“I plan sleep first, then I plan exercise, and then all my meetings and travel are planned around that,” he says Muscle & Fitness. “No matter how busy the schedule is, it is secondary to sleep and exercise.”
For someone who sits on planes and on stages non-stop and embodies his brand The ultimate human It comes down to logistics that provide both structure and flexibility. We spoke with Gary Brecka and were curious about his secret weapons for performing at a high level even during the holidays. You’ll be surprised that they are much easier than you might think.
The human superpower Brecka protects first
Brecka calls sleep “our human superpower,” and he treats it that way. Even as he bounces from Miami to Sydney to Dubai, he does his best to support the feeling of day and night in his body.
“You can’t control your sleep and wake cycle when you’re on the road. You can’t control when the sun rises and when it sets,” he explains. “But you can decide when you feed yourself.”
At home in Miami, Florida, he sleeps from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. ET, and wherever he is in the world, he doesn’t eat during those hours. When he recently went to London, that meant no food before 11am. “By following that, I can adapt to a time zone very quickly,” he says.
It’s classic circadian biology applied with precision. It relies on the ‘master clock’ in the brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and the three largest Zeitgebers, the things that influence your circadian rhythm: light, exercise and food. Once you have these in place, your body can adapt to the changes in your environment much more easily.
The first 90 minutes are his
The first hour and a half of every day is off-limits to everyone.
“Those first 90 minutes don’t even belong to my wife, nor to my children, nor to my career, nor to my clients,” he says. “It’s mine alone. But then I’m giving away the rest of my day.”
If we filmed him in those minutes, we would see the same thing every day: waking up, brushing teeth, scraping tongue, pulling oil, and then straight outside into the natural light. There he does three rounds of 30 deep breaths with a breath hold between rounds.
“My body is so attuned to that, that it knows that as soon as I start doing breathwork, it’s time to wake up,” he says, adding, “We used to sleep and wake up with the sun. We don’t do that anymore, but traditionally you can’t uncouple those mechanisms. I call morning breathwork and sunlight my morning antidepressant.”
These rituals are simple, portable, give you a great benefit for your time and are 100% free.
Structure over obsession
From the outside, scheduling sleep, exercise and “me time” above all else, no matter what part of the world he is in, can seem obsessive, so I had to ask, “how do you draw the line between living a healthy, structured life and being obsessive?”
Brecka explained that “there is a difference between structure and obsession.” For him, obsession means that your happiness depends on the world that suits your plan. Structure is the opposite. You control what you can do, and you give yourself grace when things don’t go as planned. In this way, structure leaves room for flexibility.
For example, he says, “I don’t drink, but if we were at a graduation party and we were toasting champagne, I’ll have half a glass of champagne. If I’m going to a birthday party for a five-year-old child, I’ll have a piece of birthday cake.” And he adds one important thing: he doesn’t beat himself up for it.
His first line of defense is the way he speaks to himself. He warns against that inner voice because it can be powerful. “The expectation you place on yourself is much harder on your cell biology than the expectation other people place on you,” he explains.
“My first line of defense is to give myself grace,” he says. “We use a different voice to talk to ourselves than we would if we were talking to someone else.” The same compassion you would extend to a stressed husband or boyfriend, he deliberately turns inward.
He says that if you constantly judge yourself, your nervous system goes into a state of fight or flight. “This is when you interrupt your biological rhythm. This is when you don’t sleep very well. This is when your brain is in a constant state of heightened alert, and this is when your immune system weakens. You are not good at fighting off disease.” Brecka explains.
Training for longevity
At 55, Brecka strength trains and lifts heavy weights three times a week, but the way he trains has changed.
“I’m training for longevity now,” he says. “I don’t squat, I don’t load my body with heavy weight in strange ways.”
After owning a CrossFit gym, he still believes in speed and heavy weight, but not both at the same time. Instead, he advocates adding a minimum effective load even on days when he doesn’t have access or time for a full workout at the gym.
This morning he says he strapped on a 17-pound vest from Aion, which also adds an element of compression to his walk. “Once it’s on, probably 20 minutes, you forget you’re even wearing it,” he said.
The Holiday Survival Pile
Brecka says he’s giving himself some grace over the holidays, but he does have a few secret weapons that go a long way and help him stay on track.
When I asked him what he thought was the one thing that would destroy most people during the holidays, his answer was blunt and began with “they [the readers] I’m not going to like this one.”
1. Skip the combination of alcohol and sugar
Alcohol is the one thing he urges people to ruthlessly reconsider, especially what they pair it with. “Alcohol is the root of all evil,” he says, emphasizing what alcohol is
becomes in the body. “Acetylaldehyde lowers blood pH and makes your blood more acidic. It also robs the body of essential vitamins and nutrients,” he explained.
While he is not preaching that you should give up alcohol completely. Even he would have a glass on special occasions, but he makes a point: “if you want to eliminate something, eliminate the combination of sugar and alcohol.”
Instead, he suggests choosing straight spirits and prioritizing high-quality tequila and full-bodied red wine over grain-based drinks.
2. First, get some hot tea
Whether it’s green, black or ginger, one of Brecka’s go-to tricks at a holiday party is to start it off with hot tea. “If you’re drinking a very hot, bitter black tea, the last thing you want to do is pile up a pile of cakes and cookies,” he admits. The warm, slightly bitter drink calms that satiety impulse, while still allowing you to hold a drink in your hand and be social.
3. Prioritize whole foods
Brecka has completely retrained his taste buds away from ultra-processed foods. “My tastes are really focused on whole foods,” he explained. “I really don’t crave things. If I saw a bowl of Doritos and I was really hungry, I don’t eat it because I’m afraid I’ll feel guilty. I don’t eat it because it has no taste.”
I had to ask you how long it takes to recalibrate your taste buds from craving junk food to craving Greek raw yogurt, a handful of berries, a handful of crushed nuts or grain-free granola, and a tablespoon of honey—his favorite sweet treat. His reaction surprised me. “If you want to do it quickly, you can do it for three days by water fasting,” he said.
4. Minerals and molecular hydrogen
Brecka doesn’t waste a single sip. If he drinks something, it works for him, even on days when he fasts. “My favorite products are hydroplasia tablets, amino acids and Baja Gold salt,” he explains. “These are some of the cheapest supplement hacks you can have, and you get all 91 trace minerals, you get an anti-inflammatory, a selective antioxidant, and you get all nine essential amino acids.”
5. Small habits go a long way
With whole foods on his plate, hydrogen and minerals in his water, fasting windows that give his system a break, and exercise, ideally outside, in the morning light, with a little extra strain on his body, Brecka admits it’s all discipline. “But you need less discipline, the more discipline you have, because your body is going to thrive on the small sustainable habits you build over time,” he said.
For him, that discipline is about a handful of quiet, unglamorous habits that allow him to reach a high level without losing his mind.
“I think these are small incremental changes that, if you’re disciplined and you make them, can make a dramatic change in how you feel, how you perform, and how you sleep,” he admits, noting that you shouldn’t invest in expensive biohacking gadgets until you’ve mastered sleep, until exercise is non-negotiable, and you’re eating a whole food diet. “Nothing else matters, and those are the real simple choices that we all have control over.”
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