The Mightiest Warriors
The Mightiest Warriors is a podcast that shines light on the remarkable stories of humans who have transformed profound adversity in their lives into a force of compassion, leadership and service to others.
"He who has a why to live for can deal with almost any how."
Victor Frankl
The Mightiest Warriors
From Tennis Champion to Metabolic Health Pioneer: Dr. Paul Arciero's Journey
What happens when a tennis prodigy hits rock bottom at 19, only to discover an inner strength that transforms not just his game, but eventually the science of nutrition, fitness and human performance? Dr. Paul Arciero takes us on his remarkable journey from struggling student to pioneering protein metabolism researcher whose work is changing how we think about nutrition and exercise.
Growing up in a bustling household with seven siblings, Paul often felt lost in the shuffle, finding his identity through movement rather than academics. His story pivots on profound moments of clarity—first while lying near a brook at a European tennis tournament feeling utterly empty, then experiencing unexpected peace that preceded a tournament victory. These experiences shaped his approach to health science, always seeking the holistic integration of mind, body, and spirit.
The scientific revelations are equally fascinating. As a young researcher and vegetarian, Arciero discovered something that contradicted established knowledge: when vegetarians consumed protein, their metabolism actually decreased rather than increased. This unexpected finding launched decades of groundbreaking research into protein quality, timing, and distribution—eventually leading to his PRISE protocol (Protein pacing, Resistance training, Interval training, Stretching, and Endurance exercise).
Perhaps most compelling is Arciero's vulnerability in sharing how, at the height of his professional success with media attention and scientific accolades, he was privately suffering through debilitating panic attacks that left him housebound. A middle-of-the-night epiphany brought clarity: "Don't make your life complicated. You're here to help people."
Whether you're struggling with metabolic health challenges or seeking optimal performance, Dr. Arciero's evidence-based approach offers practical wisdom that can be adapted to any dietary philosophy. His message transcends nutrition science—reminding us that our deepest struggles often precede our greatest contributions.
Want to calculate your personal protein pacing needs? Visit proteinpacing.org for a free calculator and discover how strategically distributing high-quality protein throughout your day could transform your health and performance.
Dr. Arciero's web site: https://paularciero.com/
For delicious and nutritious meals ready to eat (MREs) visit Essential Provisions at https://essentialprovisions.com/
Welcome to the Mightiest Warriors podcast. I'm Dr Mark Pettis, the Medical Director of Essential Provisions. Essential Provisions is a whole foods, nutrition, sports and performance company that makes meals ready to eat and sports blends that are beautifully whole food, clean, toxin-free products that are ideal for the wilderness enthusiasts, for the hunter, fishermen, recreational individual or for individuals that just want something convenient that they can open, heat neat, without any worry of quality and health benefit. And so I am delighted to be here today with Dr Paul Arciero, and Paul is in the spirit of full disclosure on the Board of Advisors of Essential Provision. In the spirit of full disclosure on the Board of Advisors of Essential Provision, I'm going to embarrass Paul with a brief introduction.
Speaker 1:True of most warriors, Paul has a CV that I could spend a long time on, so I'm just going to focus on the cliff note versions. But Paul is a full professor and director of the Human Nutrition, Metabolism and Performance Laboratory in the Department of Health and Human Physiological Sciences at Skidmore College in New York, and he, in a prior role, served as a full professor at University of Pittsburgh in their Department of Sports Medicine and Nutrition. And Paul has held many academic roles, has over 70 peer-reviewed published studies and some of the most respected mainstream journals on the planet, and Paul is an exemplary example, in my opinion, of an individual who really walks the talk. His personal life and story, as we'll get into, has very much been a story of pushing the edges, raising the bar and continuing to reach higher as a way of just continuous self-learning and development and, as you'll see in our conversation today, Paul has a very generous spirit for sharing. And, Paul, it's just great to have you here on the Mightiest Warriors podcast.
Speaker 2:Mark, first of all, that was an amazing introduction.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:For people to get my name pronounced right and some of my academic appointments. This is such a treat, so thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun. I'm excited to be here with you.
