I Stopped Eating Breakfast and Made More Money

This wasn't the episode I planned to record. But it needed to be said.

Your health is not separate from your wealth. It is the infrastructure your wealth runs on. And for most military investors and entrepreneurs — that infrastructure is quietly degrading every single morning before the workday even starts.

In this episode, Markian breaks down the exact system he uses to protect his most valuable asset — his energy — and how that directly compounds into better decisions, higher output, and more income.

What you'll hear:

• The lazy person's approach to intermittent fasting that actually sticks
• Why skipping breakfast gave Markian 4–5 extra hours of peak cognitive output every day
• What his WHOOP wearable revealed about his biological aging after two weeks of travel
• The VO2 max metric every military investor should be tracking
• How he designed his daily environment in St. Petersburg, Florida to stack habits without willpower
• The direct line between morning energy and wealth creation

Key insight from this episode:

"If I'm twice as alert, that could mean I'm going to be able to have twice the positive effect on my businesses, my investments, my team, and my family."

This one applies whether you're active duty, transitioning, or deep into building your portfolio. Take care of the machine. Everything else compounds from there.

Most military investors don’t struggle because they lack information.

They struggle because they’re doing it alone.

The Military Multifamily Academy (MMA) is a 14-week program designed to help service members learn commercial real estate by actually working real deals with a team.

No theory.

No guesswork.

Just execution.

If you’re ready to stop watching and start building, learn more here:

