The Pursuit of Happiness | Paul Burgess

Paul Burgess has been a great mate, supporter, and mentor throughout my journey to quantitatively define optimal nutrition. When he first invited me on his podcast, I put him off. I felt I still had more work to do before promoting what we were doing at Optimising Nutrition (and also felt a strong sense of imposter syndrome). I’ve now had the privilege of being a guest on his podcast three times. So it was an honour to finally return the favour and have him on the Optimising Nutrition Podcast. Paul has experience in just about every form of tracking, hacking, testing, and biohacking from his four decades of experience in the health space. His podcast is a constant flow of deep dives into the latest testing and functional medicine trends to manage complex issues. While he’s recently become a massive advocate for Data-Driven Fasting, he’s also mellowed.  He has become more passionate about encouraging people to do simple things that work first before diving into rabbit holes of tracking and hacking that often cause plenty of stress and anxiety (not to mention expense!). Likewise, worrying about the latest test, tracker, or supplement is a waste of time if you don’t have your nutrition, sleep, stress, and activity dialled in. Once you get the basics sorted, most people find they don’t need to waste their time, money, and limited headspace on new-fangled fancy stuff! It was fantastic to talk with Paul about what he considers the ‘big rocks’ that most people struggle to get in place and pursue what makes you happy.