Speaker 1:Well, we were talking, paul and I were talking before we hit the record button. Paul's a protein science metabolism researcher and we're going to get into that work and Paul and I could easily just focus on the science. But we're going to we'll work into that. But we really want to look a little bit at just your personal story, paul. Extraordinary people who commit their lives in service to others. Just tell me a little bit about your upbringing, paul. Where did you grow up? What were some of the first seeds of your interest in science and biology and physiology, and then we'll sort of work our way forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me my story began in Long Island Huntington, long Island, which is where I was born. So myself and my seven siblings five of us started in Huntington and then we moved to Connecticut, simsbury, connecticut, mark, and that's where we resided for many years. So there was nine of us in a relatively modest size home it was a little bit less than 2000 square feet. So we had to make do with roommates at a very early age and it was great. So I have, you know, six siblings there was seven of us, five boys and two girls and then our parents and yeah, it was such a beautiful environment and it was not without trials, I mean, as every family has. But yeah, it was. It developed a very close knit upbringing, for sure. And there was relatives, there was generational, you know, in many ways, with grandparents living somewhat close by and aunts and uncles and cousins and things like that. So I, you know, I felt like I'm very loved, but at the same time you could get lost in the shuffle. In our house. There was a lot going on. Our house was on the corner of two streets and it seemed like literally everybody and their brother and sister were at our house growing up. It was. Just many would, and we still do. We have lifelong friends that would comment that, oh my gosh, you know your house was always open, it seemed like, and there would be oftentimes neighborhood kids sitting and watching TV in your den without any of you there at home. That was the kind of environment. So, yes, the fifth of seven it was.
Speaker 2:It was a loving atmosphere, but at times it was kind of easy to get lost in the shuffle and so, yeah, there were some challenges along the way and I felt at times, you know, I needed to find an identity. I was not a good student. Maybe it was because of this. You know, chaos at times that was, you know, around, but I really struggled. And so for my first introduction to the academic environment, it was not a really good one, just because I didn't find that to be very easy or comfortable for me. So I kind of had to just take to something, and for me I took to moving my body physically. So I became physical with sports and movement and things like that and that kind of kept me grounded, I would say, of all things, with all the other things that were going on not doing well in school, I felt like if I could move my body I could kind of find my way in the world, and so I kind of relied on that for quite a while through high school anyway, and as it turned out, I had some opportunities with my athleticism to pursue a sport in college. It was tennis. So I was provided a scholarship in college, down in Florida of all places, which is where I am happen to be right now but I didn't do so well, so I had to take a leave of absence, self-induced leave of absence, and it was there that I went to Europe and tried to make it on the tennis tour.
Speaker 2:And when I found out that it was a challenge there as well, I remember one day with my brother who had just recently graduated from college he was an all-American tennis player and I had not been performing well and I just remember I went for a walk and I found myself in the woods by a running brook and I remember just lying down and the next thing, I know, I had an overwhelming feeling of emptiness, literally emptiness. I thought, oh my gosh, you know I don't have much going for me academically. Here I am, you know, a college athlete who had to leave because of not performing well academically. And here I am, over in Europe at 19 years old and not doing well with what I had always relied on up until this point, up until my, you know, 19 years of life, and that was my athletic ability and not doing well. And, yeah, it was very humbling and, like I said before, it was very cathartic. And I just remember looking up and gazing up to the sky with tears coming down at a professional tennis tournament, which is where we were, and I was in the woods just listening to the water and I thought, wow, I can't get any lower than this, I can't get any more empty than this. But at the same time, almost immediately, I had this overwhelming feeling of contentment I know, you know, things are so ironic in life as they turn out and I just thought, wow, you know, I can't get much more empty than this. But at the same time, I just feel, you know, this is where I'm meant to be.
Speaker 2:I didn't have much and, as it turned out, I carried that feeling of emptiness, but just solitude and total harmony, I guess, in the face of having nothing at the time, and I proceeded to play the best tennis, literally of my life up until that point and I won the tournament and I became an instantaneous European tennis champion. It was very, very bizarre, but that was a turning point for me, for sure. And it was when I returned back that I really dove into my studies, my academic, relying on this relationship that I had with my family, my parents and especially my grandparents, who I got to know very well. So, through those 19 years when I felt like I had nothing other than this physical body, it was always my grandparents that provided me that level of comfort, reassurance, confidence in me when I had none. And so, you know, as the years went on and they became less healthy, that really tugged on my heartstrings. So I'm just kind of giving you the preliminary story of my story.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, that's what really launched me when I returned back from Europe and there's another side to this I just want to mention real quickly, as I won the tournament, I remember I was sitting at the winner's dinner, so they had, you know, the dinner and you know it was a wonderful evening of recognition and happiness.
