultimate truth — they’re never able to find a better path.

They lock themselves into a subpar way of living. With their lives just as limited as their perspectives.

What you need to realize is this:

Truth is holistic.

It doesn’t exist on only one side.

By thinking it does, you close yourself off from ever finding a better way of life.

You might escape the temporary uncertainty and chaos that comes with not knowing — but you trap yourself in the permanent subpar existence that it brings.

By jumping from diet to diet — you never find one that works. And you’ll always feel like life isn’t quite what it could be.

By jumping from career to career — you never see that there is an opportunity to create your own. And you get locked in a job that really isn’t right for you.

Don’t get me wrong…

Absolutes are important. They allow you to rapidly expand your perspective by serving as stepping stones to a better path.

But most people aren’t willing to let them go.

They treat perspectives like individual planets, and see all others as being wrong.

But by being too zoomed in on just one, they miss the entire Universe.  They don’t realize that their’s and every other planet are part of the same thing. And as a result, they throw away the opportunity of more resources, allies and better ways of living.

By being too focused on the benefits of a single leaf, they miss the potential that lies in the entire forest.

And in exactly the same way, people look right past the potential of sugar.

Let me paint you a picture

The Misguidedness Of Fearing Sugar

Your life isn’t as good as you want it to be because you don’t have the perspective that would allow it to.

When people hear about the horrible effects of sugar — the natural reaction is to go in the opposite direction.

• Cutting out junk food

• Getting rid rid of all sugar

• Rejecting carbohydrates altogether

And they almost always see improvements.

But they become so hypnotized by the positive effects, that they mistakenly assume they’ve seen the full picture. That their perspective is the endpoint of all human knowledge and that continuing to experiment is a waste of time.

But in doing so, they don’t see the problems that comes with it. (And there are many).

They miss the path in between that carries an even fuller and healthier way of life.

Because by rejecting sugar completely, not only do you handicap your health (as you’ll come to see) — but you close yourself off from the energizing, life sustaining an mental benefits the right use of it brings.

No matter how much the keto or carnivore community wants to argue that carbs are the devil.

They’re still trapped in a perspective box.

They aren’t continuing to experiment because they think they’ve found the ultimate answer. And so their existence becomes subpar because of it.

I’m exaggerating a bit for dramatic effect.

But let me paint you a picture of why that is.

1. Living Without Carbohydrates Is Stressful

Your body needs glucose to survive.

(Especially organs like your brain and kidneys).

If your body doesn’t get it from your diet, it will create its own by breaking down what it has. In other words, glycogen, fats and protein.

This is why people on a keto or carnivore diet burn a lot more fat. But there is something most people seem to forget.

Burning fat is very metabolically expensive. Your body won’t use it unless it absolutely has to. So when carbs are out of the question, your body will first turn to amino acids for its glucose.

This includes the ones in your diet — but also the ones found in your muscles and lean tissue. In other words, when you’re not getting carbs — your body will shred muscle and lean tissue to fuel itself.

It does this by flooding your body with the stress hormone cortisol. Which does so many terrible things for your health that I won’t be able to go through them all.

But here’s a few of them:

• Bone loss

• DNA damage

• Destroyed gut

• Chronic anxiety

• Sleep disturbance

• Accelerated aging

• Decreased sexual health

• Suppressed immune function

When you’re not eating carbs you’re in a constant state of stress.

This is why you feel mentally sharper on a carnivore diet. Your body is filled to the brim with cortisol because it thinks it is starving. It’s telling you to go find some god damn food.

And not only are the mental effects detrimental in the long term, but they’re also subjective.

Because people perform better with carbohydrates — even though they feel like it’s the other way around. In the same way that drinking caffeine makes you feel more creative — but objectively makes you less so.

”But isn’t stress useful for getting work done”

Sure.

Stress is probably the best nootropic you have.

But chronically flooding your body with cortisol is not a long term strategy.

And there are other ways of getting that mental enhancement (as we’ll talk about in the actionable part).

To really drive this point home, just think about the bigger picture of living life stressed:

• You can’t relax or recover

• You develop mood swings and depression

• Your work turns to crap because your creativity shuts down

• You can’t enjoy life because you’re chronically anxious and worried

It’s more than just a painful irritation — it’s your entire life (as we talk about here).

Living without carbohydrates is stressful.

And if you happen to like this life thing, cortisol isn’t something that will aid in that feeling.

2. Glucose Keeps The Lights On

Think of your body as a hybrid car.

