hello, today's guest is Adam Fiori, (AdamFiore.com). He is a visionary investor and influencer who is redefining what aging and illness can look like. He is redefining the way 40 to 60 year olds look and feel by implementing lifestyle strategies with diet and exercise.

At age 51, Adam was diagnosed with latent adult onset, diabetes type one. He created new ways to fuel and train himself. When you see his picture, you will see his discipline and success. Adam also manages the exponential investors club portfolio of high growth tech stocks. I love how Adam is so forthcoming as he posts his actual statement right online for all to see .

Lastly, I want to recognize Adam's service to our country. He has served in the us Navy and I thank you for that service . I am a huge flag waver, and presently my son is in the army. Welcome Adam to The Vitality Feed.

Well, thank you, Caroline. Thanks so much for having me. And, uh, it's first of all, it's my pleasure to serve, serve our country, our great country.

Glad to hear that your son is, is doing the same. I'm sure you're very proud of him. And thank you for the great intro and yeah, I'm looking forward to the conversation because it sounds like you have a great audience and I'd love to share a little bit of my story and hopefully inspire some people.

That is the mission. Tell us a little background about you and how you grew up. If you had any health issues, if weight was an issue, or if you played sports or things like that.

Sure. Okay. So I grew up, I would call it a, a relatively normal childhood. I grew up in New York city in Brooklyn. I'm an only child.

I got a ton of love and attention from my parents . I grew up where they filmed Saturday night fever. I grew up in an Italian neighborhood, literally. I had a lot of cousins around too, so yeah, I mean, I as an only child, I actually got a lot of attention, which I love probably why I am the way I am today.

I definitely, you know, love attention still but hopefully I've used it for good, uh, now, but yeah, I grew up, I would call myself active. And I played a lot of sports. I was not a great athlete , but I was always fit. So there's, and there's, that's a big distinction. You know, people, a lot of people look at my pictures and they automatically assume that I'm a great athlete.

I'm a good athlete in certain sports, other sports. I'm actually not a good athlete at all. It doesn't, you know, just because you look at it and I know people who look completely out of shape and are incredible athletes and could. Run circles around me just about any sport. I so agree, because anything that has to do with the ball, I am so uncoordinated, but I can run and I've done martial arts and things like that.

That is a very good distinction. Yeah.

And, and, and to finish answering your question. So I never had a problem with weight. Okay. I was always thin, when I started lifting weights, which was around, you know, uh, probably 14 years old, 15 years old.

Um, yeah, I was able to put muscle on, but I would call, I would say I was a late bloomer with that partially because I didn't know what I was doing. Right. I was just reading bodybuilding magazines and lifting weights and thinking that you want it to just eat as much as possible and, and, you know, do the traditional exercises, that type of thing.

So, um, but no, I, I was in good shape. I, I was able to put some muscle on, I was relatively thin, never had a problem with that growing up. Yeah.

So very normal. Um, what symptoms were you experiencing that guess go get tested, like what was going on in your life? Cause this is very unusual, right?

That's a great question. This might be helpful to other people who, uh, could potentially be walking around with an adult onset diabetes.

I was experiencing no symptoms. And in fact to this day, I still haven't experienced any symptoms. So what that means. So to give you a little bit of background, I get an annual checkup with my physician. Right. And we always laugh. I mean, I'm his hell. He uses me as an example. I'm his healthiest patient uses me as an example to someone, some of his patients who were 20 years younger than me saying, you know, you need to start getting yourself in shape now because you know, um, You want to be in great.

You want to be in great health when you're in your fifties, right? That's something you want. You don't want it to just go downhill from, you know, from twenties and thirties and forties and the fifties. Um, so we always laugh because I I've always had perfect blood pressure. I still do, cholesterol.

Every vital is, you know, pretty much as good as you can get. And so to answer your question, I was having no symptoms and I went in for my annual checkup right before COVID. And my physician said to me, you know, he said, uh, this is so crazy. He said, but your, your blood sugars, I noticed they were a little elevated last time to like a pre-diabetic level.