activedutypassiveincome.com/mma

Transcript

Speaker 5 0:00

So this is not the episode I was planning on making today. However, I feel very strongly about this because this has been affecting my life and those around me massively lately, and that is health. And health, as the saying goes, is wealth, and I've been realizing that more than ever recently. How I consume food, what kind of food I consume, when I consume it, when I work out, how... What my lifestyle is, has had a almost direct correlation to my wealth and income. And in the past, this was absolutely not a thing, okay? In the past, I still didn't even know how money worked, and so to pick out and see the correlation was very difficult. Hi, if this is your first time tuning in, my name is Markian Sich, and I'm recording this for YouTube, but also our podcast. And if you're watching on YouTube, please share if these topics for the military investor community is interesting to you. And if you're listening on a podcast, keep listening and also share if this is valuable. Now, I want to help everybody understand that I do not feel like I am, like, some super disciplined health person, okay? So if that's you and you're like, "Hey, I, I don't know," I just feel like y- you doubt your ability to be, like, a disciplined health person, a workout person, all that kind of stuff, I get you. Now, I will say, um, back when I was at the Naval Academy, I would consider myself somebody who was, um, very healthy from the aspect of I worked out a lot, but that was about it. Uh, I wasn't healthy for any other reason. Like, we ate like pigs at the Naval Academy. Uh, there was, like, unlimited food, so we were always eating 'cause we needed more calories 'cause we'd work out, like, three times a day. So I wouldn't say that that was necessarily healthy. That was... We were very young, plus we worked out a lot, so the outcome was decent, right? But now, aft- especially after the military, I had to figure out a routine for myself. I had to figure out a routine because people weren't looking over my shoulder. And something I'm realizing both in business, in life, and in, and in health is I, um... And I think maybe this is true about everybody, but I'm realizing this about myself in particular, that I do have, like, a little lazy streak in me, right? And so I-- the way I gamify in my own head, right, is I try to figure out how can I, how can I help myself get better at health? How do I make my, um, resting heart rate better? How do I make my VO2 max better? How can I, uh, run better? How can I lift better? How can I look better? How can I eat better without it, um, A, consuming my life, because I'm a busy person, and B, how can I do it to where it's not too expensive? Let's be honest, I'm pretty conscious about not- Making that something where, I don't know, half my, half my income goes towards, you know, health and wellness. Uh, not that it wouldn't be worth it, but I wanna be, again, cost conscious. And then C, just not making it to where I will burn out. That's a, like a very important part to me. And I talk about this a lot during our, uh, cohort onboarding calls about how important it is to mitigate, um, burnout. And the thing that I hone in on is momentum, and how do you gotta get one little domino at a time. And I've talked about that previously on the podcast, but let me teach you the tricks that I've been using lately to help me. I'll teach you what I have done recently to help me kind of get better at this stuff. And I've had my ups and downs, and if you're still in the military, after the military, you're an entrepreneur or not, you're thinking about becoming an investor, doesn't matter. You, you probably have life stressors. You might have family. You might have all sorts of things going on, and that is a competing priority. So let me teach you how my lazy streak helped me gamify some of this to help me... I'm not gonna say I'm perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but what I am doing now that is helping me feel like I'm moving in the right direction so that I can li- live a longer, mo- more fulfilled life with my family. So here we go. First thing that I have started doing, gosh, maybe four or five years ago at this point, I really don't remember when I started this, was, uh, intermittent fasting. Now, I know that there's a lot of, I don't know, opinions about this, but I don't look at it as some like magic pill or some kind of amazing, you know, one-stop shop solution for all my problems. What I look at it as is, hey, I'm... I got that lazy streak, uh, so I, I, I don't wanna have some complicated diet. But the most important thing is, what I'm noticing is my caloric intake. How m- how many calories do I take in? This isn't... So again, it's not because like, oh, there's this magic 16-hour period out of a 24-hour period that if I only eat in the other eight hours and now, and not during that 16 hours, that somehow that causes some magic in my body and I'm gonna like look lean and perfect all the time. No. What I'm treating it as, as a forcing function to just consume less calories. Uh, basically, if I skip breakfast, even though that's my favorite dang meal of the day, if I skip breakfast, for lack of a better term, uh, it helps me not eat as many calories during the day. So now my meals turn into two primary meals, lunch and dinner, instead of three. And I also know something about myself is I love food, so I straight pig out on whatever, on whenever I eat, right? And so I'm