“The difference between one man and another is not mere ability . . . it is energy.”  ― Thomas Arnold

Everything in life—the relationships we hold dear, our jobs, our passions, even our fears—is fueled by energy. We need it to get out of bed in the morning, we need it to interact with the people we love and we need it at work. In fact, if you ask anyone what they truly need, they will likely reply, “More energy.”

The standard definition of energy is the strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity, but the one word that stands out to me in that definition is sustained. We are living in a world of short-term gains—online followers, superficial relationships, fleeting fads—and those things did not fade away with the pandemic. In fact, if you look at the boom in TikTok dances or the emerging mar ket for fashionable masks, you could say that trend has only increased. Even so, these fly-by-night trends are not built to last. They are not  sustainable—and what makes us human, what connects us to our deepest values and our deepest power, is our ability to see beyond  the short term and to sustain.

As I was deciding on the best word to describe my work, I kept coming back to that concept of energy. From my personal life to the biohacks I’ve offered others as a formulator, dietitian and biochemist, I recognized that more than anything, all my work with the novel ingredients that I have patented and groundbreaking formulas I’ve conceived has been to help people build and achieve real, sustainable energy.

More and more, that is the one thing we all crave. We live in an overwhelming world. From the news we consume to the hours we work to the endless to-do lists that keep us unavailable to the people we love, we are over-stressed and over-stimulated. We wake up exhausted and we go to bed exhausted. Often, this fatigue leads to real and chronic issues in our life, including auto-immune conditions, mental health challenges and chronic pain. In response, we try to find short-term comforts to deal with the pain. We medicate through food, prescription drugs, shopping or alcohol, but even more com monthly, we medicate through numbing out. We medicate by giving up.

The pandemic of 2020 didn’t make any of that easier. Fears, both  real and imagined, have threatened us at an accelerated pace unknown to previous generations. Fear of disease. Fear of death. Fear of eco nomic collapse. Fear of depression, addiction and isolation. This has  all been added to our already overloaded lives. In some cases, these  compound stresses can even evolve into traumas. The bottom line is  fear makes us less resilient; it makes us more susceptible and more  easily compromised. 

It is just like Yoda says: “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear  leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.” When we give in to stress and imbalance, we lose whatever motivation we had and fail to generate the energy we need to create the  rich, full and beautiful lives we’re all meant to lead. Conversely, we can come back to a place of balance and rediscover the inspiration we have long been lacking—the inspiration to build resilience, which  my friend Keith Norris describes as “becoming harder to kill.” Resilience is a type of toughness or psychological elasticity that is a core  component of the growth mindset, and a foundation upon which we  can build a seemingly unending supply of energy.

The stress and the burnout many of us experience is understand able. We were not built for this modern life. Most of our busy world— the news on TV, the apps on our phones, the 10 hours a day we spend  sitting at our desks—is new to the human experience. For centuries,  we used to rise with the sun, move our bodies continuously through out the day and eat an early and modest dinner with our families  before retiring for the night.

Until the last century, this was our daily routine, shared by humans  across the world. Now, instead of long meals with our families, we  find ourselves driving down the freeway with the radio at full blast, shoveling down fast food and checking email between bites while honking at the car in front of us. We bury ourselves in our work and then we race home. We squeeze in time with our family between whatever’s on TV and the incessant texts and emails on our computers and phones. We lie in bed only to scroll through more news and shop on Amazon before the Ambien kicks in so we can finally sleep. And we wonder why we are exhausted!

We are living in a time of chronic bad  news which divides us, scares us and tells us that the world is a terrifying place—and every day it feels harder and harder to get up and face it. I get it. I lived like that for a long time, and the irony of it all was  that I was supposed to be one of the  “healthy” ones! 
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The bottom line is  fear makes us less  resilient; it makes us more susceptible  and more easily  compromised.

I have made my career and my name as something of a health and fitness guru. I am a recognized dietitian, sports nutritionist and bio chemist. I’m a supplement formulator who has patented more than 10 novel ingredients and been involved in more than 500 different supplements and cosmeceuticals. I work out almost daily, I diet, I fast and I know all about mindset, meditation and other performance-enhancing strategies to get the most out of every waking moment. But what most people did not know about me until very recently are the health problems I’ve gone through—problems like Epstein-Barr virus, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, depression, insomnia, obesity, anorexia and a pituitary tumor. For a long time, I was totally falling apart.

If I have any authority to speak on health, performance and energy, it’s not because of my technical qualifications or supplements I’ve made; it’s because I know what’s true and what’s not in the world of  health and fitness, and I know how many of us are being lied to. I know because for a long time, I believed some of the same lies myself.
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After everything I’ve been through, I’ve learned that it’s not one biohack or one magic bullet ingredient that can change our lives and  boost our energy. Those elements do play a role and can help us get those final percentage points of improvement, but real energy is  much more foundational—and it has as much to do with our psychology and our spirit as it does with our supplements.

The human body is amazing, and we don’t always have the perspective to understand the lessons it teaches us. It will tell us when we’ve run out of gas by stalling us on the side of the road whether we like it or not; the issue comes when we interpret that as just needing to add a new chemical compound to our morning routine. Sometimes those breakdowns show us that we need to go back to the drawing board entirely and rethink the people in our lives, our routines and our purpose. I know because I’ve been through that humbling process myself.