Speaker 2:And here again, you know, I'm kind of like two sides of the same coin that are completely opposite I had an overwhelming, overwhelming feeling of just absolute homesickness for my parents. You know, I just remember sitting there feeling like, oh my God, this is the pinnacle of my athleticism at this moment, coming from feeling at the beginning, a couple of days earlier, of having not much of anything, and then having this overwhelming feeling of just heart sickness, of being homesick, especially my parents, parents, um. And so, yeah, I ended up leaving two weeks later um returning back um, but what was ironic about that was my father ended up getting a very rare. My father, once I returned home soon after he developed a very rare form of leukemia. Um, and so, yeah, everything happens for a reason, and that was my starting point.
Speaker 1:Wow, what a profound story, paul, and just as I try to picture you at that tender young age of 19, in the middle of what probably felt like a very strange place, though tennis was, you know, obviously a passion that you had, that's a bit of an epiphany. It sounds like that you experienced in that moment. And you know one of the things that came up for me, paul, just listening to you. You talked a little bit about what it was like growing up in a large family and often feeling a bit alone. You know, I could imagine feeling like a voice in the wilderness, with all that stuff going on in a large family.
Speaker 1:And tennis I've often been struck watching great tennis players. You're really kind of alone out there. Right, it's not a team sport. You know. Most of us have had team sport experiences where you're part of this cohesive group. In tennis you're kind of out there. So how do you think there was something about that? Your comfort may not be the right word, but your experiences of being sort of self-sufficient and autonomous and that kind of brought you to that place of such a great singles tennis player.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. You know that's a really good question. But there was probably some support, some level of self-reliance, as you describe, that I needed to be a tennis player. I was also. I happened to be a hockey player I mean who kind of isn't when you grow up in New England, basketball or hockey? So I had that team sport. But I just felt like, yeah, the tennis for me, the individualism of it, the self-reliance, the resilience that you needed, you know being able to figure things out on your own. And, yeah, maybe you're right, maybe just without knowing it, this yearning to find my voice. You know my inner voice, you know who is it that speaks to me when I need it. And I find that, even today, I find comfort in solitude. Right, solitude is being content with either no one around or with a crowded, you know chaos happening around you, and so, yeah, I think that was really important for me. You know, to develop that life skill that is so valuable. You know, to be okay, alone and in your own skin.
Speaker 1:And in your own skin. I had similar experiences, paul, growing up a lot of time alone and in my experience, even when I was sort of physically alone, I began to feel a presence. I don't know if you experienced this when you were on your back looking up at the sky, kind of at the bottom of, you know, just expectations that had not yet been fulfilled. I started to feel confident that even when I was alone, sort of physically, that there was something there holding me. I don't know what your experience was like, you know some would call it spiritual, you know, but often it's in those moments that we do connect with something transcendent.
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree more. Yeah, there's absolutely no doubt. I can just say this, mark, there was no question in my mind that at no point did I feel like I was alone on the journey proverbial rock bottom to realize that you know, there's some other life force that's there with us to help us and it's kind of it requires us to kind of get out of the way and, you know, to experience it. But yeah, it was wonderful and to this day, you know, I think about that moment often because it was such an epiphany, as you said it was. It was so life transforming and I do.
Speaker 2:I rely on that because it's very reassuring for me of being vulnerable, being alone, not having a lot of things going my way and realizing that you know I can find my way out, I can have a breakthrough in those moments and that's really important, you know, to just understand that that breakthroughs can happen at any time, no matter the circumstances. And you know we hear about these all the time with people that have really had other similar, really rock bottom type life experiences where they have those breakthroughs in the moments that they have them. So, yeah, I'm a big believer in that higher power being there with you at the most vulnerable times, and you know it hasn't been all roses, by the way. You know we can go into this more, but I've hit rock bottom many other times throughout my life, at times where many people who were looking from the outside would have absolutely never expected, you know, and I've had those moments that I've had to again break through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, paul, for sharing such a personal story. And, of course, the timeline of our lives is so interesting because that could have gone a very different way at that particular moment, at the age of 19. And uh, uh, you know, become more challenged in terms of of what next and and who am I? And uh, so here. So there you are right, you win this tournament, you're 19 within weeks after questioning, you know who are you in this, in this cosmos, and what's next to Plum. And then you return home and, as you put it, nothing happens in a random way. Everything does, I believe, have meaning. And so you confront this illness that your dad had and you happen to be where you needed to be. Uh, for that, um, um yes.