like, gosh, if I eat close to 1,000 calories a meal, if I eat three times, I'm gonna eat way more than what I actually burned that day, no matter how much I work out. And so I literally was like, "I'm gonna cut one third of my caloric intake by simply, you know, being lazy, not making myself breakfast, and focus on, on work as soon as I can." Um, and that's helped me tremendously. I feel like that's probably been the biggest single impact on me just not, quite frankly, becoming overweight, uh, on, on kind of like keeping myself in check. So... And that is huge for, you know... Obviously, I don't have to explain that to you all. Like, that is, that, that is a big deal for your health, for your energy, and all that kind of stuff. Now, so that, so that's, that's thing number one that I do. Uh, thing number two that I started doing, and I know this is maybe also difficult or controversial, is I just like, uh, coffee is always just dark coffee. Like, in the morning, I make an espresso. That's it. That doesn't, that doesn't, uh, affect the fast, you know. I, I don't eat till, like, 11 or 12. I try not to eat after 8, and I just kinda keep it simple. Um, I don't-- We never really stock our home with, with sodas. So this topic is on the, um, this part of it is about all the drinking, right? Like, what type of things do I drink? Um, again, dark coffee. We don't have sugared sodas in our house stocked regularly. Sometimes when there's a party, we'll, we'll, we'll get a, you know, a box of Coca-Cola or whatever, and then, you know, there'll be some leftovers for a while. But for the most part, no sodas. Never order sodas. Um, and to me, I could also rationalize it, "Oh, it's cheaper just to get water." Right? And I don't get soda, so it's the not affecting my body. So that was, that was like an easy win for me in my head, is to not spend on the money, uh, the money on, on sodas and, and flavored coffees. And, um, and then I, I will admit I still enjoy, uh, you know, an occasional whiskey, bourbon. My wife, uh, was a winemaker back in the day, so we love having dif- various different wines in the house, and I know that that's something that I should cut down on to an absolute bare minimum, if not completely kill. But, uh, that's still a hill I have not charged up, and I am still, you know, trying to figure that thing out. But I think there's a lesson in that. What I was referring to earlier was burnout. I'm not trying to tackle too many things at the same time. I'm trying to tackle things in a sequential order that gives me confidence to keep going to, to get better at my health. And then, and I try to do them in the order that, that then helps the next thing happen even easier, kind of like greasing the skids for next, for the next thing I'm trying to tackle. Um, now let's talk about working out. So I as- I strive for going to the gym three times a week. I think that's, uh, doable. And eventually I, I have this vision of, of at least doing a quick run or jog ev- you know, almost every day. Um- And I also envision myself as somebody who, and as you can tell, I'm like envisioning, I'm manifesting, I'm trying to visualize who I'm gonna be someday. Um, I'm also envisioning being somebody who, even if I'm traveling, I get some kind of a workout in. I know for some of y'all, you're probably like, "Oh yeah, easy day," and, and I congratulate you. Like, if you already have that habit, that's incredible. Uh, I do not yet. And so in order to do that, and I've learned this about myself in many different aspects of life, I need to take it slow. So recently, I... Well, actually, let me show you guys. So I have this thing, uh, if you're watching, you'll see. Uh, it's a WHOOP. Anything I mention, by the way, I, I'm not promoting it. We're, we're not affiliated. But WHOOP is a, um... It's kind of one of those, like, fitness wearables. Uh, and my wife has an Oura Ring, my sister-in-law has an Oura Ring, I have a WHOOP. Um, I just didn't want any more rings on my fingers, and I kinda like the, the way it's, uh, the way it operates. But it tells me, you know, my heart rate and all that kind of stuff. Well, one of the things that it does, and honestly the primary reason why I got it, is because I think it does a pretty good calculation of how you're aging. And it's, and, um, it, it, you know, it was showing me that I was pretty much exactly like, uh, biologically or based off of all the data with my heart and everything that it's, that it's seeing, that I was, like, on track. My age was basically, uh, biologically the same as my chronological age. Well, after this past month and a half when we went to Japan for two weeks with the family and then, uh, for my wife's, um, birthday, I took her to Puerto Rico for a long weekend, that kind of, that kinda tanked, I'm gonna be honest. And so I was very happy to... I, I was pissed that that happened, but I was happy to see that it actually did show me the effects, the negative effects of, um, kind of just lots of fatigue and travel and then not, you know, overeating, maybe having one too many drinks. It, it started showing me that impact on my body. And so it did exactly what I hoped it would do, is it kicked me into gear and I was like, "I can't keep doing this." Like, literally my, uh, my speed of aging went almost two X of what normal aging speed is. And I was like, "Whoa, let's stop." And it, it's almost like I looked in the mirror and I started seeing a few more gray hairs. So I stopped. And, um, let me pause just real quick 