A working example of how I live. Sleep, training, peptides, hormones, labs, and the discipline that holds it together. Not a prescription — a snapshot of one physician's stack.
Patients ask me, sometimes within ten minutes of meeting, what I personally do. The implication is fair — if a physician is going to prescribe testosterone, peptides, NAD+, and aggressive metabolic protocols, you would like to know whether he uses any of them himself.
The answer is yes. I use a structured version of nearly every tool I prescribe to my patients, plus a few that are not pharmacologic at all — the foundational ones that determine whether anything else works. This page is the full picture, organized in the order I think the levers actually matter.
None of this is novel. The protocols I use are anchored to peer-reviewed evidence and refined by clinical experience over years. What may be useful here is the sequencing and the integration — how the pieces fit together, what I sacrifice for what, and the honest acknowledgment that no single intervention does the work alone.
Before any specific intervention, four principles determine which interventions matter and in what sequence. These do not change.
The goal is not adding years at the end. The goal is compressing morbidity and extending the productive, capable, present-with-my-family middle. Function over duration.
Sleep, sun, food, training, relationships. These move the needle further than any peptide or supplement I will mention later. I work on them first because nothing on top of a broken foundation lasts.
Bloodwork is the dashboard. Body composition is the gauge. Sleep tracking is the early-warning system. Without measurement, optimization is theater. I run comprehensive labs every six months on myself.
Consistency over intensity. A 70% protocol followed every day produces vastly better outcomes than a 100% protocol followed three days a week. The thing that compounds is the thing that doesn't quit.
The order below is roughly how I weight them — foundational first, then sharpening tools, then the medical layer. None of them is optional. All of them are calibrated to my physiology, my labs, and where I am in life.
The single highest-leverage intervention in medicine. I treat it that way.
Sleep is not a passive recovery activity. It is when memory consolidates, growth hormone releases, glymphatic clearance occurs, glucose normalizes, and testosterone is produced. Lose sleep and you lose the rest of the protocol's benefit. I prioritize it ahead of everything.
I aim for 7–8 hours of total sleep, with consistent sleep and wake times within a 30-minute window. The room is dark, cool (~65°F), and devices stay out of the bedroom. Caffeine is cut after noon. Alcohol — covered separately below — is essentially absent because of what it does to deep sleep architecture.
I track every night. The wearable is the dashboard, not the goal. Three numbers I watch: total sleep time, time in deep sleep (target > 75 min), and HRV (my baseline, not someone else's). When HRV drops 15% below my 30-day baseline, I treat the next day as a recovery day and adjust training.
The single most important thing I do for the next thirty years.
Lean mass is the strongest non-negotiable predictor of healthspan that I know of. Not muscle for vanity — muscle for metabolic reserve, glucose disposal, fall prevention at 80, and the ability to keep doing what I want to do for as long as I want to do it. The data on grip strength, leg press, and all-cause mortality is overwhelming.
I lift 3–4 sessions a week. Compound movements anchor every session — squat or deadlift variation, press, row, pull. Progressive overload is the rule, not the exception. I am not chasing PRs at 44 — I am chasing consistency. The hardest set of the day is in the 5–8 rep range; supportive work is in the 8–12 range.
If I have one session, it's a full-body lift. If I have four, it's an upper/lower split. Sessions are 45–60 minutes. I rest enough between sets to actually push the working sets — typically 2–3 minutes on heavy compound work.
The mitochondrial work that strength training does not do.
Zone 2 is the steady, conversational-pace aerobic work that builds mitochondrial density, fat oxidation, and cardiovascular efficiency. The benefit is not visible quickly and the temptation to skip it is constant — which is exactly why I do not.
I run, cycle, or rower-row for 30–45 minutes at a pace where I could hold a conversation but it would be slightly annoying. Heart rate hovers around 60–70% of max — for me, that's roughly 130–145 bpm. Two sessions per week is the floor. Three is the goal.
Once or twice a month I add a single high-intensity session — short intervals near max heart rate. The combination of Zone 2 plus a small dose of high-intensity work is what builds VO₂ max, which is one of the strongest fitness predictors of all-cause mortality in adults over 40.
The most evidence-supported supplement on the market. Take it.
Creatine monohydrate is among the most studied compounds in sports nutrition. The data is robust on strength and lean mass, and increasingly persuasive on cognitive performance, mood, and brain health. The cost-to-benefit is unmatched.