And I just figured it was maybe something like eight or something like that, you know, maybe back from vacation. So I didn't really say anything. He goes, but now you're elevated to a diabetic level and I'm really concerned. I'm thinking that you have diabetes, uh, cause there's, it doesn't make sense for you to have all the other numbers be so good.

And then your blood sugar is behind. So, we made an appointment with an endocrinologist. I got a cat scan of my pancreas and sure enough. I was diagnosed with type one diabetes with I technically it is latent adult onset diabetes, right? Presenting as type one. It presents as either type one or type two mine presents as type one, but it's not true type one, diabetes means your pancreas doesn't make any insulin to be on insulin therapy or you will die. Right. Right. My pancreas is compromised. It doesn't make enough insulin. I was told that I would need to go on insulin therapy, but, and this is what we'll talk about more, but through the miracle of excellent, you know, diet and exercise and mindset, I was able to actually avoid insulin therapy altogether, avoid medication altogether.

And I lowered my A1C level from 7.2 to where it is now 5.8, um, lower my body fat and 15% to 7%. And, to this day I still have never felt a symptom. So it's really kind of strange.

It's kind of strange, but scary at the same point because people can and just be walking out. I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis and a lot of people walk around with that too, and they have no clue.

And so it's interesting. And most doctors don't diagnose that. So at least they caught it . What made you go down the path that you chose for your health?

It's first of all, it's just who I am. I mean, one thing you asked me, you know, if I had, I said I had a normal childhood physically. Yeah. I mean, one thing I will say is that. I need to really thank my parents for this and just the people that I was around that , I've always had, even before I knew what it meant. I've always had a limitless mindset. I've always had a mindset that I can do anything. Um, it's carried into so many different areas of my life , before I became an entrepreneur, I was a singer songwriter, you know, and I got out of the Navy and thought I was going to go right into college and I ended up, getting in with some producers here in the Philadelphia area.

Next thing you know, I am in New York city. And I got signed by Russell Simmons to a recording contract with Columbia records. Right. Some people would say that is just blind luck. And then yeah. To some extent it is. But the other reason that it's, it's more than just luck is that I put myself in positions to get extremely lucky because I really believe that I can do anything.

And I don't just mean, like, I'm not saying that in an arrogant way. Like I believe that I can do anything. I believe that any of us. Can do anything. And it's just a matter of, of realizing it. And it's not just something that you repeat to yourself, like a mantra. It's, it's really knowing it in here that.

You're capable of anything that, that all of these, um, rules that, you know, society says, this is how it has to be. Can all be rewritten. I mean, I like to say that when you redefine what you think is possible, you can literally bend reality. I've seen it. I have bent reality by just literally redefining what I thought was possible.

I love how you say I put myself in positions to get lucky and it's just smart and it's discipline and it's control. And like you said, everybody can change. People get diagnosed and doctors will literally give them a day, a lot of people literally die on that day... It doesn't have to be like that and you're living proof .

Thanks and you know what, I just want to be clear about one thing to that is that, um, what I don't want anybody to think is that they should just wear that.

I did just ignore what their doctor says. Right? I think it's all, it's, it's a process. And I can tell you for myself when I left that doctor's office. So he put, I don't know if you can see this, he put this continuous glucose there in my arm. And he said, we're going to monitor your blood sugar spikes. You're going to come back in two weeks and in two weeks, we'll decide whether you start on a long acting insulin or short acting. And we got in the car. I said to my wife, I said, I, there's no way. I'm just accepting that I'm going to try. I'm going to see what I can do to go about this a different way.

And just use this as a platform, you know, to try to inspire other people and do something great. Right. So, yeah, so I immediately changed, completely changed my diet. I cut out all sugar. I cut out more carbs and I switched to this modified keto diet. I got a different exercise program that I put together.