'cause I'm, I'm about to keep diving into this. But if you're listening to this and you're like, "What does this have to do with investing and, and entrepreneurship and real estate?" Let me just foot stomp. This has everything to do with it. And I'll explain, um, when we get to the f- maybe a little bit more into the food part. Um, I'll have to circle back around to the intermittent fasting for that on, on energy levels and how I see a direct correlation to my income. I know I mentioned that earlier, but I just wanna like remind y'all this, this will all tie together. So now- Back to the WHOOP and, and my travel and eating habits. So I came back and I was like, "I need to fix this." And so I got back to the gym, at the time of this recording, just like two weeks ago, and I was like, "Okay, I know how my brain works. I know how I can get things done. I need to give myself little wins." I needed to just walk into the gym, right? I needed to just walk in and go through the motions. Um, and what I decided was, like, I'm somehow gonna squeak in and be a little bit more efficient. I'm gonna squeak in a run first, and then I'm gonna d- do some lifting, and then I'm gonna sit in the sauna. So, 'cause I'm, I'm, I'm learning more about saunas, dry saunas in particular, and just the health benefits are, are really good. I don't think the sauna at my gym is perfect, but, um, it does the job. Another thing that I'll just caveat here, guys, is, like, if you're not in the military, you're no longer, as, as Brandon Turner says, you're, you're not a goldfish. You can... You don't have to stay in your fishbowl. You can move somewhere. We moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, and I didn't realize how ideal maybe, like, just, like, the geographical slash, uh, everything being... proximity of everything was gonna be, but it is pretty dang nice. Uh, our, our kids' school is literally, like, three minutes driving from our house. The gym is across the street from the school, and so I can drop my kids off, so spend time with them in the morning, walk them into school, drive across the street to the, to the gym, do my gym thing, and then come right back home and, like what I did today, is jump in and start recording this. So I have a very efficient situation, and I think designing a, an efficient situation for yourself is a massive, massive, uh, level up. It'll, it'll be a huge impact on you. Anyway, all I'm saying is design and engineer your situation, your, uh, your life, where you live, how you do things, right? Um, it'll help you build the habits. So now what I'm doing, this is literally what I'm doing, okay? I... You know, for the Marine Corps, I used to have to run three miles, uh, every year, and I hated it. And the way I did it is I would run a mile for, like, a week or two. Like, whenever I'd go running for about a week or two, I'd only run, like, a mile. Then I'd increase it to a mile and a half. Then I'd increase it to, like, a mile and three quarters, then two miles. And I would just do it more and more and more, slowly but surely get to the point where I knew, okay, once my, you know, three miles comes, I'll be able to handle it. And that, that put me in a good spot. I, I never had to, like, cram in a bunch of running and try to, like, all of a sudden get in better shape before the run. I would start months in advance, just slowly, slowly ease my way up to that. And so that's what I'm doing right now. I know that I just need a little win. Literally, so the first time after all this travel that I had gotten to the gym, I was like, "I'm just gonna run three quarters of a mile. That's it." And then I, and then I went and, and did a few sets of, of the muscle group that I wanted to do, and then I got into the sauna. And I got it all done in just a little bit over an hour, or maybe it was within an hour. So I get in there at around 8:00, I'm out by 9:00, and I jump into work. So, um, now, you know, every single day what I told myself is I'm gonna increase the amount I run by five one-hundredths of a mile. So the next day I wrote I ran 0.8 miles. The next, uh, the next day when I went to the gym, uh, it wasn't like consecutive day, but the next time I went to the gym it was 0.85 miles. Next time it will be 0.9, and so on and so forth, and slowly I'll get up to a mi- a mile and a half, maybe even to two, and that's just what I'm gonna maintain. Because what I care about is my VO2 max, and that is the thing that is the... I'm, I'm, I'm not like some Huberman or, you know, super health, um, scientist, but what I'm gathering through all of the things I'm seeing on social media is that, uh, oxygen is essentially the greatest indicator of, of health, right? Oxygen is, uh, I think the saying goes, "Oxygen is the absence of disease." Oxygen is life. And so how your heart can ab- um, sorry, how your lungs can process, uh, oxygen in concert with your heart, um, basically what is the volume of oxygen it can use when it breathes in? Again, I'm not a scientist. If you're a doctor listening to this and you're like, "Wow, you're explaining it wrong," I apologize. But that's how I think about it, is like how well can the volume of oxygen be, that I'm, that I'm breathing in, can it be then put into my bloodstream effectively, right? Uh, so that the oxygen actually starts going through my body and having all the positive effects that it does. And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to increase my VO2 max. It went down three points from when I