I take 5 grams in the morning with food or coffee, every day. On training days, I take a second 5 g dose pre-lift — for a total of 10 g on lift days. No loading phase needed at this dose. No cycling on and off. Brand matters less than consistency, but for what it's worth, I use Thorne — third-party tested, no proprietary blend, made the same way every batch.
Read the full case for creatine →
If you do not hit protein, the rest of the protocol underperforms.
Protein is the substrate for everything I am building — muscle, hormones, neurotransmitters, immune function, and the body composition I care about. The deficit most adults are running on protein is silent and significant.
I target 1 gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight, every day. For me that's around 180 g daily, hit across 3–4 meals. Each meal anchors with 40–50 g of protein. Whey or whole-food breakfast (eggs and Greek yogurt are easy), real-food lunch and dinner (meat or fish), and a casein or protein-rich snack if I'm short by evening.
Protein is non-negotiable. Carbs and fats are flexible — they fill the rest of the calorie target based on training load. Total intake stays roughly maintenance unless I am deliberately leaning out.
Whole foods, protein-first, calibrated to body composition — not a number on the scale.
I eat whole foods, mostly. Meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, dairy. Minimal ultra-processed packaged food. The grocery store perimeter does the work.
I do not count calories most days — I count protein and use body composition (DEXA or InBody, every 4–6 months) as the gauge. Scale weight is a noisy signal compared to lean mass, body fat percentage, and waist circumference. If lean mass is holding or trending up while body fat trends down, the program is working regardless of what the scale says.
I limit refined carbs and sugar — not eliminate, limit. The rule is: minimize at home, enjoy when out. Travel and social meals are not the place for rigid rules; they are the place for proportion and judgment.
The most underrated longevity intervention is what you do not consume.
I have functionally eliminated alcohol. Not because I cannot have a drink — I can — but because the data on alcohol's effect on sleep, hormones, recovery, body composition, and cancer risk is unambiguous. The drink that ruins your sleep tonight ruins your training tomorrow. The pattern compounds.
For special occasions a glass of wine appears, with the cost understood. Most weeks I drink zero. My baseline energy, cognition, and recovery are dramatically better as a result, and the longer I have lived without alcohol as a regular feature, the less I have noticed missing it.
Recreational drugs are not part of my life and not part of this protocol.
Anchored to labs. Calibrated to functional, not standard, ranges.
By the late 30s, most men show measurable testosterone decline. By 44, I would have been frankly hypogonadal by functional standards if I had done nothing. I did not do nothing.
I optimize testosterone, thyroid (full panel — TSH, free T3, free T4, reverse T3), DHEA, estradiol, and cortisol rhythm. The targets are functional/optimal ranges supported by literature, not the lower-bound "in range" that most labs flag. This is the same approach I use with patients.
Specifics — dose, route, frequency — are calibrated quarterly on labs and symptoms. The goal is steady physiology, not a number for its own sake. Hematocrit, lipids, PSA, and estradiol are watched on every cycle. I do not push higher than I need to.
Caveat: I am not publishing my individual doses because doses are individual. They mean nothing without the labs and the clinical context that produced them. If hormone optimization is part of your picture, it requires a real workup with a real physician.
Selective. Cycled. Anchored to specific goals.
Peptide therapy has been part of my regimen for several years. The two I run consistently are BPC-157 + TB-500 for tissue repair and recovery (cycled, 4–6 weeks at a time when I am training hard or coming back from a tweaked tendon) and Ipamorelin / CJC-1295 for sleep quality and growth-hormone-axis support (rotating cycles, 3–6 months).
I run Tesamorelin in 12-week cycles for body composition — the visceral fat reduction is well documented and the effect on the abdominal silhouette is real even on someone with reasonable body fat percentage. I monitor IGF-1 throughout each cycle and adjust accordingly.
Periodically I add MOTS-c for mitochondrial work — particularly when increasing Zone 2 volume — and NAD+ (the IV loading protocol followed by subcutaneous maintenance) for cellular energy and longevity. NAD+ is a personal favorite; I notice the difference within a week of loading.
What I do not do: stack speculative compounds, run peptides without labs, or source from research-grade or gray-market vendors. Every peptide I use is compounded by a licensed 503A or 503B pharmacy with full documentation.