Speaker 1:And and yeah, yeah. So. So tell me a little bit about that, paul. What, what? Yeah again, there you are. You're a pretty young man, uh with you know who had realized a dream. And now here you are, in this context of back with family, and, yeah, that had to have been an interesting transition for you.
Speaker 2:It was yeah, and so when I did return home, I took some time just to recalibrate and figure out that next step. So I went and lived with a brother down in Florida who had recently graduated. But it was. It was a good time because I was able to get connected and I was getting myself integrated back into the academic environment. But it became clear to me that I definitely wanted to pursue something that was related to my fitness, health, movement, lifestyle, but then also health, because what I started to discover Mark was really interesting.
Speaker 2:Because what I started to discover Mark was really interesting, you know, I achieved a level of fitness and I started to have people ask me you know, one of the strengths that's also is sometimes our weakness, but was, for me, being able to endure long, arduous matches, especially in challenging environments. If it was hot and humid, I could usually, kind of, you know, bring out my best. But what happened was I started to have people asking me what I was doing, how I was doing it, and I thought, oh my gosh, surely you don't want to be asking me that I don't know much. You know, I just know how to, you know, train myself and eat well, and I was doing it very egotistically, although not having an ego as I was doing it, but it was just really for self improvement. But that was a turning point for me again, you know, when, literally not just my peers who were interested hey, you know what are you doing to, you know, manage your fitness and your endurance when you're out there playing, you know, for hours. But adults, you know, my parents, friends, you know how do you, you know, stay in shape, what are you doing? And even having some of them ask if I could help them, I just thought, wow, that's, I can't believe this. You know you're actually using me as a resource of health and science and things like that.
Speaker 2:But that was really important for me to have that awakening that I actually had some self-worth to offer people and that's so important for everyone. And you know it was unintentional. I don't think anyone was intentionally trying to boost my self-worth and efficacy, but it was happening and that was monumental for me, you know, just to have that awareness, that wow. So that definitely inspired me to want to continue to widen my net of information gathering beyond, just for me. And that was really important, that now I was actually interested, engaged, excited about gathering more health information, especially in nutrition, especially in exercise, physiology, performance, but health really.
Speaker 2:Because I had this connection to my grandparents who had been sick and I wish I could have done something more for them my own father who was struggling with his health to help him. And so that was really empowering for me to really dive into health science gathering so that I could be more well-informed, so that when somebody did ask me and that naturally extended over into my academic work and so, yeah, that was really tremendously confidence building for me to bring it to that level. And so when I was able to link those things you know, this ability to help share it with other people but then also be able to pursue it as an academic major nutrition and exercise physiology I thought, wow, that's my wheelhouse, nutrition and exercise physiology. I thought, wow, that's my wheelhouse. And so that opened up the academic gates. That opened up the academic gates for me, because up until that point I didn't really have much.
Speaker 1:And boy did the gates open, paul. I mean, I'm getting the chills just envisioning the passion and the purpose converging at this time in your life. And, after struggling to find academic traction earlier in your life, you would go on I had to write this down because it's just so impressive. You would go on to receive a master's in science, in nutritional science, at University of Vermont, a master's of science in exercise physiology and bioenergetics which I personally find fascinating at Purdue University, and from there you went on to get your PhD in exercise physiology at Springfield College. And so, man, you went all in, you were on a mission, and all of that just becomes the perfect segue for how you have positioned yourself, paul, as a remarkable protein metabolism scientist with some of the most recognized publications in the world.
Speaker 1:An amazing book, a former number one Amazon bestseller book called the Prize Life I want to get into that a little bit, paul P-R-I-S-E and all of that is.