It runs on both electricity (carbohydrates) and gas (fats).

It’s not that one is bad — but rejecting one in favor of the other IS.

Because when you reject carbs, you’re also rejecting a process that is essential for your body to thrive.

What you’re really doing is running your life on emergency fuel.

And because burning fat is a lot more metabolically expensive than glucose — your metabolism (AKA the brightness of your life) slows down.

• Your mind gets slower

• Your energy to move around slips

• Your motivation to move through life takes a hit

It’s as if someone suddenly turned down the lights of your life.

Which is no fun place to be at.

Not only do you feel drained and tired all the time, but your mental metabolism slows down as well. Higher order mental functions like mood, optimism and creativity becomes soap through your fingers.

Burning fat is also a part of your physiology and you shouldn’t reject it. But when you go overboard and only burn fat, it often comes back to bite you in the ass.

Glucose and fat are the yin and yang of your biological energy.

When you reject one, you reject the other — and everything falls as a result (as we talk about in here).

That’s the 2nd point for sugar.

3. Insulin Is Kinda Important

People low to hate on insulin.

But it’s one of the most important hormones you have.

• It causes muscle synthesis

• It holds onto nutrients and electrolytes

• It stores glucose as glycogen and prevents hyperglycemia

When you refuse to eat carbohydrates, you’re essentially no longer exposed to insulin. And it comes with some pretty big pain points in the long term.

Without insulin you can’t really absorb nutrients.

You need an insulin spike after eating to absorb electrolytes and minerals.

And when you don’t get that spike, you don’t get those nutrients. As a result your brain can’t work as fast, muscle cramps become a regular occurrence and existence becomes a pain in the ass.

And if you’re reading this, I’m pretty sure that includes you.

”But doesn’t a lot of insulin cause insulin resistance?”

No.

Insulin is often painted as the villain.

It’s blamed for causing metabolic dysfunction and disorders like diabetes. But it’s more of a symptom than a cause. It’s the fireman arriving at the burning building, not the person who lit it.

Because it’s just your body’s attempt at storing the glucose running free in your blood. It’s not what causes your cells to become insulin resistant.

And even though having chronically high insulin is very problematic, insulin itself is not the root cause. And neither is glucose or sugar.

The true villain is visceral fat. Which we’ll talk more about later.

But for now, the point is this: without insulin — existence becomes terribly inconvenient. Because you need it for your body to operate smoothly. To not be pulled out of reality into the mental trap of worrying and aching.

And the way you get that crucial insulin spike is with carbohydrates.

Which you get none of on a ketogenic or carnivore diet.

That’s the 3rd point.

4. The Bugs In Your Biology

You are a computer program.

The code is your hormones.

Your diet and lifestyle is the programmer (but we’ve already talked about this).

When you’re in long term ketosis — your code starts getting buggy.

Most notably, you get a sharp increase in the hormone SHBG. This little fellow binds to your sex hormones and prevents them from doing their job.

In more simple terms, your free testosterone in your blood decreases.

And in case you’re a little rusty about the importance of testosterone…

Here’s a recap of what happens when it gets too low:

• Confidence shrinks

• Muscle mass declines

• Your motivation falters

• Effort starts feeling terrible

• Mood swings become frequent

• You become much more risk sensitive

But I think the most painful one is this:

You can’t really do the things you want in life. Because anything that requires effort gets blocked by a wall of mental resistance.

You don’t want to sit down and write, you’d rather skip your workout and you don’t feel like putting in the effort to maintain friendships. Life itself starts feeling impossible.

Just about everything worthwhile in life requires effort. So if you’re not fine with living life passively floating in a stream other people have made for you — why make this life thing harder?

Why see to it so that your will smolders by insisting on the idea that carbohydrates are bad?

And that’s the 4th.

The Real Place For The Carnivore Diet

The carnivore and ketogenic diet have benefits.

But they are not due to cutting out carbs being the ultimate perspective. Nor is it because all sugar is inherently bad.

But because it’s simply a step away from the even more problematic perspective.

Let me paint you a picture.

• When you cut carbs you also cut out processed sugar — and as a result, don’t experience the harmful effects it otherwise causes

• When you cut carbs you also cut out processed starches — and as a result, improve inflammation, autoimmune issues and brain fog.

• When you cut out sugar you also allow your gut to heal — you stop feeding problematic bacteria in your gut which gives it a chance to recover. And as we talked about in this letter, your whole life improves as a byproduct.