And really importantly, I really changed my mindset too. And meditation practice it's and everything. And the bottom line is I went back in two weeks. I promised my wife that if the doctor said, look, you have to start insulin therapy that I would. Right. But I went back in two weeks and the doctor said, you're, you've regulated the blood sugar readings.

They're not as good as they are now, but even after two weeks, they had gotten regulated to a certain, you know, to an acceptable point for him. And he said, I'm okay. He did say, he said, this could be a honeymoon phase where you know, this could change at any time, but I'm okay right now with saying, let's see what happens for three months with no insulin therapy, no medication.

So the bottom line is I worked with my doctor. I mean, I respect I'm in the life, sciences myself. I respect the field of medicine. I respect what they say, but I don't just take it. I'm also willing to challenge them and say, Hey, if I can do this, you know, and that's what,

that's my point is that it doesn't have to be engraved in stone, but, and you can help yourself. And I think a lot of people miss that point, they just want the quick fix, instead of seeing what they can take into their own hands and aid their own body and that's my grievance, I guess, is that I would partner with food and exercise to do what's best for me.

Absolutely! There's a place in a time where you need doctor supervision and medication. I've been there, done that, and I'm not anti, you know, medical because you do need it. There's a happy medium, but I think people just go to it as a quick fix and they don't take any self responsibility.

And that's what I'm so impressed about is the amount of self-discipline that you had to do that.

What resources did you find most helpful when you started to educate yourself about this and to manage your diabetes?

Yeah, that's a great question. I would, first of all, I was open to multiple resources.

Right. I'm the type of person who's kind of open to anything. And then I'll kind of narrow that down and decide for myself. So certainly my endocrinologist gave me some resources and said, you know, check this out, then on social media, because I'm very social.

And when I was on social media and people found out that I had the diabetes, so that's a great example. I got a lot of different recommendations, as you can imagine. I'll just give you two. So a lot of people were recommending a book. I won't name it, but a very popular book right now. And it's a very, uh, You know, Vogue and, and the idea was , a plant-based diet for diabetes for type one diabetes, that was supposed to work.

And it was all about whole foods. So like all natural whole foods, fruits, vegetables, everything else. Right. I tried it. And literally after like two days, my blood sugar was spiking. So , I can't eat a banana. I can't even eat a blueberry. Right. But, in this book, these, obviously this is a other, everybody's got a different, you know, um, makeup because obviously a lot of people had success with this book and they are able, even though they have diabetes, they're able to eat the fruit and the vegetables and somehow it worked for them.

Right. But the bottom line is you got to do what works for you. That didn't work for me. So one person, so it's funny. I had all these people recommending this one book. That's that's like I said, it's very popular. Right, and then I had one person reach out to me on social media and say, I want to put you in contact with a friend who also was diagnosed with type one diabetes, you know, 10 years ago.

And he did a keto diet and it's incredible. He's like, you know, he lowered his blood sugar so much and everything else. So he put me in contact with this guy. This guy told me about a book and this book. Was completely different, was completely much more under the radar. And, it's worked for me.

I read it once and I, and then I made it my own and I, that's what I, my recommendation to any, to anyone who's trying to do something , whether it's creative, whether it's learning something new or like this for their health is copy someone who's been very successful or something that's been very successful.

Copy it. First, write, copy what works. Till you make it your own. That's what I did. And then add on your own. Like then that's when I started modifying it and making it my own. And now what I do is actually different from that book, but it's based on it. But if I would've just went in and tried to do my own thing right away, as soon as I read that book, It probably wouldn't have worked as well. You know what I mean?

Pretty much any kind of success, you have to try something that was successful and then you tweak it until you said to make it your own. But in this case, you'd have to get medical testing to make sure you're on the right path. You can't just make it your own, you need to test. And it's kind of like AB tests and in marketing , it's a very similar concept.

That's right. And, and not to give a plug, but this thing in my arm and that's, what's so valuable about this continuous glucose monitor that allows you to AB test. I was literally able to say, okay, I'm going to try eating this today.