Speaker 1:I've just observed you and have learned so much reading many of the papers you've published and your book it kind of epitomizes, crystallizes everything that you've been talking about really becoming a master of protein, protein pacing We'll talk about that and really changing lives. This is work as a physician and as sort of metabolic health and challenges of lean body mass have really become huge public health issues in the US and around the world huge public health issues in the US and around the world. You really have positioned yourself at the vanguard of an emerging science that really can transform lives, and what an amazing place to be as you continue to grow and learn and develop. So just maybe share a little bit, paul, about what brought you through that training, through that amazing education into the more pragmatic work as a protein metabolism scientist, what some of that work was revealing and how that led to your writing. You know the Prize Life and how it informs the work that you do today.
Speaker 2:I was very fortunate, mark, as you described, with some mentors that, in addition to my parents and my siblings and other close friends. You know, when I made the commitment to pursue this path, to dive as far as I could into this health and performance environment and field, I had some wonderful mentors and I remember when I went for my first master's degree at Purdue University I had a mentor there that was just remarkable and he lived by example, he walked the walk, and that was really important for me. I needed to identify with people like that and not to say anything about people who don't necessarily practice what they preach, but for me it needed to resonate because I have a hard time separating I'll be honest, my professional life with my personal life. I needed to have those two things congruent. If I was going to pursue something professionally, it had to align with what I do personally. It was just too hard for me to separate. Some people can turn it off, they can shut it off when they leave work. It's shut down, it's no there, but I don't do that.
Speaker 2:And so he, you know, he naturally lived that and I thought that's the kind of person vocation that I wanted to pursue. So I always knew that I wanted to have this holistic approach, this whole person approach to health and wellness and science and research. I knew that if I was going to go into this, the body is a multimodal, integrated organism and to study it in one way and here I am speaking to a physician who's achieved a very high level of success in you, but for me, I knew, in order for me to make it work, I had to take a holistic approach, and so I've always been a true mind, body and spirit in the way that I've approached my training and education and my research. So that was really important and that was very rare, by the way, because I had other peers that were going into just physiology, exercise physiology, others that were going into just nutrition or biochemistry or biomechanics or medicine, and so I just it didn't feel right to specialize in just one thing and, looking back, that was a risk for sure, because there weren't a lot of other scientists that were doing that In fact very few and so I was fortunate that, like I said, when I went to Purdue and I had this individual who was mentoring me and at the time Mark what was really interesting, just to make this transition into me pursuing this career in nutrition and physiology, I was a vegetarian, so I had kind of gone to that. I don't know if I want to call it an extreme, but at that time I would say it was more of a fringe. You know, plant based is much more well accepted, but back in the early 80s, you know, being a vegetarian was, was was pretty extreme. And so I became a vegetarian and, as a result, I pursued my master's thesis looking at vegetarianism.
Speaker 2:I wanted to study metabolism because I knew at the root of all disease is pretty much metabolism. You have a metabolic dysfunction if you have disease onset of some way, shape or form. And so I knew I wanted to pursue metabolism at its most basic core. And so, anyway, I chose to look at what was happening metabolically, you know, in terms of our endocrine system, our hormonal system, our metabolic system. You know how our cells undergo cellular respiration, our cardiovascular system, our body composition system, our immune system. So I was able to integrate all of those things into this early research back in the 1980s.
Speaker 2:As I look back, and what I discovered was very interesting, what I showed I recruited a group of vegetarians and a group of omnivores, so those that eat both plant and animal foods versus a group that just ate herbs plants herbivores as we called them back in the early days of being a vegetarian. And I fed them a meal and I was again one of my research subjects as I was conducting this study, and that was eye-opening for me because what I observed was in the scientific literature vegetarians were healthier. That's why I was pursuing it. I wanted to be as healthy as possible and in the scientific literature, vegetarians had lower blood pressure, they had lower risk for type 2 diabetes, they had lower risk for cardiovascular disease, they had lower risk for cancers. So everything I was reading in the early 80s into the mid-1980s was if you're a vegetarian, you're ahead of the curve, as extreme as it might be at the time, of an eating process.
