“The most important things that I do every day are to take walks after my meals and make sure that I sleep a full eight hours. Those two simple things, which require a lot of adjusting for your lifestyle, have an outsized impact over the years and decades as they compound.” – Josh Clemente
In this episode of Outliers, I’m talking with Josh Clemente (@joshuasforrest) about the concept of metabolic health, the importance of feedback loops, and why our daily choices have such a huge impact on our overall health.
Josh Clemente is the Founder and President of Levels, a metabolic fitness company that helps people see how their choices affect their health in real-time. Before founding Levels, Josh was the Lead Life Support Systems Engineer at SpaceX, where he led the development of pressurized life support systems aboard spacecraft. He’s also worked as a Senior Design Engineer at Hyperloop One and is a certified CrossFit Level 2 Trainer. In 2019, he founded Levels, which is a comprehensive app that uses constant glucose monitoring to provide easy-to-understand feedback on your diet, exercise, and daily activities.
Chapters in this interview:
- 00:00:29 – How Josh’s engineering background and role at SpaceX led to the creation of Levels
- 00:06:32 – How a ketogenic diet can affect your life expectancy
- 00:07:57 – The basics of ketones and ketosis
- 00:13:34 – How real-time data can help people choose the foods and activities that are healthiest for them
- 00:21:17 – Surprising insights from Levels customer data
- 00:31:01 – How Levels converts raw data into easy-to-understand scores
- 00:39:58 – Levels’ expected launch date
- 00:43:03 – Whether glucose alone is the best indicator of overall health
For more, explore the full transcript of this episode.
Links from the Episode
- Connect with Josh: Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Levels
- This SpaceX alum co-founded Levels, a health startup that measures your metabolism in real time - The Hustle
- Levels Raises $12M for its Biowearable Device that Monitors Glucose in Real Time - AlleyWatch
- SpaceX and the Dragon spacecraft
- CrossFit
- Metabolic fitness
- Glucose monitoring
- Studies of Dominic D'Agostino
- Ketogenesis
- Ketosis
- Ketones
- Metabolism
- Macronutrients: Carbohydrates, fat, protein
- Blood-brain barrier
- Anabolism
- Hyperinsulinemia
- Insulin resistance
- 2018 University of North Carolina study: 88% of U.S. adults metabolically unhealthy
- Finger prick devices, which can be found at drugstores
- Wired to Eat: Turn Off Cravings, Rewire Your Appetite for Weight Loss, and Determine the Foods That Work for You by Robb Wolf
- Diabetes
- Cortisol
- Adrenaline
- Fight or flight response
- Glucose levels and diabetes’
- Cardiovascular disease
- 2015 Weizmann Institute Trial - “results suggest that personalized diets may successfully modify elevated postprandial blood glucose and its metabolic consequences”
- Twins trial in the U.K.
- Microbiome
- Body composition
- Resting heart rate
- Dawn phenomenon
- Circadian clock
- Whoop
- Glucose intolerance
- CDC National Diabetes Prevention Program
- PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome)
- Stroke
- Alzheimer's
- Dementia
Key Takeaways
“The most important thing is that people understand that beneath physical fitness and mental health is metabolic fitness. Our brains and bodies are composed of individual cells, all of which need energy, and they need to be able to access it efficiently. If they can't, things go wrong. You cannot achieve physical fitness or mental fitness without that metabolic function beneath it. And more importantly, this is not something that's out of your control. It's hard to measure for sure, but very simple things can improve it.”
“The most important things that I do every day are to take walks after my meals and make sure that I sleep a full eight hours. Those two simple things, which require a lot of adjusting for your lifestyle, have an outsized impact over the years and decades as they compound.”
