May 1, 2017
Two weeks ago, I posted a somewhat embarrassing challenge to the BenGreenfieldFitness Facebook page. Behold, in all it's glory, the parody contest.
Here's one example I gave as a perfect parody video (by the way, prepare for the dude in the video below to be on my podcast in the very near future):
Here's another hilarious example, this time an article:
“My Fully Optimized Life Allows Me Ample Time To Optimize Yours“.
You get the idea.
Anyways, after being inundated with pie-in-my-face, head-slapping, face-blushing parodies of everything from my big-ass morning smoothies to my multi-ingredient enemas to my fringe breathwork habits, I've finally chosen two winners of the very first every Ben Greenfield Fitness Parody Contest.
Congratulations to Mike Vera for this knee-slappingly funny video:
And an equal congratulations to Mehmet Bugra Balaban for this “Day In My Humble Awesome Day” article:
I usually wake up around 6:30 in the morning without the noise of an alarm. One of the worst things in this world is waking up to an alarm. So, unless I need to go hunt a deer or catch a flight to Kauai, I don’t disturb my body’s usual circadian rhythm. After taking off my sleep-mask and earbuds that basically cancel out all the noise and other drama, I reach to my mold-free carbon fiber bedside table to grab my Bluetooth chest-strap heart rate monitor.
In order to use this chest strap, you need to rub some water on the sensor. But, I biohacked this step that helps me save 20 seconds: I use my spit instead of fluoride-free water (I know, you’re welcome). I don’t really put my body under a lot of stress from dirty electricity, constant exposure to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals or pointless bird-chirping sounds. However, to know my heart rate variability (HRV) score (shown below on left) measured by NatureBeat, I tolerate the Bluetooth signals for 5 minutes and do box-breathing. In the meantime, I get my sleep score (shown below on right) from my Oura ring (one ring that rules them all) and write in my gratitude journal.
After all these morning hacks, I head to the kitchen and pour myself a 16-oz. water. I put a few drops of lemon essential oil, ½ teaspoon of baking soda and blow a kiss inside the water. One, it makes the water taste delicious (because plain water is just boring); second, combination of lemon and baking soda improves alkalinity and aerobic performance. While drinking this, I take my morning supplements:
· 5 grams of Creatine
· 2-3 capsules of Nature Cleanse (to improve my poop)
· 4 capsules of Colostrum (to improve my immune system and bicep burls)
· 2 capsules of Caprobiotics Advanced (to replace the bacteria that I’m going to poop)
Then, I put some water in the kettle for coffee and turn it on. To save some time, I sprint to my front porch to get some sunlight. If the sun is not out, I head to my office, then turn on my special light bulbs that emit tons of blue-light. A good night of sleep starts with getting a ton of blue light in the morning and avoiding them like plague after sunset. While the water is boiling, I do some light stretches, morning spirit yoga poses and some ELDOA to improve my mobility, flexibility and for its obvious teeth-whitening properties.
Then, I get back to the kitchen bear-crawling (to improve my shoulder mobility) and make upgraded, mold-free, toxin-free, organic, shade-grown, high-altitude, single-origin coffee using French press. This process makes sure that the coffee has the diterpenes: Cafestol and kahweol. Some early research showed that these diterpenes can increase cholesterol levels in the body, but what’s the point of living if you don’t enjoy it with some good ol’ cholesterol (plus, we all know that cholesterol is not the evil). After I pour my coffee into my “Man in the Arena Mug” (if I can’t find this mug, I simply don’t drink the coffee), I head to the bathroom to take a massive dump. I’m really proud of how I poop. It’s enormous, and when I finish my business, I feel light as a feather. I’m not going to lie, my kids told me that they wake up to the sounds of me pooping and they claim that it’s better than waking up to a dirty alarm or to a rooster. Once I’m done with my blissful pooping, I have a little chat with my boys about their dreams and their upcoming day. Because I enjoy so much when I do gratitude journaling, I force my kids write down some stuff about how grateful they are with a smile on my face.
After this little chat, I go downstairs to my gym doing the worm for an easy morning workout. I think that the morning workouts should be really easy on the body and should not disturb the parasympathetic nervous system a lot (HF score in HRV). As for my easy workouts:
· Mondays: 300 kettlebell swings and 100 burpees while holding my breath in between sets
· Tuesday: Run for 20 miles and bike for 100 miles
· Wednesday: Do Kundalini Yoga in my infrared sauna where the temperature is 170 F
· Thursday: Same as Monday, but I wear a training mask too
· Friday: Same as Tuesday, but I also swim for 20 miles in a cold pool
· Saturday: Same as Wednesday, but I add some Core Foundation exercises and increase the temperature of the sauna to 190 F
· Sunday: Foam rolling, deep tissue work, and rolfing so I can do these EASY workouts next week
Then, I take a 5-10-minute cold shower, dry-out (I don’t use towels, I just wait for my body to dry itself), and head to the kitchen swinging like Tarzan thanks to the pull-up bars I installed from my bathroom all the way down to the kitchen for my morning smoothie.