Speaker 2:So what we did was we gave them a standardized meal and the standardized meal was what they were using currently in the medical field for cancer patients, for people that had traumatic injuries. It was called Sustical Ensure. Sustacow were the two medical support products, not very good, but that's what we were using. And what I found was that the vegetarians, when they consumed it we gave it on a relative basis of lean body mass their metabolisms went into hibernation and I thought, wow, how unique is that? It doesn't make any sense in terms of what I was looking to find, because in the literature vegetarians weighed a little bit less than normal eaters, they had lower blood sugar and here, after we gave them this protein rich meal, their metabolism actually went in the opposite direction of what we normally observe when we give people protein, increasing the metabolic rate. And what we hypothesized from that was that, because they're not accustomed to eating protein, and especially somewhat higher quality animal based protein, their bodies were conserving and holding on to it almost like in a hibernating type state of efficiency to not let it go. And that was eye-opening because it was across the board. It wasn't happening in just a few of us vegetarians. Every single vegetarian that consumed this metabolic supported liquid protein meal had a lower metabolism by a large amount.
Speaker 2:It was published in the number one rated nutrition journal in the world at the time, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and for me it was, like you know, hitting a grand slam at my first at-bat. So everything kind of went downhill after that. But that was my light bulb. That's what I needed, because it was in opposite direction of what I was assuming to take place. After I dove into the potential mechanisms, we have these thyroid hormones triiodothyronin and thyroxin that were changing in direct concert with this lowering of the metabolism.
Speaker 2:You know, it was just a picture that I couldn't have painted any better and that really got me started. I knew there was something very unique and very health promoting the higher the quality protein and subsequent to that I kind of pursued higher and higher quality types of protein. And here we are today. You know part of essential provisions that set the cream. You know the top of the heap in terms of quality. So, yeah, that was fantastic. And you know I kept pursuing this combination of nutrition, exercise, physiology, mind-body wellness. I wanted to always pursue that in a holistic approach and by the time I did my postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine, I had the unbelievable good fortune of working under a physician who really broke the mold of physicians and was a holistic, integrative applied physiology doctor, physician. You know, pursuing these questions that I was interested in nutrition and exercise on, you know, really making an impact on improving people's metabolic health, john Holsey. So, yeah, I was very fortunate along that path, but that's where I want it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what and and it. What a great example to Paul, of how you know, as a scientist, as a researcher, the these breakthroughs often come. You apply the scientific method to you know, affirm or maybe refute your hypothesis and here you get a finding that was totally unexpected. Researchers might have been, because they were so locked in to what they thought should have happened, would have maybe dismissed the results or said, you know, I'm not sure this means anything. Maybe I'll continue to and then so share a little bit, paul, about how that sort of evolved into your protein pacing principle and the research that really has continued to guide that, that, that principle around nutrition guide that principle around nutrition, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that was the starting point and once I had that as preliminary scientific evidence, I started to apply it to different groups, different populations, and by the time I was at Washington University, we were looking at type two diabetics and we were looking at an exercise intervention and a nutrition intervention with this higher quality protein, and both were significantly beneficial, which at the time, was being elevated to a really high emphasis of improvement in a person's health. It was really for me eye-opening to see how much of an impact, a change in the macronutrient distribution and the quality of that change in the macronutrients, so the carbohydrates, fats and protein. And so I learned, you know, protein is derived from the Greek word proteose, which is primary, vital. And so, yeah, I just started to take that and revise it, refine it, you know, make it a little bit, you know, more advanced, each time I iterated on it, on a new clinical trial, and so, yeah, what became very apparent to me, mark, was that not just increasing the protein, you know, I think we have an overemphasis, that, oh, you know, you need to eat more protein if you're not eating enough. I think that's important, but it's really the quality that has. Without any question, there's no real debate about this, because we know that there's such a varying degree of quality in everything that we encounter in life, whether it's nutrition, exercise, mind, body, you know, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:It really became apparent to me as my protocols were advancing and I was hopefully increasing the sophistication of them, it was really due to a primary focus on the quality of the nourishment that we were providing, not just in nutrition but also in the movement experiences, the mind-body experiences that we were doing. I kind of use nourishment as a more comprehensive term. But clearly quality kept rising to the top because we did studies where we gave different groups in our clinical trials the same net amount of protein, but we distributed it a little bit differently, we changed the quality of it differently and in each case there was a different response, and so it is more than just increasing the quantity, it is definitely more than you know, keeping the quality at the same level, and so that was really again an advancement for me of understanding. And, like you said, yeah, there's a little bit of risk in all of this, but for me, clearly, the quality of the experience is definitely the more important factor than the quantity that I think sometimes we get locked in in terms of our thinking. You know there's great dogma right now around, you know this calories in, calories out in, calories out. And while there's some practical application to that, it's limited in the absence of really focusing on the quality of those calories that you're consuming and the quality of the calories that you're expending. And that's really where prize was born.
