Taking care of your health can benefit you in far more ways than just making you look better, prevent disease, and live longer. Taking care of your health and wellness can actually improve your mental sharpness and clarity and improve your performance at work. Just ask Threddies co-founder, Jason Donmoyer, who has experienced this himself. That’s what I did.
I’m really happy because Jason agreed to do an interview with me for The Hart of Health about his health and self-optimisation journey while building their company.
1. What Does Your Weekly Exercise Routine Look Like Typically?
20 minutes of yoga every day, usually in the morning. A 6-minute HIIT session at least once every day. Sometimes, I’ll do this as much as three times spread throughout the day.
On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I do an approximately 50-minute calisthenics/isometric bodyweight exercise routine that has the main purpose of improving my mobility. All of this is done in a fasted state on most days.
Pretty much every day, I take a 20-minute walk after each meal.
The rest of my exercise occurs as the result of “incidental movement”… I’ll do a few squats/pull ups/push ups after using the bathroom, waiting for my next meeting to start, etc. I’ll purposely park further away from wherever I’m going in order to get more steps in.
On the weekends, I’ll do some more “fun” exercise… go hiking, play some form of team sport, etc.
2. Do You Switch Up Your Workout Routine And If So, How Often?
About once every 8 weeks, I’ll skip the calisthenics routine for a few days. I regularly change the movements that I do in this and my yoga routine is based on how I feel, what I think needs more focus, etc. While I’m mostly a fan of bodyweight exercises, if I’m feeling like pushing it, I will incorporate hand weights or a weighted vest in any of my exercise routines. I’ll often take a new yoga or calisthenics class in order to learn new movements.
3. What Noteworthy Benefits Have You Experienced In Other Areas Of Your Life From The Exercise You Do?
I feel and look great! I can think more clearly, I have more energy and get an “early in the day” sense of accomplishment.
4. What Is Your Light Therapy Routine Like Currently?
10 minutes of meditating in front of a JOOVV panel every day soon after waking. If I’m nursing an injury, I’ll do something more targeted usually while working during the day.
5. Have You Noticed Any Benefits From Doing Light Therapy And Are There Particular Benefits You Are After?
I’ve found that using the JOOVV on my face first thing in the morning seems to do wonders for my sleep quality and that’s my main reason for using it now. The verdict is still out on using it for collagen production/skin benefits. I’ve also found it works well for certain injuries. I use it for joint pain specifically in my knees and ankles and find it effective. Last year, I developed Bell’s Palsy due to Lyme disease and used the JOOVV to fully heal the nerve damage in half the time that my doctor expected it would take. Obviously, this is anecdotal and I have no definitive control to compare it to, but I feel that it sped up recovery.
I’m interested in using red light therapy in order to increase testosterone, but I haven’t spent the time to develop an experiment to verify whether or not that works for me yet.
6. How Long Have You Been Doing Time Restricted Feeding And What Does Your Time Restricted Feeding Schedule Look Like?
I’ve been doing time restricted feeding for almost 10 years now. Currently, I strive to follow at least an 18:6 schedule every weekday with a strict circadian fast (at least 13 h) on Saturday and Sunday. In practice, this often becomes a 20-hour fast during the week and close to 16 hours on the weekends. Once a month, I do at least one 24+ hour fast. I try to break my daily fast with a high protein, low carb meal, but freely eat carbs after this. I’ll eat keto for a few days leading up to my longer than 24-hour fast. While fasting, I only drink water and/or green tea and avoid supplements.
7. What Performance Benefits Have You Noticed From Time Restricted Feeding?
It’s done wonders for my health. I’ve lost (and kept off) more than 40 pounds since I started doing this. My body composition is also better (more muscle, less fat). Not having to think about and prepare a meal for eating early in the work day allows me to focus on actually getting work done. I no longer get “hangry” and if I don’t eat a ton of carbs, I feel as if I can think more clearly.
8. What Supplements Are You Currently Taking To Biohack Your Body And Why?
Every day:
- 7 mushroom adaptogen blend – I’m a firm believer in mushrooms providing many benefits. This seems to do wonders for my immunity, but for me, it’s also great in terms of improving cognitive function.
- Glycine after every meal – I’ve found after experimenting with the Levels CGM that this is extremely effective for me to eliminate blood sugar spikes and get me back to baseline.
- Creatine monohydrate – I take this mostly to preserve muscle, but I feel that it also gives me a brain boost
- Resveratrol/Nicotinamide Riboside/CoQ10 – general performance and “anti ageing” benefits
- Collagen/hyaluronic acid – mostly for joint optimisation.
- Omega-3 – mostly since it’s a common recommendation from many of my self decode reports and I feel noticeably better when I take it.
- Spirulina/Chlorella – good whole food source of many vitamins and trace minerals. Good heavy metal binder and chelator
Occasionally:
- Vitamin D/K – as needed to keep my levels ~50 ng/mL. I feel this is the level at which my body functions tend to operate optimally
- Vitamin C/Zinc/Magnesium/Manganese/Chromium – I’ll take a supplement for these if I feel that my immune system is being challenged or if I haven’t been getting them from my diet.
- Curcumin – I’ll take this if I’ve had a bad night’s sleep or fighting any other form of inflammation. I avoid Acetaminophen and NSAIDs, so I’ll often use this as a substitute.
- Ashwagandha – I’ll take this before a meal that I don’t know how it was prepared. It reduces the negative blood sugar impacts of many restaurant and “cheat” meals.
- CBD – to help with sleep when dealing with physical pain or stress.
9. What Are You Doing To Help Regulate Your Circadian Rhythm?
Getting red light exposure with the JOOVV first thing in the morning, getting outside in the sun and nature as soon as possible after waking, eliminating blue light at night as best I can. I use the “night time” settings on all of my electronic devices and have them set to automatically turn on at sun down. If I must use electronics at night, I’ll often wear blue light blocking glasses.
10. What Are The Top Biohacks You Recommend People Try?
Sleep, exercise and diet are IMHO the most important things to optimise.
For optimising sleep, the Oura Ring is my favorite tool. You can get a baseline using your normal behaviors and then tweak things one at a time to find out the behaviors that work best for you.
For optimising exercise and diet, I recommend a DNA service like Self Decode that can give you some detailed recommendations based on your genetics. You can then take this information as a starting point for experimentation. To optimise exercise, it’s important to find something that you enjoy and don’t need a lot of discipline to make it part of your routine. For me, this meant something that didn’t require a lot of equipment and could be fit into a busy schedule. I had to be able to do it at any time no matter where I was. This meant it ideally had to be bodyweight focused and something that didn’t require a ton of consecutive time in order to execute. This led me to HIIT and calisthenics. To really motivate yourself, get a good scale that measures muscle and body fat percentages and use it every day.
To truly optimise diet, I can’t recommend a CGM enough. This coupled with the insights from the Oura ring and Self Decode reports will help you understand the implications of all the food decisions that you make. I also think that everyone should practice some form of time restricted feeding as the benefits are so great. Using the proper supplements for you to minimise unwanted glucose spikes and knowing how to turn on anabolism properly when breaking your fast are also key.
JH: So strategic, so many great tips, thank you so much Jason for agreeing to do this interview for The Hart of Health. I definitely need to up my red light therapy game after this interview.
If you haven’t checked out Jason’s company yet, Threddies is a bulk hair accessories supplier. You probably know that when someone ties their hair in a ponytail or bun before doing a workout or while working, they mean business and things are about to get serious. Well, Threddies is a company that provides the hair accessories you need to put your hair up when it’s time to work hard.
