Biohacking Weight Loss: How to Biohack Your Body to Lose Weight

If you have ever done any research on the Internet for losing extra pounds of fat, one of the “newest” trends appears to be biohacking weight loss.

Not just any ordinary weight loss, but a promise of a century-old practice delivered in a hip way that leverages the latest discoveries in science and technology.

But as you’re soon going to discover, biohacking your body is nothing new once you see what it entails.

It’s only innovative if you’re willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on expensive high-tech equipment and largely unproven therapies which let you avoid as much hard work as possible.

CAN YOU SAY SHAM ALERT?

Sorry kids, but there’s only so much you can solve with hacks before you end up returning to the basic proven principles of eliminating unwanted body fat.

This article will show you why you shouldn’t worry about “biohacking” fat loss, and what truly matters for getting the physique of your dreams.

What is Biohacking Your Body?

We can’t talk about biohacking weight loss without addressing what “biohack” even means in the first place.

The definition changes entirely depending on who you ask, but this website had a good starting point that doesn’t get too technical or convoluted:

“Biohacking involves a series of techniques that aim to “hack” your own biology to perform optimally in any given area…the practice of human optimization. 

Biohacking targets many areas of life. Its main focus, however, is on things like focus and memory, athletic ability, lifestyle habits, or longevity.”

As you can imagine, this open-ended definition encompasses an overwhelming number of possibilities:

• Lifestyle habits – Nutrition, exercise, sleep, meditation, supplements, nootropics, peptides, stretches, gratitude, etc. 
• Direct editing and manipulation of our own genetic code to produce the desired changes
• Insertion of technology directly into our bodies, like some Swedes did with microchips in their hands to pay for store items
• Performance-measuring technology that you use, wear or put close to your body for tracking certain biomarkers

Now you see why you can’t really define “biohacking” in strict terms.

Naturally, this opens up the global health and fitness market to an awfully large number of expensive and useless scams.

And let me tell you first hand:

When it comes to learning how to biohack your body, there’s a good chance you already know what you need to do.

The majority of products and “hacks” are either not needed and/or are pointless remixes of the fundamentals of health.

It’s so bad that even mainstream media could sniff the scam from a mile away:

“Biohacking has become a marketing buzzword used to sell unregulated “dietary supplements” and to repackage old products, such as coffee with butter.

People have added cream to coffee since the beginning of time, but the new iteration is more expensive and is, again, supposed to hack your brain.

Like any fad that tries to sell shortcuts to biology, or any approach in life that claims to shortcut hard work, what the current iteration of biohackers is mostly selling is untested (or “It worked for me!”) health advice that is supposed to upend science.

Trying these things tends to result in wasted money and time at best.”

We understand what we’re getting into when it comes to hacking our own biology, so let’s put this to practice and start biohacking belly fat away.

Biohacking Diet for Weight Loss

Biohacking your body first starts with the foods and drinks that you choose to put in your mouth day in and day out.

If you cannot handle the basics of nutrition, you have no business worrying about “biohacking” or any other modern fitness fad.

Fix this first before you hook yourself up with the latest Apple smart watch.

Meal Planning for Weight Loss

Don’t think you need to look the latest superfoods for weight loss or follow any exceptional rules around planning your meals for fat loss.

In fact, let me show you the only list of whole nutritious foods you need to worry about:

• Meat, fish, poultry, eggs
• Dairy products (greek yogurt, cottage cheese, etc.)
• Vegetables and tubers
• Fruit
• Legumes
• Nuts
• Healthy fat sources (ex. olive oil, walnut oil, macadamia nut oil, coconut oil, avocado oil)

Once your fridge is full of these foods and everything else has been thrown out of your house, the only thing left to do is practice metabolic flexibility.

You eat relative to your body fat percentage and your fitness goals, adjust your carbohydrate intake depending on how active you are, and then eat clean at least 90% of the time.

That’s it.

THAT IS really it.

If you really need an electronic app to track all of your calories and macronutrients, MyFitnessPal is 100% free to use on desktop and mobile.