Speaker 2:Out of that I wanted to kind of re-examine how we were looking at nutrition recommendations based on just macronutrient percentages that people were consuming, and instead look at the quality of the you know, the macronutrients that people were consuming, as well as how they were consuming it. What was the distribution over the course of the day, of the difference in that quality of nourishment? And then the same for our movement, our expenditure, you know. So prize, just if I could maybe define that the P starts for protein, pacing and intermittent nutritional fasting. So there's a component of the nourishment that we've included, this nutritional fasting.
Speaker 2:And then rise R-I-S-E, which I really like because it encourages people to get up and rise off the couch or being sedentary. But it stands for resistance, strength, muscular exercise. The I stands for intervals, high-intensity intervals that we hear a lot about HIIT training and SIT training, sprint interval and high intensity interval. The S stands for stretching, flexibility, joint mobility, pliability, so I just coined it stretching, because that's kind of commonly known to many people. And then the E is what we usually default to when we start an exercise program. We go out and we walk, we go out and we jog, we ride a bike, we go swimming, we do something aerobically, or what we call cardiovascular exercise.
Speaker 2:I termed it E for endurance exercise, so those four forms of movement we know to be the most um valuable for our overall health and even our physical performance. So that that um that came to me one night. Uh, I remember sitting in bed. I popped up at three in the morning and I had been looking at some interventions and, um, literally it was like a, you know, a jolt from that higher power and my wife still, you know. Yeah, I jolted up out of bed. I remember sitting at my bed writing down P-R-I-S-E and I thought, oh my gosh. So yeah, it's an interesting, funny story.
Speaker 1:I mean, there were so many pearls in that oyster Paul and field of nutrition and performance, metabolic health no-transcript. You've really lifted the veil in a lot of your research around many of those myths that in my view at least in 2025, it does seem clear that modern humans need more protein per day than what the RDA recommendations through the years have recommended. Ultimately, it's the quality of that protein right, the diversity of the amino acids in that protein, the bioavailability. These are building blocks and we're complex bioorganisms that need the right building blocks, and so your emphasis on quality is so important, paul, and this principle of distribution over the course of the day so that one can not only get sufficient quantity and quality. It's just so consistent with all that you've shared, integrating these holistic principles of resistance, work and endurance and stretching and the importance of some intermittent fasting, downtime. It's really a beautiful complementary integration of applicable science.
Speaker 1:This is news to use. Every bit of it is news to use and it's not abstract, it's not theoretical. And what I've been impressed with, paul, because I eat differently now since I met you. I've always been, I'm an omnivore, but I love that your work can be dropped into any sort of nutritional philosophy, whether it's vegetarianism or a ketogenic mindset, paleo, pick your category, for what those categories are worth. And these principles can be adapted. So I love that, that they can be personalized and adapted. And it doesn't take long. You know, within days people can begin to notice differences. If they're tracking their blood sugars, they'll notice it on the scale, they'll notice it when they put their pants on. That they wow. You know, this is starting to feel a little loose on me, you know and certainly they'll notice it in many other ways. So it doesn't take long for the, for these principles to manifest in the, in the phenotype, in the, in the day to day experience that that so many folks are frustrated by, because they, you know, they're trying to apply what they've been taught and hitting the wall, and so you've just pulled together so many things.
Speaker 1:And then the last pearl, paul. That really jumps out at me and this is a little bit of the esoteric in me, and it does come back to this notion of a higher self, a higher spirit, notion of a higher self, a higher spirit. Nighttime, and in particular, many of wise traditions have pointed to this literally 3 am, is a time in the 24-hour day-night cycle where the veil, the veil between the material and the non-material tends to be at its leanest point. We might experience this in a dream that we're having, or we wake up with an epiphany. You know, prize, wow, there is something we might call it magical.
Speaker 1:I think quantum physics will give us maybe a better understanding of what's happening scientifically, but that you just brought that up to of 19 lying on your back in Europe wondering you know what's next to this point later in life where you've now become such an accomplished scholar and researcher and just a good guy, you know, the story continues, right, the same sort of connections and following the passion and understanding that, when the consequences of our work maybe hand us things that we didn't expect, that that can be seen as an opportunity to say, okay, what is it that I'm missing? How do I need to look at this differently? And so I just love how you've articulated that journey. So yeah, I just I had to just comment, you had so much there. So yeah, I just I had to just comment you had so much there.
