2% With Michael Easter

Today Michael is covering the power of rucking meetings.

Taking meetings while walking with a weighted pack is one of the best ways to sneak in activity and improve your health, fitness, and mindset.

\Walking and rucking meetings can decrease your risk of all-cause mortality by 40 percent and increase your work productivity by 8 to 60 percent.

You’ll get powerful zone 1 and 2 exercise when you otherwise would have been sitting—and walking meetings don’t require you to take time out of your busy schedule for a traditional workout.

But doing them right requires the right strategies and tactics.

Michael will explain the six key strategies you must know to make rucking and walking meetings successful.

He developed them over the last five years of regularly taking meetings while walking with weight.

For full access to the episode, become a Member of Two Percent at TWOPCT.com.

New companies allow us to go around doctors and get blood work that checks for 100+ biomarkers or a full-body MRI to scan for cancer when we don’t have symptoms.

The idea of taking your health into your own hands and preventing disease with a direct-to-consumer test sounds perfect in theory.

But there are some downsides to consider if you test yourself, and knowing those downsides can help you get better health outcomes from the test.

To learn more, Michael chatted with Dr. Bobby Dubois—an M.D., researcher, and Ph.D. in health policy—about how we should think about direct-to-consumer blood tests and disease screenings.

They cover:

* Preventative tests that are currently available to consumers, from blood tests that check 100+ markers to full-body MRIs and blood screenings that detect cancer.

* The upsides of these tests.

* The differences between preventative, direct-to-consumer medical tests and doctor-ordered medical tests.

* Why the results of medical tests and scans aren’t perfect, and how those imperfections can lead to unnecessary stress, costs, procedures, and your ability to get life insurance.

* Understanding the math behind preventative blood testing—why you’re likely to have at least one blood marker out of range and why that can be misleading.

* What to do if you get a direct-to-consumer test and it comes back with abnormalities.

* How abnormalities in your results are like the credit card fraud alerts you get from your bank.

* What the data says about routine screenings compared to preventative full-body MRIs and direct-to-consumer blood tests.

* The three categories of cancer and how full-body MRIs are helpful for only one of them.

* The counterintuitive downsides of catching a certain category of cancer with a full body MRI.

* Questions to ask your doctor if they’d like you to get a medical test like a CAT scan, MRI, or special type of blood work.

* Bobby’s final thoughts on direct-to-consumer preventative medical tests.

Become a Member of Two Percent at TWOPCT.com.

The Expedition covers the most worthwhile and impactful ideas Michael discovered in the last month.

This month, we’re covering:

* Numbers on:

* How much caffeine disturbs your sleep (this surprised me!)

* A 16-year-old girl who is as strong as an ox.

* Rising rates of pre-diabetes among kids.

* How exercise impacts the brain for weeks.

* Dipshit fitness influencers.

* Environmental pollution changes.

* Willie Nelson albums.

* How muscle and power change after age 40.

* Mike Tyson fighting Jake Paul.

* GLP-1s and addiction

* The four qualities of resilience (build ‘em and benefit).

* A 30-second fitness longevity challenge.

* The optimal dose and timing of melatonin to sleep better.

* A 29-minute, 33-second podcast encapsulating my health ideas.

* How AI will transform scientific discovery and innovation.

* A good parting quote.

Go to TWOPCT.com to get full access to this episode.

Last episode, Michael explored circadian rhythms and how they influence health. That episode was based on a conversation with Lynne Peeples, author of The Inner Clock.

Today Michael is following up on some important topics we didn’t get to in that episode.

You’ll learn:

* Michael’s perfect day and how he’s used and diverged from the advice of circadian science. This has lessons for self-reliance.

* How to use circadian science for better fitness. For example, to run a faster marathon.

* How to use circadian science to improve your performance at work.

* How to use circadian science to get a better outcome if you had a medical procedure or treatment, or had to take a medication.

Circadian rhythms—the 24-hour cycles humans evolved to live and function under—are a hot topic in health and wellness right now.

But the field of circadian science also contains a lot of junk science and advice.

Michael spoke with Lynne Peeples, author of the new book The Inner Clock, to get the most helpful, high-impact information around circadian rhythms.

You’ll learn:

* Why modern life works against our natural circadian rhythms.

* The link between circadian rhythms and disease, depression, and decreased athletic performance.

* Low-effort, high-impact ways to improve your circadian biology. This advice can help you lose weight, sleep and perform better, and more.

* How Lynne would design an ideal day around circadian rhythms.

* What to do if you ever work late nights (which can be hell for your circadian biology).

* Myths about circadian rhythms (this one was fun).

* Lynne’s insane personal experiment around circadian rhythms.

* The impact of daylight savings time and why we should kill it.

Go to TWOPCT.com to become a Member and get full access to all of our posts and podcasts.

People tend to be less active in winter because of cold temperatures—and that hurts our fitness and metabolic and mental health.

But the problem isn’t the cold. The problem is gear. We often don’t know the right outdoor exercise apparel and how to layer it as a system to stay warm and dry.

This episode covers seven rules of exercising outdoors this winter and teaches you how to build the perfect system to stay warm.

Michael also reveals his seven favorite pieces of cold-weather exercise gear.

The result: You’ll exercise outside more this winter, which will help you stay healthy and fit, avoid winter blues and weight gain, and even sleep better.

Two Percent recently held the Don’t Die event in the desert outside of Las Vegas.

We covered all sorts skills that are critical for survival in hostile situations at home and abroad. Everything from escaping handcuffs, hotel security, Don’t Die fitness, getting information from others, driving techniques, and staying fit, healthy, and sane in the trenches of daily life.

The course included lessons about mindset. That’s because your mindset determines how you express critical skills, live well, and survive. This could include surviving a natural disaster, a dangerous situation during travel, or even a scary health diagnosis.

Today, Michael is covering three mindset lessons from that event.

They’ll help you stay safe, reach goals, and live longer and better.

Most people will tune into U.S. election coverage this week—often compulsively and to the detriment of their time and sanity.

Election coverage has become just like a slot machine. It can pull us into The Scarcity Loop, the most powerful habit loop for sucking us into behaviors we repeat over and over and later regret.

Michael will explain the architecture of The Scarcity Loop and how it affects our time and attention this U.S. election week.

The result: You’ll learn what you can do to avoid the election Scarcity Loop and stay sane this week.

Or, at least, do something more productive than obsessively monitoring an outcome you can’t change once you’ve voted.

It’s the first Friday of the month. This means it’s time for Burn the Ships, Two Percent’s monthly, highly effective workout.

Over the next couple of months, the holidays may throw your routine off the rails with extended time traveling, entertaining, and prepping for the holidays.

So this month’s Burn the Ships workout is an antidote to that.

* You don’t need gear. All it takes is your body weight.

* You can do it anywhere. Anywhere at all.

* A bedroom, a garage, a driveway, a backyard, a living room, a hotel room, a hotel gym, a jail cell … you get the point.

* You don’t need much time—it takes just 35 minutes.

In short: It recognizes that the holidays are busy and meets us where we’re at. But it still allows us to stay in killer shape and fight back against the shortage of movement and excess of food the holidays often bring.

To Burn the Ships with us, become a Member of Two Percent.

Last week, Michael covered why more strength isn’t always better and why you should aim to be “strong enough.”

We featured an exercise that tells you when your lower body is strong enough.

You asked for similar “strong enough” exercises for your upper body.

That’s what this episode covers—we’re featuring two upper body exercises that tell you when you’re strong enough in two key movements.

To access the full episode and video of the exercises at Two Percent, become a Member at TWOPCT.com.