And I could see every hour what effect it was having on my blood sugar readings. And then the next day, try something, let's say, you know, keto, no sugar, no carbs. And it's obvious, you know, one of them is spiking my blood sugar up to 200 and the other one is keeping my blood sugar down at 110.

I mean, it's a huge step. Trial and error is to me, it's everything. Don't, don't take anybody's word for anything. You got to AB tests and you got to try it for yourself.

That, that makes total sense.

For mindset, obviously you have a very strong mindset. Where do you think that came from? What kind of conversations do you have in your head? I believe a lot in transformational vocabulary. So, it's the constant chatter that you have between your own ears that makes all the difference. What you said, even from when you were a young child, you felt like you had that ability. Do you think that was sent from your parents or.

Yeah. I think to a certain extent. So my, my dad's a psychologist and my mom's, , in, the speech therapy field. So not psychology, but yeah, I mean, my parents were both, In the education field, and we're both very much into, everything from psychology to Buddhism to mindfulness.

My mom is very into, Buddhism and mindfulness and things like that. So yeah, certainly some, a lot of it's come from that. A lot of what I had when it came to this limitless mindset, I didn't know I had it when I was younger. I didn't know that I had that. It just, it was just there. But it also needed to be refined.

I was also very immature in some ways, too. I made a lot of mistakes. Right. So I would say the big, if I had to give you one big turning point that stands out in my mind, it was starting to read Eckhart Tolle. So when I read "The Power Of Now" by Eckhart Tolle it was like this aha moment where, because he talks a lot about the voice that we all have inside and what we say to we, you know, what we say to ourselves?

What that incessant chatter sounds like, and when I became aware of it, I was able to start tuning out, almost kind of laughing at the negative, fearful, you know, resentful chatter that I, that was going on in my head. And that's what it is. You're not supposed to really try to just make it stop.

You try to make it stop. It almost makes it worse. The idea is more to just become aware of it and literally laugh at it. Like it's a little kid who's bothering you, you know, you just laugh at okay. Whatever. And then you focus back on all the positive thoughts in your mind, the strong thoughts and positive thoughts, right, the loving thoughts, the creative thoughts, right . So when I read "The Power of Now", that opened a door for me, and then his second book, which is called "A New Earth", really, really hit home for me. And, you know, since then I've read a million great books, but those two were transformational for me.

Everything else since then has just, taken it to a different level. I would say.

Would you mind going over your eating regimen, do you do any kind of timing and are you counting macros or what are you doing?

I always post that I do a modified keto diet and a lot of people assume that I, you know, they ask me questions like about getting myself into a state of ketosis and that type of thing. So I always try to clarify, I call it a modified keto diet because. I don't care about getting into a state of ketosis.

Um, so that part of you know, which is an important part of keto, but it's not important to me. Like I said, you've got to make this your own. Only reason that I do this is because it's great for my health, for my diabetes. My keto diet, I don't know if I may be in ketosis and I may not be, I don't know, I don't care, but what I do, the way that I eat allows me to keep my blood sugars literally regulated.

All day throughout the day and keeps me off of medication and off of insulin. Most importantly, what it really does is because my insulin, because my pancreas is compromised means that I have a finite at what we all have a finite amount of beta cells, but most healthy people have plenty of them. My beta cells, a lot of them have burnt out.

So if you do use a visual, just picture, like only a few beta cells left that are basically keeping me from having to go on insulin therapy, but the, the way the endocrinologist explained it to me is. If you can keep your blood sugar levels from spiking- it makes it so that your beta cells won't be taxed.

They won't be overburdened to try to like, overcome these big spikes. And you may be able to literally get the rest of your life out of these beta cells that you have left just by taking care of them and not taxing them. So that's what I do. Right. And, to answer your question, I don't do any type of intermittent fasting or anything like that, it's actually important for me to kind of eat more steadily throughout the day.