was on vacation, from before, before vacation to after, two or three points. And so I was like, "Whoa, that's not good. I wanna increase that," because that is the leading indicator, from what I understand, that, uh, from all the insurance company data, that that is a leading, uh, indicator of like how long your life is gonna be, you know, barring any other, um, diseases and so on. And so I'm like, that is the one thing I wanna increase. I wanna decrease my resting heart rate. Back when I was at the Naval Academy, it was so low they, they couldn't even measure it. I wanna go back to that, which pretty much is just like running a lot, and it kind of all works together. And then I wanna increase my heart rate, uh, variability, 'cause that means that my heart rate can swing to a faster heart rate, slo- lower heart rate more efficiently and quickly depending on the load or the stress that my body's encountering. So it's like it's just healthier, right? So those are the things I'm trying to improve. Now, something I'm noticing with, um- With the food intake and the timing of the food and intermittent fasting and the gym is it's becoming an energy management thing. I want to be able to have the max amount of, maximum amount of energy during my working hours. And I will tell you right now that not eating breakfast has been the single biggest unlock. I... The fact that I don't, um, slow down in the morning gives me so many more hours of hyperactive work, of high-energy work, of brain power. Um, you know, it, it could be for various reasons, but I think it's mostly because your, your body doesn't have to like all of a sudden maybe deal with like a bunch of calories and carbs that it has to process, and so your body can just, all the energy that it has, it can use towards whatever you're doing at the moment, like which is work or whatever. Um, additionally, it might be tapping into your, your fat in your body and using that for energy, which also makes you feel really good. So all of that, I started feeling a lot more. I didn't ha- I wasn't in tune when I was younger. Now I'm like, wait a second, I'm like 35, right? Like 35. I'm 35. And so I'm literally... I can feel myself slow down. I can feel my brain slow down, my body get sluggish if I eat, especially if I eat carbs. And so in the morning, just having a coffee has helped me massively. I stay alert, awake, and full of energy and very productive until I eat, essentially. And then if I eat healthy for lunch, not a bunch of carbs and stuff, wow, it c- it can keep on going, right? If I don't overeat, it can keep on going. Now, the one issue there is I do want to take protein in the morning. And literally last week, I discovered this thing. Again, I'm not promoting this. I haven't even tried it. I think I put it in my Amazon cart. I haven't bought it yet. But this is what I'm planning on doing, is I got, um... There's called, I think it's called PerfectAmino, but it's these, uh... Basically, it looks like vitamins, and you take them, and it has... It, it, it's equivalent to like thirty grams of protein, which is awesome, but it doesn't have like the sugar or the calories or anything. And so you don't break a fast. It does, it keeps your body, um, from like starting, you know, to whatever it's called, um, digest food, right? It, it doesn't slow your body down, so you don't break a fast. You just... But you do get the protein, and so I think that's important because when I work out in the morning, I want to have protein in my body so that I have the most amount of muscle growth, and so... Which is also a huge health thing that I'm not gonna get into. And so, wow, uh, like that's one thing that I'm kinda discovering right now, so maybe I'll update you guys in six months or so, and I'll do another episode on my health journey. Uh, but now to tie it all together, the importance of being healthy And full of energy for business. I now... If I have four or five hours in the morning of high productivity, I-- It's not an immediate thing, but I feel so much better when I'm then able to s- get the things done, right? It gives me the dopamine hits, feeling like I'm good at my job, which carries me through with a better mood for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the month. I can see the positive effects on my team and on my family. Now, again, it's maybe not immediate, but I've, I've seen this cycle enough that I have that positive mental feedback loop in my brain showing me, "Hey," the more energy you have, the more creative and productive you'll be, the more your ideas will ma- materialize and turn into actual things, and the more you'll just get things done. And the wealth-- Like, literally now, because I'm so hyper-focused on, like, my hour is worth, uh, like, creates a certain amount of wealth for me. Uh, you know, it-it... No matter what you tr- wanna do down the road, is like, you're still gonna somehow be trading dollars for hours, right? In one way, shape, or form. The whole purpose of, you know, becoming an entrepreneur, investing in real estate, and all that kind of stuff, is you wanna grow that. You wanna stop literally trading your hours for the amount of money it takes to survive. You wanna, you wanna spend your time strategically and have it in, and have a leverageable mechanism, I think I've spoken about that in the past, where it, it multiplies the amount of wealth you... and, and money and income that you're able to make i-i-in your time spent, right? And so if I'm twice as