The big takeaway theme you’ll see repeated through this article is the following — Biohacking weight loss is nothing more than a very fancy way of following the same principles proven time and time again to remove excess weight and keep it off!

Intermittent Fasting to Lose Weight

Long-time readers know I am fully bullish on fasting for fat loss, especially since I’ve written two internationally best-selling books on the topic.

The general idea is this — you spend much more time in the day NOT eating than you do eating.

So as an example, you only eat during an 6-hour window and you consume ZERO calories during the remaining 18 hours of the day.

What stops people from fasting is that many studies do not find much of a weight loss difference between intermittent fasting and daily caloric restriction when the same amount of calories are consumed per day.

Of course, this would only be true if you do what the Internet tells you to do.

When you follow a proven fasting protocol like The Metabolic Blowtorch Diet, you get these additional benefits related to weight loss:

• Lower levels of insulin
• Better quality of sleep
• Eliminates cravings for junk food
• Enhances BDNF production
• Faster fat loss due to selective cycling of carbohydrates around training days
• Less money spent on food

Oh and don’t think for one second ‘FASTING’ isn’t eating for 12-16 hours.

All my personal FIRST HAND 30 years of experiential knowledge shows Autophagy and Hormesis happening at 18 hours and longer.

If you think I AM full of shit, extend your normal 16 hour fast by 3 hours and see what happens to your body fat?

I’ll become the biggest genius you’ve ever encountered in about 3-4 weeks.

I consider this protocol to be the best “biohacking weight loss” method that doesn’t require you to buy a brand new gizmo.

But I also have Guaranteed Shredded for the hardcore dieters who want to speed up fat loss even further and are willing to endure even longer fasts.

Drinking More Water to Lose Weight

I question the seriousness of anybody who considers drinking water as “biohacking your body”, but such is the modern-day age we live in.

I’ve always long wondered about the exact mechanism through which water is connected to fat loss, and it turns out there’s a decent explanation backed by scientific evidence:

“…increased hydration leads to body weight loss, mainly through a decrease in feeding, and a loss of fat, through increased lipolysis.

The publications cited come from animal, mainly rodent, studies where manipulations of the central and/or the peripheral renin–angiotensin system lead to an increased drinking response and a decrease in body weight.

This hypothesis derives from a broader association between chronic hypohydration (extracellular dehydration) and raised levels of the hormone angiotensin II (AngII) associated with many chronic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease”

And this observation is replicable in human studies too, so don’t worry about the explanation being purely theoretical.

On top of being a zero-calorie liquid, water keeps your appetite at bay and very slightly increases your metabolism.

Not to mention being essential for eliminating waste from your body, which I talked about years ago in The TOT Bible:

“Water is the principal component of plasma, which aids the body in the transportation of nutrients through the bloodstream. Drinking enough water also ensures proper metabolic function.

Additionally, it helps regulate body temperature, moisten the air used for breathing and keep our mucous membranes hydrated”

I recommend people drink a gallon of water (4L) a day to ensure they’re getting the optimal amount (not the minimum amount).

And if you’re wondering about the best water for good health, check out my article on deuterium-depleted water.

Drinking Coffee for Weight Loss

Even though I recently wrote an article on how coffee does NOT affect testosterone levels, it’s still a heavily recommended staple of any fat loss diet.

Healthline wrote two great articles summarizing coffee’s science-backed effects on weight loss (here and here), which can be summed up into a few bullet points:

• Coffee contains zero calories, so you don’t have to worry about breaking an extended fast
• Coffee lightly boosts metabolic rate, although drinking large amounts regularly will eventually lead to tolerance (not to mention studies only show a transient increase in metabolism)
• Coffee blunts appetite, which makes it easier to adhere to a calorie-restricted diet that makes you feel hungry
• Coffee somewhat increases fat breakdown through the release of adrenaline
• Coffee contains caffeine, a stimulant that keeps you alert and energized relative to your base state

I love drinking coffee in the morning and it makes for one of the cheapest and most effective pre-workouts you will ever take.