If I’m home in the mornings, 365 days of the year, I have the same amazing delicious smoothie. The ingredients are:
· Pau D’arco bark tea (brewed overnight)
· 2 teaspoons of organic turmeric
· ¼ teaspoon of organic black pepper
· 2 teaspoons of organic Ceylon cinnamon
· 1 teaspoon of Aztec sea salt
· 1 cup ice
· ½ squeezed organic lemon
· 4 oz. of organic coconut milk (gum-free and BPA-free)
· ½ organic cucumber
· Enormous amounts of organic kale or spinach
· ½ avocado (I save some money on avocado and buy non-organic one because the fruit has a thick skin)
· 1 whole avocado pit
· 2 egg shells (I let my kids eat the eggs, I just use the shells)
· 2 Brazil nuts (I also sometimes put one in-shell)
· 20 Spirulina tablets (Energy bits)
· 3-5 tablespoons of an organic Orgasmic blend: maca, mucuna, ashwagandha, goji berries, chaga mushroom, cordyceps mushroom, pine pollen, black currant, horny goat weed, royal jelly, holy basil, holy cow, goat feet powder, Himalayan shilajit, green matcha, nettle, bilberry, sea buckthorn, and deep Pacific seahorse
· 1 teaspoon of organic flax seeds
· 1 teaspoon of organic chia seeds
· 1 teaspoon of organic Fijian watermelon seeds
· 1 oz. of organic coconut shell
· 2 teaspoons of organic cacao powder
· A few drops of Dark chocolate stevia (about 20 drops, not so much, to make this palatable)
· 1 tablespoon of organic coconut oil
· 2 tablespoon of Kava (if I’m in the mood)
I blend this all up for about 60 seconds on high before I add the protein. If you blend the protein for this long, you basically pulverize all the protein and make the smoothie worthless. Then, I add:
· 1 cup of bone broth
· 2 scoops of organic, unsweetened vegan protein
· 1 handful organic almonds (5 handful if it’s a high calorie day)
· 1 goat feet and 2 pasture-raised emu feathers
Then I blend this again for about 15-20 seconds and top it off with 1 organic cherry pit to improve digestion. Boom! That’s it! These are all easy-to-find ingredients and they make a really nutritious quick morning smoothie. If any of the ingredients above is missing, I don’t make the smoothie and eat bunch of organic celery stalks which are basically negative calorie foods (what up Phi Sigma Phi! Woot woot!). With this affordable, sustainable, and mindful breakfast, I take 6-8 capsules of digestive enzymes because I don’t want to deal with digesting this stuff. I simply outsource my digestion to my pills (boom, another biohack!).
While chewing my smoothie, I read new scientific articles that I find through Google and update my Facebook status. After every article, I do an easy 1 set of 100 pull-ups and continue with my breakfast.
After finishing my breakfast, the work day starts which is typically around 9:30 am. I work on my treadmill desk where I walk constantly because the science suggests that sitting can increase all-cause mortality by 0.013%. I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to take those chances. Until lunch time (which is around 1:30 pm), I work on my articles, record podcasts, do phone consults, update my clients’ workout schedule, Snapchat myself wearing some biohacking device and tweet some cool articles.
I take this time very seriously (except when I use Snapchat) and work non-stop for 4 hours. Occasionally, I take breaks to get myself some poop-enhancing slimy kombucha. Aside from that, I work constantly because I’m usually in a flow state. I sometimes use the bathroom too. But, that’s it! Non-stop work! Then, it’s lunch time. For lunch, I make myself a giant big-ass salad and top that off with 2 tablespoon of organic, extra-virgin, Tibetan, cold-pressed, low-altitude olive oil, some raw nuts and some wild-caught, sustainable, bone-in, skin-on, tail-attached, eye-popped sardines. Because I usually lose about 52 minutes to prepare my morning smoothie, I eat a simple lunch and save 28 minutes back. I also eat my lunch out in the sunlight to make sure I have optimum levels of vitamin-D throughout the year.
After lunch, I take a little early siesta and nap for about one sleep cycle while listening to binaural beats. If I don’t nap, I feel under-recovered for some reason. I don’t know why! So, I make sure I nap a little bit. Then, as a warm-up I play some ukulele on my Biomat next to the negative-ion generator while standing for about 20 minutes. During this time, I do some dynamic stretching with my major muscle groups such as calves, biceps and triceps, neck and glutes. Then it’s time to hit the gym and hit it hard. Sometime in the early evening, usually after 4 pm and before 6 pm, I do my hard workouts. I tend to schedule my intense workouts around this time because body temperature peaks, reaction time peaks, testosterone increases a little, grip strength peaks, vocal-cord strength peaks and (last, but not least) my third eye chakra perception peaks. My hard workouts are typically:
· Monday and Thursday: 100 reps of heavy back squats, 100 heavy deadlifts, and 200 burpees with no rest
· Tuesday and Friday: SealFit 10X (to save time) with rave music on
· Wednesday and Saturdays: Naked Acro Yoga with the neighbors in a sweat lodge down in the basement
· Sundays: Breath holds for as long as possible for 60 minutes with special carbon dioxide tubes blowing in my face
After I finish my hard workouts, I have a few organic whiskey shots to replete my glycogen stores and wind down. When I’m done taking shots, I take another cold shower to shock my body one last time and start recovering.