My point is that the benefits are not due to it being the ultimate perspective. But because it’s just better than the average one.

It’s a stepping stone in the right direction, but the problem is that most people stop there. They see the benefits and assume that this is all life has to offer.

But the problem with health and life in general is this: You won’t know how good life can be before you it is. You can’t imagine it because you don’t have anything to compare it to.

It’s like trying to understand infinity.

You can say to yourself, ”ah yes, infinity. That thing just goes on and on doesn’t it”.

But you don’t really understand what it means. You can’y intellectually understand that infinity is so large that everything that could ever happen has and is happening an infinite amount of times.

It is in this way people get stuck in an un-actualized perspective. Because it’s impossible to see what life would be like from a fuller perspective before you have it.

And for that reason, people miss that the carnivore diet comes with its own set of problems:

• Lower metabolism

• Nutrient deficiencies

• Hormonal imbalances

• Chronically high cortisol

The carnivore and ketogenic diet can be very beneficial in the short term (1 week or so) but very not so in the long term.

They’re ironically not dietitional — they’re medicinal.

They’re more like tools you can use to heal yourself.

But just as you should’t have to live life chronically taking pills — you shouldn’t have to live life without carbohydrates. Because medicines have side effects. And as I hope you’ve seen, they are not very pleasant ones.

The carnivore or keto diet are fine tools — but sloppy masters.

Use them as you would use a hammer to replace a nail.

But don’t fix something that isn’t broken.

Sugar: The Misunderstood Hero

Glucose is the molecule of life.

It’s what our ancestors sought out and what makes life as we know it possible.

It’s what allows our brains to function, our biological code to run smoothly and the fire of our lives to burn bright.

So why would such a thing be bad for you?

Why would our evolutionary programmed sweet tooth be leading us towards inflammation, insulin resistance and ultimately death? (As mainstream medicine claims).

Because all sugar isn’t created equal.

This is what both perspectives seem to miss.

This is the nuance in between the extremes and the path to a fuller life.

It’s the key to getting the benefits sugar brings without sacrificing health or enjoyment of life.

It’s the next stepping stone towards the ultimate perspective (if you will).

I’m not saying this the ultimate truth. But it is the evolution of the ketogenic and carnivore perspective.

For the simple fact that it’s a fuller perspective that sees more of reality (but we’ve already talked about this).

To lead you towards a brighter path of life, to uncover the energizing benefits sugar can bring — we need to first understand why it’s so misunderstood.

We need to see the full picture.

So invest 1 minute of your time and save yourself 10 years of confusion and subpar living.

So instead of painting you a picture, let me write you a short section.

All sugar isn’t created equal

People are still too quick to accept absolutes.

As we’ve gone over, the unknowingness of reality is often too much to bear for the mind.

But clinging onto explanations and absolutes just traps you in a narrow perspective you can’t get out of. It sacrifices all potential of a better way.

This is exactly the problem with science.

Because though the act of science may be objective — the people who interpret it are not. And what people often miss is the broader perspective you get when you examine the details.

But because the mind craves order, people will jump to simple and clear cut explanations. Even if they may objectively be wrong and even harmful.

• Butter causes heart attacks

• Seed oils are essential

• All sugar is bad

But let’s get a bit more practical.

This is the problem with the studies done on sugar.

You can’t do a study looking at the health effects of pure sugar, and then have it carry over to every different source of it.

Because you’re ignoring the delivery mechanism.

And you get the funny phenomenon of mistaking the driver for the car.

It’s like saying that chocolate is bad for the environment because you insisted on having it flown to you across half the planet. The problem wasn’t the chocolate — but how it was delivered.

But because it’s easier to cling onto one myopic explanation instead of facing the ambiguity of reality — the conclusion becomes ”all sugar is bad”. When in reality, what was bad wasn’t the sugar itself — but in the way it was consumed.

To fully understand this, let’s break down the 3 most common forms of sugar.

1. High Fructose Corn Syrup

A common form of processed sugar is called ”high fructose corn syrup”.

It’s essentially processed starch that can be found in soda, cereals and other kinds of junk food (though it’s rare outside of America).

When you consume HFCS — nano particles from can pass through your gut wall. This causes your immune system to go crazy and sets off a cascade of inflammatory responses (as we talked about in the last letter).

In turn, this causes the inflammation, brain fog and autoimmune issues that are so often attributed to sugar.