Boring, evidence-based, every day.
The supplement industry is mostly noise. The evidence-supported core is small. I take what is well-studied, third-party tested, and addresses gaps that are common in modern diets. I avoid stacks of 30 capsules and the proprietary-blend marketing that comes with them.
The brands listed below are what I personally use. I have no commercial relationship with any of them — no affiliate codes, no sponsorship, no advisory roles. I name them only because patients ask, and the answer is more useful with a specific brand than without.
What I do not take: long lists of esoteric "longevity" supplements with weak evidence, stimulant-based fat burners, multivitamin grab-bags, or anything proprietary-blend. If a supplement cannot tell me the exact dose of every ingredient, it does not enter my regimen.
The unsexy levers that move long-term outcomes.
Morning sun within 30 minutes of waking — 5–10 minutes outdoors, no sunglasses, no glass between me and the photons. The circadian effect is real and the cost is zero.
Daily movement target outside of training: 8,000–10,000 steps. Walks after meals are the cheapest blood-sugar intervention available.
Sauna 3–4 times a week when access allows — 20 minutes at 175–185°F. Strong cardiovascular and longevity data, particularly the Finnish cohorts. I treat it as cardiovascular conditioning and recovery in one.
Cold exposure is in my routine but not on the schedule the way the others are. A cold shower most mornings, occasional cold plunge. The evidence is more equivocal than enthusiasts admit, but the felt benefit on alertness and mood is real.
No measurement, no optimization. The labs are the dashboard.
Every six months I run a comprehensive panel on myself. The cost is negligible compared to the value. The cadence catches drift before it becomes problem.
I read my own labs the way I read patients' — looking at functional ranges, trends over time, and the relationships between markers, not single values in isolation. The labs tell me what is working and what is not.
The protocol on this page is not theoretical for me. I built it because I had a problem to solve, and I wanted to share that part honestly.
For three to four months before I started running this protocol with intent, I could not play basketball. Hip pain that had been creeping up for a couple of years had finally crossed the line where the cost of playing exceeded the joy of it. I sat out — sometimes watching from the sidelines, sometimes just not going at all. The implicit diagnosis from the conventional path was a version of "you are aging, and this is what aging looks like."
That answer was not acceptable to me. So I went to work — on the protocol described above, run consistently, with the goal of getting back something I had lost.
Sleep architecture. Resistance training calibrated to support the joint, not load it carelessly. BPC-157 + TB-500 targeted at the connective tissue and fascia around the hip. Hormone optimization to give the recovery machinery the substrate it needed. Anti-inflammatory diet, Zone 2 to maintain cardiovascular fitness while I was loading the joint carefully. I was patient with the protocol and impatient with myself.
The result is the part that matters: I now play basketball 3–4 times a week without issue. Real games, real intensity, with the people I want to play with. The hip is functional. Cardio is there. Recovery between sessions is fast enough that I can repeat it within 48 hours. The thing I thought was gone came back.
The protocol is not a vacation routine. It runs on a normal day with patient hours, family obligations, and the usual interruptions. Here is the rough shape:
Three years into running this protocol with reasonable consistency, the results have been measurable rather than aspirational. I am not claiming this transfers — it is one person's response. But the numbers and the felt experience are real.
More importantly: I have the energy to be present with my family at 9 PM, the sharpness to make complex clinical decisions at the end of a long day, and a baseline of physical capability that lets me say yes to things — backpacking, lifting heavy, playing on the floor with kids — that most peers my age have started saying no to. That is the result.
Everything above is what works for me — a 44-year-old physician with my labs, my goals, my family situation, my training history, and my genetics. None of it is medical advice. None of it is a prescription. None of it is a recommendation that you should follow this stack.
What I will tell you is that some version of an integrated protocol — sleep, training, nutrition, hormone optimization, peptide and supplement support, and ongoing lab monitoring — produces dramatically better outcomes than picking and choosing pieces in isolation. The specific shape of your version should be designed around your physiology, your priorities, and your physician's guidance.
If you would like help building your version — anchored to your labs, calibrated to your goals, supervised over time — that is exactly what we do at Limitless. The consultation is the starting point. The protocol is a partnership.
Limitless launches May 2026. If you want a physician-led protocol calibrated to your labs and your life — not a templated regimen — book a consultation. Founding members lock pricing for 24 months.
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