(There’s a good reason why 99% of pre-workouts contain caffeine!)

And when paired with nicotine, you get two compounds acting synergistically to give you more of their fat loss benefits.

There’s really not much you need to do with coffee other than follow a few simple tips:

• Avoid drinking coffee ~6 hours before bedtime so you don’t disrupt your sleep schedule
• Keep your daily cups of coffee to a maximum of two — one in the early morning, and another 30 minutes before a workout if you’re feeling low on energy
• Drink your coffee nice and slow so you don’t overwhelm your body and suffer from a post-caffeine energy crash

Most importantly, DO NOT buy into the fad of adding coconut oil, MCT oil or butter to your coffee so you can “biohack fat loss”.

It’s still coffee plus the extra 200 calories from pure fat that won’t make a meaningful difference and instantly break any fast you are on.

Just stick with the normal stuff because you really, really do not need anything else.

Eating Spicy Foods to Lose Weight

This is by far one of the more ridiculous “biohacks” I’ve come across with regards to nutrition.

The proponents of this idea are largely relying on the effects of a compound known as capsaicin that’s found in spicy peppers:

“Capsaicin is the molecule that is responsible for the pungency of hot peppers. It stimulates the sympathoadrenal system that mediates the thermogenic and anorexigenic effects of capsaicinoids.

Capsaicinoids have been found to accentuate the impact of caloric restriction on body weight loss. Some studies have also shown that capsinoids, the non-pungent analogs of capsaicinoids, increase energy expenditure.

Capsaicin supplementation attenuates or even prevents the increase in hunger and decrease in fullness as well as the decrease in energy expenditure and fat oxidation, which normally result from energy restriction”

So you should be able to use extra Sriracha sauce, add in a couple of ghost peppers with each meal, and watch your body turn into a fat-melting furnace… right?

Not exactly.

One meta-analysis published in 2012 looked at 90 studies and the conclusion was nothing short of disappointing:

“It was observed that consumption of capsaicinoids increases energy expenditure by approximately 50 kcal/day, and that this would produce clinically significant levels of weight loss in 1-2 years. It was also observed that regular consumption significantly reduced abdominal adipose tissue levels and reduced appetite and energy intake.”

Even an average Joe brand new to the world of fitness knows a reduction of 50 calories a day is a laughable joke.

And “clinically significant weight loss in 1-2 years”? Please.

Can you experience lower levels of hunger by eating more spicy foods? Perhaps.

Will you see a thermogenic effect due to some of the sweating that happens when things get really hot? Yes, but it’s small and quick at best.

But if this is the best that “biohacking weight loss” has to offer, consider me seriously disappointed.

Add them to your diet if you want but don’t expect any miracles.

Biohacking Fitness for Weight Loss

Our “biohacking diet” has been fully covered and now it’s time to turn to biohacking your body through physical activity.

It turns out there are only three very simple things we need to do…

Building Muscle to Burn Fat

If you are serious about burning fat, acquiring lean muscle mass is one of the best ways to go about it.

In the most literal sense, having more muscle than fat will help you burn more calories at rest:

“…scientific estimation of the metabolic rate of muscle is about 10 to 15 kcal/kg per day, which is approximately 4.5 to 7.0 kcal/lb per day (Elia, 1992). Muscle tissue contributes approximately 20% to TDEE [Total daily energy expenditure] versus 5% for fat tissue (for individuals with about 20% body fat).”

Doing the math, gaining 10 pounds of muscle mass would help you burn off an extra 45-70 calories per day.

It’s not an awful lot but adding muscle slowly over time through proper ego-free lifting, combined with a high protein intake to maximize muscle preservation during fat loss, will make the journey a lot faster.

So how do we increase muscle mass? What’s the best muscle-building program regardless of the diet you’re following?

The answer is right below.

Positive Muscle Failure Training (PMF)

Positive muscular failure (PMF) can be defined as “reaching a point during a set where you cannot properly perform the concentric phase of a lift without half-assed proper technique, thereby requiring rest or help from a spotter”.