But if you don’t see the big picture — the conclusion becomes that sugar is the problem.

2. Table sugar

This one is tricky.

Table sugar (sucrose) is a disaccharide made of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. And it’s found in almost every food you can think of.

In studies, this little scallywag causes metabolic dysfunction, inflammation and a bunch of other problems.

So this begs the question, if sugar isn’t bad — why would sucrose be?

It’s just sugar isn’t it?

The thing is, with refined sugar — you’re taking away the delivery mechanism.

We didn’t evolve eating pure glucose or fructose. We evolved seeking out natural sources such as honey, milk, fruits and berries.

And if you take a look at our biology, to metabolize sugar (and actually use it) — we need the right nutrients. B vitamins in particular.

But when you eat a bunch of table sugar without these metabolic nutrients, it bypasses your metabolism.

And through a pretty complicated process, you get excess lactic acid starting to accumulate in your cells. Which in turn, leads to a bunch of other problems (including insulin resistance). No bíen.

To conceptualize this, think of your body as a business.

Your clients are the sugar.

Your employees and systems are the metabolic nutrients.

Clients by themselves are not bad, they’re what makes your business possible.

But when you take on so many that your employees and systems can’t handle them— it becomes a bad thing.

You burn out trying to fulfill every order, get tied up in disputes and eventually have to file for bankruptcy.

What was on its own a good thing, quickly becomes a bad thing when you don’t have the resources to handle it.

And so it is with sugar.

3. Fructose

The last common type of sugar is fructose.

It’s found in all kinds of processed foods and most notably in fruits. And it’s the reigning campion of tricking your metabolism.

This sneaky little rascal can straight up bypass your cells’ metabolism and go directly to your liver, causing the by-production of something called uric acid.

And because we humans lack an enzyme to break it down, we have to deal with the problems it causes:

• Fat gain

• High blood pressure

• Metabolic dysfunction

And because fructose so sneakily goes to your liver, excess amounts also causes non alcoholic fatty liver disease (NFALD). And you can trust me when I say, that is not something you want.

Lastly, fructose hijacks your cells’ satiety mechanism, making you keep feeling hungry.

All this makes for a very troublesome combination and might discourage you from ever touching fructose again.

But it too follows a pattern you may have noticed….

That the effects are dependent on the delivery mechanism. And as you’ll come to see, fructose can be fine tool for supercharging existence.

All these examples come down to one thing.

The delivery mechanism is what matters.

Because, sugar is neither good or bad, but the delivery mechanism makes it so

If we want to avoid the havoc a life without sugar brings and not sacrifice our metabolism in the process — the solution is very simple.

We need a better delivery mechanism.

And luckily for us, nature has given us just that.

The Hidden Powers Of Natural Sugar

Something I’ve never understood is this:

Why would our evolutionary programmed sweet tooth be leading us to our doom?

Even if the problem lied in our time of abundance — does that mean our ancestors would eat themselves to death, were there a lot of fruit and honey lying around?

Luckily for the continuation of our species — no.

Because as it turns out — natural sugars are VERY different from processed ones.

• Honey

• Lactose

• Fruits & berries

All these 4 doesn’t have any nasty particles capable of infiltrating your blood stream. Meaning, you avoid the inflammation that ”sugars” like HFCS causes.

They also all contain metabolic nutrients (especially B vitamins) crucial for metabolizing sugar.

As a result — the sugar you eat is actually used for glycogen or fuel — not put away as fat without question.

When you eat a tablespoon of honey — the nutrients open up the metabolic gates.

The sugar turns into ATP that both supercharges your brain and increases your glycogen.

There aren’t any particles that damages your gut which keeps your mind clear.

And when your body finally gets its cherished glucose (and a way to actually use it) — reality itself gets a lift.

You get the positives without the negatives.

• Sugar ramps up your metabolism — giving you more mental and physical energy. Your creativity and work improves, your training becomes more enjoyable and higher mental functions like mood and passion becomes easy.

• Sugar calms down your nervous system — when your body no longer thinks it’s starving, you become calmer, more conscious and able to move through life with more precision. Your able to make true changes in your life (as we talked about in the letter on stress & anxiety).

• Sugar protects your cells — glucose metabolism releases a lot more CO2 than fat does. And believe it or not, CO2 is extremely important for protecting your cells’ proteins and DNA. Keeping you younger, healthier and energetic for longer.

• Sugar gives you the benefits of insulin — keeping your muscles strong, preventing too high of a blood sugar, holding on to electrolytes and preventing cramps and brain malfunctions.