alert, that could mean I'm gonna be able to have twice, uh, the positive effect on my businesses, on my investments, and on my team, and on my family. Which, which by the way, guys, if you think about it, like investing compound interest, it, the, the effects you have today have massive knock-on effects down the road. And the way Eric Upchurch says, my, uh, real estate and ADPI partner, he, he talks about how, um, just 1% better every day, right? And so that's where I'm at mentally. I'm like, if I can just give myself a win in the gym three times a week without overdoing it, so I don't burn out, but I'm slowly but surely, slowly but surely getting better. And even if, you know, three-quarters of a mile or a mile isn't enough to increase my VO2 ma- max significantly, eventually I'll be at a mile and a half or two, and eventually I'll be doing that consistently long enough to where it will impact me. So instead of me trying to, like, crush through and increase my VO2 max, instead of, um, trying to, like, beat myself and feel bad about it, I think, "Okay, where do I wanna be a year from now?" And I give myself the opportunity to win every day, every week, slowly but surely, and just see my... Like, I wanna, you know, one little stair step at a time up to where I'm going. And, um, maybe just to wrap it up, to sum it all up, um- I intermittent fast because it gives me energy in the morning. It also helps my caloric intake so I don't overeat. Um, I am giving myself the opportunity to win in the gym by not overdoing it and slowly increasing what I'm doing, um, and just being consistent. I-- The life situation that we're in, where we live, and the proximity of everything, we've designed in such a way to where we can build and stack habits. And let me see. I, I have a wearable that, that kind of like gives me that red flag mechanism if something's going wrong so that I can, uh, catch myself if, if I'm not doing well. Um, and I'm trying to find... I hate like tricks, tips, and hacks and all that kind of stuff, but I'm trying to find smarter ways to get my protein. Um, I also-- I've decided I'm no longer a shaker bottle guy. I hate having to wash them, clean them, deal with them. I'm literally trying to optimize every minute of my life almost, um, not because I'm a crazy scientist robot, but because I want to crush my work, get as much out of it as I can, and then spend time with my family. Um, I want the time with my family to not feel like it's scheduled necessarily. By hyper-scheduling and focusing the right amount of time on my work, that leaves my, like, emotional and brain capacity to just not feel like I have to schedule my family life too much. Anyway, and so I, since I'm no longer a protein shaker bottle guy, I, I, uh, I just got like a whole box full of like protein shakes, uh, from Amazon. And there's this one called OWYN, like Only What You Need, I think. Again, not promoting. Um, that one is cool I think because it just doesn't have a bunch of like sugars and extra crap that it doesn't need. So I got that. Tastes great. I don't have to shake anything, just grab a bottle, drink it. You know, I have a little mini fridge in, in my studio/garage. And so I'm just trying to keep things easy. I'm trying to create like... So if you're listening to this and you're like, "Gosh, I, you know, I don't have time for this. I don't have time for that." Um, I, I started waking up a little bit earlier, but not too much earlier, just to give myself the opportunity to get through some morning routines. Um, I just know that, that that's... I, I need sleep, right? So like a lot of people that wake up at like 4:00 in the morning, they're like, "Oh, you know, you can do it." I'm like, "Okay, yeah, sweet," but then that means you have to go to bed at 8:00 to actually get enough sleep so that you don't start aging faster. That's another thing this thing helped me with. I'm like, what is the goal here? Is the goal here to optimize... You know, there's always gonna be a trade-off. Are you trying to just get as much done? But like, I mean, I got three kids. I can't go to sleep at eight o'clock. I gotta like give them a bath, you know, make sure they get their chores done. Maybe there's some reading, prayers, all the, you know, we have family time at night, right? Before they go to sleep. And so I have to pick my battles, I have to pick my trade-offs, and so I, I give myself a little bit of... I, I wake up around 6:40. Currently, that's like my routine, but that gives me enough time to like, um, you know, take a shower, wake up, put, uh, put some SPF and, and, and whatever I need on my face, and then get, you know, make coffee for me and my wife, help the kids get ready, and then I'm off to dropping them off, going to the gym, and getting into work. And I have like this domino effect that happens of all those things in sequence, and it's currently working for me, and I'm not sharing that to show off or to whatever. I'm sharing that because, um, I feel like I, I finally found my way after listening to so many people describe their way. And so hopefully maybe my way of doing things will help you, and I know that this is one of the biggest unlocks to growing your wealth, creating more income by, by being able to, to take care of your health, by, by being able to have high energy when it matters. All right, ADPI, uh, I know a little bit of an unusual topic, but I wanted to break that down for you. Let me know what you think. Share it if this was valuable, and I'll see you later