That's what I was thinking with the diabetes. You need to be more regulated on your intake.

I'd be happy to share this with your audience. So basically what I do, is I wake up in the morning and I have about five or six egg whites. I buy them in a carton, right. Or it's the equivalent of five or six eggs. Sometimes I'll throw a yolk in there too. I don't do the yolks that much just because I'm trying to keep the cholesterol down as well. And since I eat a lot of eggs, I don't want to eat too many yolks. Right. So on the weekends, maybe I'll have like three yolks or whatever.

Anyway, bottom line is I do egg whites in the morning. One of the keys is I put baby spinach, just raw baby spinach, in everything I eat, I put it in my egg white omelet. Right. So that's in the morning then, before lunchtime, I will do a, oven roasted Turkey breasts , sliced. I get it at whole foods. Right. But not processed, not the kind that you buy that's they slice it right in front of me. And it's really, it's delicious. It's healthy. It's not processed. I'll have a good serving of, uh, of the Turkey breasts again on a bed of baby spinach, some olive oil, right.

I snack throughout the day on almonds and then I'll usually go to the gym sometime around lunchtime, when I get back from the gym, I have a protein shake. I do two protein shakes a day. The protein shake is something that I AB tested, right? Because a lot of protein powders have sugar and carbs and everything else. I found a protein powder, it's got one carb and I think a half a gram, one gram of carb and a half a gram of sugar. So what's the, um,

I'm curious what the basis is whey soy.

It's a whey it's a whey isolate protein. So I, as I make the protein shake, I use hemp

I've been doing hemp milk for years. It's for me, it's out of all the alternatives to cow's milk. Right. And I've tried them all almond and cashew and coconut. They all left me kind of like, I didn't like them as much as I like cows milk, you know, hemp milk. I like even better. It's got the same consistency as cow's milk.

It's got that kind of thicker consistency. It's got a great flavor and it's protein, no carbs. It's, it's really healthy for you. So anyway, so my protein shake is hemp milk and protein powder, more baby spinach. Right? And then this is where I, I get my very little amount of sugar that I get. Per day , like one gram is a peanut butter.

Some peanut butters have five, six grams of sugar in a serving. Mine has one gram of sugar. So it's low carb, low sugar. It's delicious. So anyway, mix all that up and make a nice big protein shake. And again, this is all like every couple hours I'm eating.

And then after the protein shake, I do some more work. And then I usually, um, I cook up in once a week, like a big thing of chicken breasts. I'll have like a nice chicken breasts with , more baby spinach. And then a couple hours after that I'll have another protein shake. Oh, one key for my protein shake is I have an espresso maker, I love espresso. I take one small espresso. I just dump it right in the protein shake. It just makes it taste really delicious. It gives me like a nice boost in the afternoon. Oh, and by the way, everything, I just told you, I eat the same thing every single day.

That's impossible for some people. And I get that. I know a lot of people want variety, but I'm ex-military and just my whole mindset around food. I'll be honest with you. I love food, but I do kind of look at it as fuel and less as like pleasure, entertainment, whatever and that's not for everybody.

No, that's, that is interesting. My background is in food, but what I do like about it , there's this limited number of thoughts you have a day. And so what are you using your thoughts on? And there's a whole area there about, you know, you don't have to think about your food and that's very intriguing to me.

You just. Every morning, you know, what's breakfast, you know what snack, you know what lunches know, and it's a done deal. Like there's, there's no energy put towards that. A lot of people do that with clothes too. Mark Cuban, I think.

Does it Mark Zuckerberg wears the same shirt and the same shirt every day.

Yeah. Dean Grasiozi is another one. Yeah, it is amazing, but it's smart. It's like putting your energy to stuff that, more meaningful to you at your present situation.

Yeah , and the best part, what helps also with that is. There's one meal a day. The one that I didn't get to dinner is my wife's an excellent cook . I mean, I'm not a great cook. She's great, she cooks only stuff that I can eat. Right. And, um, dinner is the one meal where I have something different every night, you know?