• Sugar prevents excesses of free fatty acids in the bloodstream — protecting your metabolic health, preventing fatty liver and obesity.

• Sugar sends signals to your body that it’s thriving — your body, realizing that food is plenty, can allow expensive processes like building muscle, increasing your energy and amping up life.

But before you merrily run to the grocery store and become Winnie the Pooh — you have to remember one thing…

With great powers comes great responsibility.

Because natural sugars can still give you plenty of problems.

And if you’re not careful, they’re no better than the processed ones (even though abusing them is lot more of a challenge).

The powers of a supercharged life lies in navigating the terrains of sugar and using them wisely.

So let’s go through what that looks like.

The 5 Sweet Noble Truths

(Yes I know it’s 4)

There are 5 steps to responsible sugar consumption.

So let’s shoot them all off.

1. Right Type

The first step is to use the type of use sugar that doesn’t inflame your gut and does contain metabolic nutrients.

Such as:

• Raw honey — has been shown to increase insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetics.

• Fruits & berries — slows down fructose absorption with its fiber and metabolic nutrients.

• Organic maple syrup — has a lot of B vitamins and minerals like manganese

• Lactose from raw milk — packed with vitamins, minerals, prebiotics and other good things

A basic rule of thumb you can use is this:

Natural = Good

Processed = Not so good

2. Right Amount

Even though sugar isn’t harmful for you.

And even though natural sugars contain metabolic nutrients…

You can go too far.

It’s pretty rare but constant insulin exposure can be problematic for your metabolism.

Alright, so how much is too much?

You can know this intuitively, but here’s a rough estimate.

• Low (0 - 3 hrs/week): 1.5 * Bodyweight

• Medium (3 - 6 hrs/week): 1.8 * Bodyweight

• High (6 - 12 hrs/week): 2.2 * Bodyweight

But you don’t have to get super uptight about this.

If you’re lacking energy or feeling mentally dull, experiment with increasing your sugar consumption.

More than that, when you’re eating natural sugars — you’re body will most likely tell you when you’ve had enough (or not enough).

• Eating too much honey or maple syrup just makes you feel sick

• Milk contains fats and protein working on your satiety mechanism

• Fruits and berries have fiber that will slow down fructose uptake and make you feel full

3. Right Consumption

Unfortunately…

You’re genetically predisposed to get from fruit.

Eating too much fresh fruit is difficult — but drinking squeezed or blended fruit is a different story.

You can quite terribly work yourself into NAFLD just by drinking too many healthy fruit smoothies.

Because as you may remember…

Fructose has an element of irreducible rascality. Because not only does it bypass your metabolism, but it hijacks your cells’ satiety, keeping you hungry. Which is not a good combination.

It creates uric acid which shuffles calories into fat storage were a lot of it is stored as visceral fat. Thereof, the fatty liver. Which is again, NOT something you want. Mostly because it can lead to:

• Fatigue

• Diabetes

• Liver cancer

In other words, drinking your sugar is a recipe for disaster.

But the solution is extremely simple:

• Eat your fruit fresh

• Get your honey raw

• Drink your milk whole

With the right metabolic nutrients, the metabolism is stabilized and you get the good without the bad.

As an example, the fiber in fruit slows down the absorption and let’s you use it for good.

And a quick reminder that a bit of orange juice won’t kill you. It has even been shown to be extremely beneficial.

So as with everything in life, just don’t overdo it.

4. Right Macros

Fat does make you fat.

But it’s more complicated than you think.

Fat is crucial for your body to not fall apart. It’s the backbone of hormones like testosterone and what keeps your cell membranes healthy.

But it can be taken too far.

When you eat too much fat, the excess lipolysis (fat oxidation) prevents glucose metabolism and storage of glycogen. And so, the glucose you eat only has one place to go — which is fat.

It is sort of a competition between glucose and fat metabolism (also known as the Randal cycle).

And so when you’re eating too much fat — your body can’t use the glucose. And you miss out on the benefits of a supercharged mind, a strong body and well functioning immune system.

What you get instead is giant fat storages under your skin and around your organs. And as a result, a cascade leading towards insulin resistance, increased risk of death and a severely decreased metabolism. (This is a slight exaggeration)

So to get the most out of glucose (and life) you need to pay attention to your macros. You need to keep your fat in the proper range.

Having it below 20 % will most likely cause more problems than it solves. And above 33% is probably where you may start to see problems again.