When you train a muscle with a single set of PMF, it should be blasted to complete exhaustion via maximal muscle fiber contraction and perfect exercise technique.

A program built entirely around PMF will involve higher reps, fewer sets and shorter rest periods in order to tax both your anaerobic and aerobic energy systems.

Fortunately for you, I’ve already created such a program distilling my 3 decades of lifting experience in the gym.

Not only does the link above contain a link to a FREE sample routine for arms, but you’ll also see multiple examples of PMF sets in action with different exercises.

It’s a ridiculously simple program that works ridiculously well for putting on multiple pounds of pure lean body mass.

Burn Calories with Cardio

If you’re a gym bro who hates doing any cardio out of the fear of losing muscle, you’re not going to like what I’m about to say next.

Cardio is one piece — but not the only piece — of successfully biohacking weight loss.

Not only does it help you burn even more calories, it also assists your body in disposing of waste, it also improves cognitive performance and heart health.

It is thus an important staple of becoming fully optimized and goes far beyond shedding a few extra pounds.

As I wrote in my article explaining why cardio is essential for therapeutic testosterone users, my stance on how to properly perform cardio can be summed up in one sentence:

“The ideal cardio protocol is performing low-impact endurance training 2-7x per week (30-45 minutes per session) at a low to moderate intensity (65-80% of maximum heart rate, so ~125-140 BPM) depending on your body fat levels.”

And if you can do cardio fasted on days where you are fasted, even better!

Cardio is a complement to weight training — the former increases your metabolism while the latter ensures the weight you lose is fat and not your hard-earned muscle.

Hormone Optimization

Last but certainly not least, your training regimen will suffer if your hormones are not fully optimized.

Lower testosterone levels will literally sabotage your biohacking weight loss efforts, as evidenced in men who see profound physique changes with the power of testosterone therapy:

“Testosterone therapy in men with testosterone deficiency (hypogonadism) has profound effects on body composition, resulting in reduced fat mass, increased lean body mass (LBM) and significant reduction in anthropometric parameters, such as weight, waist circumference and BMI.

The effects of testosterone therapy on increased LBM and reduced fat mass and the changes in anthropometric parameters were consistently reported in most studies, irrespective of testosterone formulations used or duration of testosterone treatment”

If you’re just learning about this for the very first time, my FREE ultimate guide to therapeutic testosterone will get you up to speed on what you’re missing out on.

And when you’re finally ready to take the plunge into 3 decades worth of knowledge on the subject accumulated by yours truly, The TOT Decoded course is seven weeks’ worth of online videos, templates, checklists, and case studies designed to guide you towards doing everything right the first time. 

Biohacking Sleep for Weight Loss

Biohacking your body will prove to be useless if you aren’t getting your ZZZ’s in every single night.

While sleep loss can certainly slow down your metabolism, the big reason to get your uninterrupted 7-8 hours is because sleep makes the psychological process of weight loss much easier to handle:

In other words, being sleep-deprived increases the odds you’ll feel much hungrier than normal and the temptation for junk food becomes so much greater.

So allowed me to present the following “hacks” for sleeping better and deeper, although you probably know about them already and aren’t doing them consistently.

Reduce Blue Light Exposure Before Bed

To put this in plain English, you need to turn off ALL your electronic devices and screens 1-2 hours before bed.

Tablets, TVs, smartphones, smartwatches, computers — it all has to be shut off in order for your body to produce the sleepiness hormone melatonin and get tired for bed.

Lying down in bed and scrolling Twitter does nothing but ruin the quality of your sleep:

“Blue light suppresses the body’s release of melatonin, a hormone that makes us feel drowsy. While this may be helpful during the day, it becomes unhelpful at night when we’re trying to sleep.

Being exposed to blue light in the evening can trick our brain into thinking it’s still daytime, disrupting circadian rhythms and leaving us feeling alert instead of tired.

