Today we’re here with Dan Pardi, the Dan behind DansPlan.com. Dan’s Plan is a super-cool and totally free website that I highly encourage you to check out.
Had some very interesting conversations with Dan in Austin a few weeks back and was stoked to get him on the Fat-Burning Man Show. Due to our similar interests in geekery, we have a brainy chat about all sorts of fun things (provided you’re a nerd like us).
So Who is Mr. Dan?
Dan is the CEO and co-founder of Dan’s Plan, an online wellness and technology company promoting optimal health in our modern world. He has performed scientific research on diet, exercise, and cancer, and continues to conduct research today in both sleep neurobiology and cognitive neuroscience at Stanford University and Leiden University.
Dan is an invited member of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior, which looks at biological, psychological and social processes associated with food intake. Early in his career, he served as Assistant Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of San Francisco, where he designed year-round training protocols to optimize in-seasons performance for 13 different athletic teams.
What is Dan’s Plan?
The Thesis
A “broken lifestyle” is at the root of modern illness. View health not simply a balance of wellness and sickness, but also as a personal practice. An effective health practice will reduce the risk of disease, maintain physical abilities, and optimize life performance, life quality, and lifespan.
The Focus
Food, movement, and sleep are the foundations to your daily health practice. With simplified lifestyle tracking, we provide insights on key actionable behaviors and then let you know if you’re living within your ‘Zone of Health’ on a daily-to-weekly basis.
Nobody can be healthy for you. Dan’s Plan helps make it easy and fun.
Are you living in your Zone of Health? Find out now! Need more cowbell? Read the Foundations chapter.
The Show
Among other things, Dan and I chat about:
- Quantified self and using technology to stimulate behavior
- Dan’s super cool, just updated free website, Dan’s Plan
- The importance of quality sleep
- Paul Jaminet’s (Dan’s Plan team member) approach to diet and nutrition
- My new book, The Musical Brain: A Comparative Review of the Evolution of Music, Language, and the Brain
- Behavioral economics and why you might drive across town to save $50 on a TV (but not a car)
- And the implications of the precipitous drop in our food spending in the past few decades
Here’s the show.
Listen to the Show by pressing the PLAY BUTTON below on the right.[audio:https://traffic.libsyn.com/fatburningman/16FBMDanPardi.mp3|titles=16: Interview with Dan Pardi of DansPlan.com](download link)
Subscribe to my PODCAST on iTunes (and leave a review to spread the word)!
(Click the “View in iTunes” link and then click through to the “Subscribe” button.”)
Click “Like” if You Do!
[al2fb_like_button]
And here’s the shortened YouTube slideshow (it’s only the first 15 minutes). If you want to hear the full show, listen above or click here.
Dan was an interesting guest — thanks for having him on. I enjoyed his approach: health zones rather than rigid prescriptions of amounts of things. The part about sleep was new information to me.
But, I was dismayed by Abel’s disparagement of conventional foods, e.g., eggs. For many of us, eggs worth paying for — pastured, fed non-GMO corn in addition to their own foraging and hunting spoils — is out of reach. For example, in my area, Costco sells conventional eggs at 1.49/doz. Whole Foods sells eggs from “humanely raised” hens at $6.00/doz. Surfside Farms sells eggs from truly pastured hens at $7.50/doz. by CSA/subscription and at farmers markets. Should I avoid the Costco eggs that I can afford simply because they’re of lesser quality than the “real food” that Abel recommends? I think I’ll get what I can from the battery-hen eggs rather than do without.
I wish I could afford to buy the best-quality food, but I feel disrespected, by implication, for buying the best I can afford.
Glad you liked Dan – the man is full of insight, to be sure.
That’s an interesting point. I can say that I gladly pay farmers $6/dozen (more sometimes) for their pastured eggs, but it’s only because I can afford the luxury of that choice.
But what do you do when you simply can’t afford the best possible food? Lord knows, I’ve been there. I lived on conventional eggs (and far worse) in college and the years after when I was shackled by debt. No disrespect at all to those who are already are buying the best they can afford.
My opinion? Eggs are still a decent choice over other alternatives even if conventional. But I still think that pastured eggs at $.50 cents a pop are an excellent investment even if it means making a few monetary sacrifices in other areas.
Thanks for listening!