My recommendation would be to simply aim for 33%.

Note: You don’t need to be super anal about this. Just don’t sprinkle olive oil over your 25 % fatty ground beef you seared in butter with some cheese on top.

5. Right Timing

Timing is everything.

Whether it comes to martial arts, business opportunities or eating your sugar. The time you choose can either make or break your health.

Choose poorly, and you’ll wreck your growth hormone, mental performance and spirit.

But choose wisely, and you’ll fuel your mind, heal your gut and keep a strong will to persist.

There are 3 principles to keep in mind:

1. Resist the bedtime sweets

During sleep you’re producing the most amount of growth hormone.

As a result:

• Your cells are repaired

• Your lean muscles grow stronger

• Your brain structures become sharper

But the release of it requires blood sugar to be low. Which isn’t the case were you to slam 100 g of honey before bed.

Quit carbohydrate intake 2 hours before bed.

This goes for food in general (as we talked about in ”how intelligent people use sleep”).

2. Embracing the lack

Cutting out sugar does allow your gut to heal.

Which is why you see a lot of improvements from a ketogenic diet. But as we’ve painfully just discussed, it’s not a long term strategy.

But it can be used as a short term one.

When you have a window were you’re not eating — your gut has a chance to recover.

Troublesome bacteria can be weeded out and motor proteins can come to the rescue to clean up. And they’re only activated when there isn’t any digestion going on.

This is also were you can get the mental clarity benefits the people on carnivore talk about.

Because it’s only for a short time, it isn’t really harmful for you.

But you don’t have to go crazy. Cut out eating 2 hours before and after bed for a 12 hours fasting window.

Even if longer windows may be more effective, you will still see benefits from a 12 hour one. A bonus is that your sleep will also dramatically improve.

If you just do your work in the morning, you can take advantage of the mental clarity and have your first meal as a reward.

And you don’t have to deal with all the nasty side effects that chronic cortisol elevation brings.

Muy bueno.

And you’ll see the difference in mental performance with and without sugar.

I know that at least anecdotally, my 2nd work session after I’ve gotten some honey and fruit is always much more intense and fruitful (no pun intended).

3. Workout timing

Sugar is probably the best way to fuel your workouts.

• It stores glycogen, giving you the energy reserves to push hard.

• It fuels your mind, allowing you to exceed mental limitations.

But to get the most out of the benefits, timing is everything.

Take it too close, and you’ll mess up growth hormone release.

Take it too far away, and you’ll feel like you’re just going through the motions.

The solution is to implement both perspectives:

Get your majority of your carbs 2 - 3 hours before your workout to build up glycogen.

Get a small amount of sugar 30 minutes - 1 hour before your workout to get a mental and physical boost.

It’s what we keep coming back to, you need to open your mind.

Because when you learn the art of combining perspectives, you realize that truth seldom lies in one side. And you become capable of pulling the best out of both. (Which we talk a lot more about in the letter on becoming a health polymath).

To gain the benefits of keto and the powers of natural sugar.

To wrap this up, I would like you to think of sugar as people.

Bear with me, it’ll make sense.

Let’s say you had some bad social experiences.

People betrayed or took advantage of you. They neglected you and kept stirring you into their drama. So naturally, you decide to reject the social game altogether. And fair enough.

You scale the tallest mountain and settle down in a small shack. And when you look out of your tainted window with cracks in each corner, the only thing you see are miles of equally as snowy mountain tops as yours.

A few days goes by and life starts feeling more tranquil. The cool breeze, the mesmerizing sunsets and the quietness of the nights just soothes your spirit.

But as time goes on, you start becoming restless. The isolation takes a tole on you and you eventually find yourself talking to plant pots and making friends with the bed bugs.

A few days may have been exactly what you needed, but the weeks upon weeks without human contact made you drift closer and closer towards insanity.

You finally realize that as nice as your mountain stay was, it has to be alternated with actual social connection. And as deep of a connection you created with your ceramic pots — you need real people.

And when you go back to society, you realize something…

People themselves weren’t the problem.

The problem was just a few annoying ones.

And when you cut out the troublesome people and embrace the friendly ones, you achieve a higher perspective.

You get both the benefits of cutting out trouble and embracing the quality.

And life starts feeling brighter than ever.

And so it is with sugar.

With that my friends, I don’t have a lot more to say.

Thank you for reading.

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And enjoy the rest of your week!

I’m out.

- Simon