When I got sick…again…with my brain tumor as well as my two cervical disc replacements, I had to start looking at how I was living my life. I had to figure out why my life’s “formula” wasn’t working, which was tough to square with my ego considering my title of “World’s Greatest Formulator.” Even so, I knew I had to do some inner work to change, and I began to look for new sources of energy. As a supplement formulator, I knew there were thousands of ingredients out there that could enhance energy and long-term health, but I already had stacks and routines that maximized my performance that way. What I came to realize was that energy wasn’t as finite a concept as I thought. Energy wasn’t a “sum” that got added or subtracted; it was the result of how we negotiated and transformed our body’s resources and how we negotiated and transformed the world around us. The second part of that formula was the path to the truly sustainable energy that I craved.

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Having more energy  isn’t ultimately about  having better supplements; it’s  about becoming a better person.

As I learned firsthand, having more energy isn’t about having better supplements; it’s about becoming a better person. Over time I came to realize that life was more than just sand passing through an hourglass, winding away until it was all gone; it was an open field with endless opportunities for connection and abundance. Still, it took exhausting the old path (many times, as it turned out) to finally put myself on the right one.

The result of my many rebounds from near-death health struggles and the life epiphanies that resulted from them is The ENERGY Formula—a book that marries more than two decades of technical experience of biochemistry and nutrition science with an honest, human approach to life, family, friends, society and self. My hope is that The ENERGY Formula will not just make you more focused, more powerful or more productive; it will make you more compassionate and caring, more grounded, more relaxed and more purposeful. It will make you a better listener and a better friend.

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The ENERGY Formula is simple. It is based on six “ingredients” which will help you unleash your limitless potential (and that’s a life-changing promise, not just a subtitle):

Experiment — Our lives are the great experiment. By determining the best inputs, we can establish what we need most to thrive and to create the lives we deserve.

Nutrition — Nutrition isn’t just about the food we eat but how we eat it. By building a nutritional strategy that helps us eat mindfully, we can strengthen immunity, extend our healthspan and maximize energy.

Exercise — Our bodies are reflections of how we use them. If our bodies don’t reflect our highest self, exercise can offer a reset button, giving us the opportunity to restore, rebuild and rejuvenate.

Routine — From how we begin our days upon waking to how we ease ourselves to sleep, building routines that minimize stress and enhance productivity is essential to living a life of vitality.

Growth — Reaching our potential not only requires that we embrace a growth mindset, but also that we connect with the people, tools, supplements and strategies we need to realize our highest selves.

Your Tribe — We don’t do any of this alone. By identifying and investing in our communities, we find that energy isn’t an individual, fixed sum—it’s communal, and it can grow exponentially. 

At no other time in human history has the choice been clearer: We can either succumb to fear or we can engage with our highest selves. My hope for you is that it’s not the former, for as Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho, best known for his novel The Alchemist, said, “Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.” We must finally stop and ask, “Is this the life I want for myself?” Biohacking is about developing shortcuts to reach our full potential, but perhaps the biggest biohack of all is learning to love yourself, and I don’t mean that in some flippant, inspirational way. I mean truly honoring, respecting and rewarding yourself for your unique purpose on this planet. When we know our why, we can start developing the how. Surprisingly, that is how self-love really originates—and it’s a process the biohacking community has sometimes gotten backwards. 

When we live in commitment to our highest ideals of self-love, love for our communities and for the world, we truly build resilience. Instead of feeling disappointment, defeat or failure when we face obstacles, we lean into our strength and resolve to overcome them. When we are optimizing ourselves—showing self-love through nutrition, exercise and healthy routines and then sharing that with our tribe—we even end up strengthening our immunity and our biology. We have the energy and momentum to challenge ourselves more physically and mentally. 

You will not change everything overnight. But slowly, you will begin to EXPERIMENT with your body and biology. You will start to change how you prioritize NUTRITION and EXERCISE and you will build a ROUTINE which promotes rest, recovery and resiliency. You will move into a GROWTH mindset supported by the elements you most need for enhancement and you will find YOUR TRIBE, the people who best support your growth. Through it all, you will begin to live with true ENERGY.

With all this in mind, I invite you to try The ENERGY Formula. Take it one piece at a time. Instead of an all-or-nothing approach, embrace an “always something” mindset. We cannot create change without action, and it is consistent, daily action that accumulates like compound interest, leading to monumental transformations. We start to slow down enough so that we can all begin to breathe a bit more easily, moving out of the fight, flight or freeze of survival and into the wide, systemic flow of how we work, live and celebrate this short but miraculous time on Earth. Now more than ever, we can make that change. In fact, it might be necessary for our survival.

We all deserve to get this life “right.” We all deserve the same grace we so easily offer others, and we all have the opportunity right now to hit the reset button and begin to live the lives we know are out there waiting for us. So, let’s get started.

After everything I’ve been through, I’ve learned that it’s not one biohack or one magic bullet ingredient that can change our lives and boost our energy. Those elements do play a role and can help us get those final percentage points of improvement, but real energy is much more foundational—and it has as much to do with our psychology and our spirit as it does with our supplements.