And, to your point, I don't have to think about it because I know whatever she makes is going to be delicious. It's gonna be good for me. And dinner usually looks like. either fish, a chicken dish or a Turkey dish, a pork dish. And sometimes we don't need a lot of red meat, but sometimes a red meat dish, once in a while, um, you know, with, with a salad makes incredible salads and a, and a vegetable, like a broccoli or cauliflower, Brussels sprouts.

So, yeah. So I'm getting that nice variety at nighttime. I don't have to think about it to your point, but during the day when I'm working and sometimes my days are like, like yours, I'm sure, you know, where like, Business opportunities are coming left and right. And, and I have so many people to get back to, to your point.

Not having to worry about what I'm doing for food and having to just be, you know,

that's great,

really cool. I am more intrigued with that as I get older and learn about that. It's a very interesting philosophy and I like it. I like the simplicity of it. It's it's very smart, I think. Okay, Adam, my last question, if there was one thing you could eliminate from the world, what would it be and why?

Yes. So if there was one thing that I could eliminate from the world, and obviously it's a great question because we all have many things that we'd like to eliminate from the world. So when you're narrowing it down to one, you really want a big overarching thing that kind of affects everything.

And for me, that's fear of failure. Everything I do is based on trying to inspire people in one way or another to get over a fear of failure, because if we could do that, we have so much potential all of us. Right. And people see people like Elon Musk and Tony Robbins and they say, Oh my God, they're so amazing.

And what people don't realize they are amazing, but it's only because they've tapped into something that we all have. And I guess. That's my point is just imagine if all of us learn how to tap into what Elan's tapped into and what Peter Diamandis and Tony Robbins have tapped into. If we all tapped into that.

Not that we would all have success on that scale. We wouldn't have to, but just, we could make the world so much of a better place. We could create so many more things we would, you know, just on a large scale and even on a small scale within our families, within our homes, you know, I mean, there's just so many things we could do with our neighborhoods.

So yeah, to answer your question, it's, for me, it's definitely a fear of failure. I'd love to get love, to help get rid of that.

I concur and it is funny because I learned from Tony Robbins, that one of my big things is I don't like uncertainty. So I've discovered though recently in the last few years, that when you cross that line, when you, when you do it afraid, I love the expression, do it afraid.

And if you cross that line, it's kind of like a feather in your cap. It's like, well, I did that. I put that fear aside. And the confidence that it gives you. So it's such a good feeling to be able to do that. And I think it's like a muscle, you work at it, you know what I mean? You keep taking that fear and you, and you keep pushing it to the side and say, I'm going to do this.

And you build on that and it gets stronger and stronger.

thanks Adam.

Yeah, this is great.

Thanks for coming on. Oh, this has been so awesome and sharing all of your background and your wisdom. Um, I enjoy being friends with you on social media and I knew you'd be perfect from my podcasts. So thank you for sharing your story and your time is greatly appreciated.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hey, can I let people know if they want to learn more about me, where to go,

please give us all of your social media, all of your.URLs.

I mean the simplest thing to do if you'd like to learn more, because I got a few different things that I do both in the investing space, in the redefining aging and illness in the longevity space. But if you want to just learn about everything I'm doing and then there's links on there where you can go. If you want to learn more, just go to Adam fiore.com. It's my first name, Adam ADAM my last name F like Frank I O R e.com. It's really easy. And then from there, like I said, there's different places you could take that.

Do you want to connect with me on social media? Generally, if you put in Adam Fiore, I'll be one of the first people that'll, that'll pop up. And, and I'm a very friendly guy. I love having conversations around these things and I love making new friends and, um, love finding synergies with people like business opportunities as well.

So it's been a real pleasure. I want to thank you so much for having me.

And I will put, I will put that. Adam fiore.com in the show notes. Thanks again, Adam. You have a great day. Take care. Okay.