Speaker 2:No, that's terrific, you know. I should add just one more piece, Mark. About 10 years after I had come up with this it wasn't quite 10 years, maybe seven years the prize concept it had started to receive a lot of attention, media attention. Good Housekeeping gave me the Good Housekeeping seal of approval for it, and so it was getting written up in all kinds of popular media, not just in the scientific domain, and people were really looking at me as this example of supreme holistic health. And what people didn't know behind the curtain was that I was struggling, with my wife and my three sons, with terrible, debilitating panic attacks, so much so that I was getting invited to go and speak literally around the world on prize and to present my research, because I was very well funded at the time and I wasn't leaving the house I was.
Speaker 2:I was confined for for years with these debilitating panic attacks and it was, yeah, really another very nadir low point in my life with when most people were looking at me as having everything. I call it the superhero syndrome. I think I was almost felt like I was meant to be a superhero, but I was living this fake life where I was struggling tremendously. Once again I bring this up just because you just reminded me of it. I've only spoken about this publicly a couple of times. I was awarded the Faculty Science Award at my university three years ago, so I shared it with my colleagues at my university after I received this highest honor, because no one at my university knew that I had struggled through this.
Speaker 2:But it occurred at three in the morning. I woke up and I remember I was in the throes of these panic attacks occurring way too often and I knew my life needed an intervention of some type. And I remember, once again, I woke up three in the morning and I just walked into my bathroom. In my bedroom I had tears streaming down my face and I just thought wow, you know, I never thought I would have ended up like this. And I just remember looking at myself in the mirror.
Speaker 2:I get a little emotional when I think about this, because it was so overwhelming for me. I once again had this feeling of harmony, of peacefulness, contentment, right at the midst and in the middle of one of the hardest moments of my life, of suffering through these panic attacks and not leaving home. And I looked at myself and I said you know who are you, what are you doing? And the voice that I had reflected back at me was saying don't make your life complicated. You're here to help people and, Mark, I live by that. It's who I look at every morning. Now, when I wake up in the morning, I see that person saying you're here to help people.
Speaker 1:Wow, paul, thank you so much for sharing that. For all that, you've shared just the courage to open up. It's not easy for any of us to sometimes open up and share certain aspects of our lives, and you've done that so sincerely, so graciously. And what a gift, paul, for people who are interested in reaching you. Paul, I know you have a website, probably more than one and your book.
Speaker 2:Share that with the folks Sure, yeah, this wasn't intended for me to share that, but I just felt that it just came out naturally. So, yeah, if anybody's interested, I have my prizelifecom website. You can find some information. I probably need to do a better job keeping that up to date. I do have a very practical kind of you know, tangible way of staying up with the protein pacing research. It's proteinpacingorg, and I provide a free calculator for anybody that wants to calculate their protein pacing needs Mark of what we just talked about. And so, yeah, thank you. And then I'm on Facebook and Twitter. I'm not as active as some, but I try to share a few of my, some of my research and opinions on certain health topics there as well. So, but yeah, super grateful for you to have me and be able to share with everyone.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much, paul. You know I'm going to just put in a quick plug about the products that Paul was talking about from Essential Provisions, so you know. So Paul is one of our board of advisors, right, right? So just imagine we've had just amazing intellectual and spiritual capital that has gone into these products. Our CEO and founder, robin Gentry McGee, is an amazing culinary chef and I call her an alchemists, and Paul and I and Kathy Swift, an amazing nutritionist, on our team and others will brainstorm and reflect on some of this vanguard science and Robin will translate that into these incredible creations. And so, for those that are interested in Essential Provisions products you know, check out EssentialProvisionscom. I will include links to Paul's website and his book, one of his books. Paul's written more than one on the detail from our conversation today. And the detail from our conversation today. And Paul, thanks again. You're just such an inspiring guy and you're so grounded and we're all grateful to be recipients of the passion and purpose that you you manifest in your life.
Speaker 2:So thank you for that, brother. Oh, thank you, really enjoyed this. Thanks for having me.