Chronic misalignment of circadian rhythms can also lead to many negative health impacts, including metabolic disorders and mental health conditions such as depression”

If you absolutely need to use electronics late at night, the least you can do is use artificial blue light blocking glasses designed to avoid the suppression of melatonin production needed to fall asleep and stay asleep.

Fix Your Sleep Schedule

A big part of fully optimized sleep is going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time every single day.

As new research shows, a constantly changing sleep schedule is detrimental to your health:

“The researchers in the latest study looked at the relationship between variability of sleep pattern and the development of metabolic risk factors in 2,003 people aged between 45 and 84 years.

They found that for every 1 hour of day-to-day variation in bedtime or length of sleep, there was a 27% raised risk of developing metabolic risk factors.”

If you have to pick only one of the two, it’s most important to wake up at the same time every single day.

You’ll find yourself feeling much more rested when you wake up.

Not only that, but you will find it much easier to fall asleep without tossing and turning or sporadically waking up in the middle of the night.

Optimize Your Sleep Environment

With your sleeping habits hopefully fixed for good, it’s time to fully optimize the room in which you sleep.

There are an endless number of little tips and tricks you can do, but here are the most important ones:

• Keep your sleeping room at a cool temperature (~60-67 degrees Fahrenheit)
• Keep your sleeping room pitch black, with no light coming in from the windows whatsoever
• Keep your sleeping room quiet and far removed from noise
• Keep your sleeping room tidy and free of any unnecessary clutter.

And finally, you want to be using the most comfortable sleeping mattress you can possibly afford.

I recommend the EightSleep Pod Pro Mattress because it tracks 11 biomarkers, automatically regulates temperature according to your body type, wakes you up gently by changing the temperature, and is WAY more comfortable than a TempurPedic!

Biohacking Stress for Weight Loss

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you already know that biohacking your body for weight loss won’t work if you’re chronically stressed out.

Literally, high levels of stress will make it harder to stick to a fat loss diet:

“Elevated cortisol levels create physiological changes that help to replenish the body’s energy stores that are depleted during the stress response. But they inadvertently contribute to the buildup of fat tissue and to weight gain.

For example, cortisol increases appetite, so that people will want to eat more to obtain extra energy. It also increases storage of unused nutrients as fat”

And so long as you remain in this unproductive state, the fat distribution from eating more calories and holding more fat works against you:

“When body tissues are exposed to high levels of cortisol for extended periods of time, some cellular and tissue alterations may occur.

High levels of cortisol cause fat stores and excess circulating fat to be relocated and deposited deep in the abdomen, which left unchecked can develop into or enhance obesity.”

While my answer to any stress-related problem will always be to raise your vibration to optimize your love creation, most people need more concrete advice.

For some people, a daily routine of meditation in the morning may be the answer.

Other people may need specific breathing exercises to tackle cravings that spontaneously appear throughout the day.

Find whatever works to keep hunger and cravings at bay FOR YOU and stick with it.

We are all N of 1 and our journeys towards higher consciousness are inherently unique.

Conclusion – Is Biohacking Weight Loss Really About “Hacking”!?

The next time somebody tries to sound fancy by saying they’re “biohacking weight loss”, you can safely ignore them.

All they’re going to do is repeat all of the advice in this article and throw in an expensive device or two to make the process seem much fancier and more complicated than it has to be.

I’ve already given you the basics for free, and my FREE ultimate fat loss guide goes above and beyond what’s featured here.

My best peptides for weight loss, my favorite drugs for fat loss, how to manipulate hormones for fat loss, and a lot more.

Once more: Stick to the proven fundamentals of weight loss and there’s a 99.9% chance you won’t need to buy or use any new toy that comes with aggressive marketing hype to separate you from your wallet. 

As always…

Raise Your Vibration To Optimize Your Love Creation!

PS – If you want to watch me try out ridiculously expensive biohacking tech and let you know what’s actually worth spending your hard-earned money on, join The Fully Optimized Health Private Membership Group.

It’s your greatest opportunity to fully optimize your health and gain total access to me and my network of high-level men and women living their highest and best life.