When sun sets, I put on my blue-blocking glasses just in case, even though I have special nighttime amber lights all around the house. This makes sure that blue light is blocked not once, but twice! At around 7-8 pm, we have dinner as a family. This is the only meal I get to taste variety in my day. After a very routine day full of habits, variety of the dinners we have makes me feel very bliss, down-to-Earth and grateful for the abundance I have in my life.
Once we are done, we throw out all the dishes in the garbage to save some time and water (another lifehack, boom!). Then we play card or board games. Once I am in the lead, I feel sleepy and we finish playing.
Around 9 pm, I take my sleep supplements which are 3 drops of Australian organic sloth tears, 2 organic cage-free koala bear hairs and 3 organic whole chamomile flowers from Egypt. I do a little nighttime meditation, write in my gratitude journal, pray, do one last set of 100-jumping jacks to increase night time fat burning, wear my sleep mask, put on my earbuds and go to sleep.
Rinse and repeat! Feel free to copy and/or modify my daily routine. If you think you are doing something that I should add (I highly doubt it simply because I can’t be more grateful), please write about it on the comments section below for free or book a phone/Skype consultation with me for an affordable price (book 3, get 10% off on your 4th consultation).
Humbly,
Mehmet Bugra Balaban
So there you have it!
Isn't it refreshing to poke fun at oneself every now and again. After all, there are a handful of reasons not to take life too seriously, and plenty more reasons to laugh a lot. Anyways, both Mehmet and Mike won $300 of – you guessed it – a box full of biohacks and supplements hand-picked by yours truly from Greenfield Fitness Systems.
OK, now it's your turn. Do you have your own written parody to leave in the comments section below?
Simply write or link to a tongue-in-cheek paragraph or clip showing off your crazy biohack, meal, workout, exercise or quirky healthy lifestyle habit, written or filmed by you, and I'll not only read every single comment and watch every single video, but I'll choose the top three and send you a signed copy of my New York Times Bestselling book “Beyond Training” and also usher you into my private Inner Circle for free..
Let the fun begin!
You can laugh what you want, but I had my right gonad removed. Mostly because of my oncologist’s advice, but I heard it helps winning bike-races here in Europe. And to prevent my free testosterone from plummeting, I add fenugreek and stinging nettle in my giant smoothy. Together with the glass, BPA-free blender they make for a nice Heavy Thing™ to lift. I do sets of 3 spoonfuls and than switch the jar to the other hand, to keep my symmetry.
As a result my testosterone levels were great, no man-boobs, but lots of facial and body hair (but less on the scalp though), and now I have to shave the gonad I have left (gotta remove the hair for the IR-sauna light to get through), face, chest and back with my German engineered Harry’s razor, for which I use a parcel forwarding service because they don’t ship within the EU.
My dad, who was a gourmet coffee roaster, homeschooled me to know that all a good coffee bean needs is some heat to roast, some pure structured water of 386.15 degrees Kelvin and 20 seconds to brew. So with all the nootropic crap I put in it, to show some respect for my old man’s profession, I shoot it up the bum. Followed with a couple of opium suppositories, which I get from Mikey Forrester: custom f’chiching’ing designed for my needs.
This micro dose of opiate, nootropic, MCT, caffeine combo made my brain hyper sensitive to my super expensive transcendental mantra. So in a moment of clarity, instead of getting my hacks from Ben’s guests or pubmed, I thought up my own improvement on the masszymes that used to digest my food: I get Rachel to digest food and get her poop transplanted; that way I get the benefit’s of a healthy plant-based whole foods diet, without the loss of my manly spearhunter image.
One thing about Rachel is that I can’t hear whether she’s a warrior or a worrier just like I can’t hear whether Ben is biohacking in a summit in Vegas or is biohacking his Vagus nerve. But tonight, in my gratitude journal, I’m going to jot down their names for all the nice memories and out loud giggles they’ve given me.
PS I used Kelvin as it is the SI-unit for temperature. For most of the units Ben and other Muricans, like Fahrenheit, inch and pound I found the SI-unit. I especially like how he sometimes shows to be thoughtful of all his listeners by prescribing grams per pound of bodyweight, just adorable. But does anyone here know how many mol “copious amounts” is? I haven’t found any calculator online that supports it, and Ben uses it quite a lot.
LOOOOOOOL.
Ben, thank you so much!! It was a blast putting together that video. Can’t wait for the next contest ;-P
Hahahaha.
wild-caught, sustainable, bone-in, skin-on, tail-attached, eye-popped sardines.
Excellent.
This was fun!
The video was spot on HILARIOUS!