The Real-Life Diet of Sahil Bloom, Whose Productivity Window Starts at 4:45 a.m.

How does Sahil Bloom maximize his productivity and maintain work-life balance at the same time? By cultivating habits that may seem unusual to others, but are carefully tailored to support his lifestyle: He’s up every day at 4:15; avoids carbs, but only after lunch; and eats the same “breakfast dessert” for workout fuel every day: two dates covered in grass-fed butter.

Which is not to say that the 33-year-old former Stanford baseball player, who just released the new book, The 5 Types of Wealth, A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life, doesn’t follow some now-customary practices—he takes a quick cold plunge every morning and sits in the sauna for 20 minutes every night. He does, however, define morning and night a bit differently than most: He’s in bed at 8:15 p.m. and up at 4:15 a.m. to catch his productivity window at 4:45 a.m. During the day, he carves out specific time slots for family with his wife and 2-year-old son.

“If you want to go to bed earlier, you’ve got to think of it like progressive overload—like slowly loading a muscle more and more, increasing the amount of weight that you move a little each week, to build strength,” he says. “You can do the same thing for your sleep schedule. Make a 5- or 10-minute adjustment every week. Small things become big things. Going to bed 10 or 15 minutes earlier and waking up 10 or 15 minutes earlier won't feel dramatic on a short-term basis. But with time, it can make a major difference.”

We caught up with Sahil to talk about how he dialed in on routines that work for him, his affinity for a carnivore diet, and the evening hack that helps him be more productive first thing in the morning.

Sahil Bloom: I'm up by 4:15 a.m. religiously every single day. I get to bed at 8:15 in the evening, so I get eight hours of sleep.The first thing I do is get in my cold plunge, which I have on the deck right off of our master bedroom. I'm in there for three to five minutes. Then, I go downstairs and make myself a cold brew coffee.

Definitely. I bought this thing called the Cumulus, which is a new coffee machine. I was getting Instagram ads for it all the time, so I got one, and it's amazing. While the coffee’s brewing I do this thing that I call my “5, 5, 5, 30” which is five pushups, five squats, five lunges, and then a 30-second plank. The quick activity really jolts a bunch of energy into me—moving around, getting some blood flow. I also feel like getting my core activated to start the day raises my body temperature after the cold plunge, too.

Not yet. I have a big glass of water with some sort of greens powder and salt to get some hydration. Then I'll go sit down at my desk by around 4:45. I’m really focused and creative first thing in the morning, which is a trade-off because I'm basically utterly useless after about 5 or 6 p.m. I typically reserve the first three hours before my son wakes up for focused work on my most important creative projects. The last three years, that’s been the book.

I wear noise canceling headphones on with typically classical music, which I've loved since I was in college for getting into a focus state.

My son’s up, and he’s all rambunctious and excited to start the day. I really try to take advantage of the family time there. I’ll make us breakfast and we’ll hang out for a little over an hour. Breakfast every single morning is the exact same thing: Six whole eggs, a cup of cottage cheese, and two dates with grass fed butter and sea salt. I also normally raw honey on top of the eggs.

Well, it’s obviously high in protein. It’s also high in quality fats. I love getting pre-workout energy from the dates, which are a relatively new thing for me. I love the natural sugars and they taste unbelievable. It's actually really difficult to only eat two of them.

For the last two years I’ve been doing what I would call hybrid training, which is kind of a balance across weightlifting and long distance running. I've run two marathons over the last couple of years, and I did my most recent one in 2 hours, 53 minutes. So, how far I run on a day-to-day basis depends on where I am in my training cycle. The lifting stuff has generally been the same since my college baseball days. A lot of compound movements and free weights. I don't push the weights nearly as much as I used to when I was younger. The risk versus reward trade off for me at this age, doing a 500-pound deadlift or really heavy squat, just isn't the same as it was then. I’m focused on maintaining a level of strength and focusing more on aesthetics.

I’ll have lunch with my wife and son. I'll have a serving of protein—call it like 8 to 12 ounces of chicken or ground turkey maybe, a source of veggies and a source of carbs. So maybe a sweet potato or rice and some sort of vegetable. Then we go for a walk.

I’m a huge believer in an after lunch walk. It’s been a life-changing 15-minute intervention for me. I used to get the absolute worst afternoon slump, like a devastatingly bad afternoon slump. The walk changed that for me. It also helps your digestion, mood, and it’s great family time. I leave my phone behind, and we end up having great conversations.

Definitely. And with the walk, my son’s at a fun age looking around and exploring, and it creates this natural cadence of getting to do a really nice family activity, even if it’s only 15 minutes. After the walk, I have my second working block between around 12 and 5 p.m.

We normally have our dinner at around 5 p.m., and I always cook. We all eat the same thing at dinner, and that's normally red meat. If I had to guess, I typically have like 16 ounces. You could say I’m a carnivore diet-type person, and I like to have a big meal before bed. It makes me feel better at the end of the day. We’ll also have a bunch of veggies alongside that, and I won’t have a carbohydrate source later in the day unless there's a specific reason. So, if I feel like I'm losing weight, I need to keep it on. Examples of carbs would be purple sweet potatoes.

At 6 we get our son ready for bed. Bath time and the like for about 45 minutes. Once we start to put him down, my wife takes over with him. I typically will go back to my desk and do my morning prep for the next day.

I take about 15 minutes preparing for whatever my first two or three priority tasks are gonna be that next morning. So, I take a three by five notecard, and I write the two to three things that I need to get done the next day. This way, when I sit down it’s already there. I also take whatever reading that I want to do for the evening, and I will go sit in the sauna and do that for 20 minutes at 210 degrees. At 7:30 p.m. I’m back with my wife, and we’re spending time together before shutting it down to sleep for 8:15.

Set what I call to be an A, B, and C goal on a daily basis. The whole idea is on a day when you feel great or when you have tons of time and energy, you hit your goal, which is your best case scenario for that day. So say you want to work out for an hour, you do that—that’s your A goal. If it's just kind of an OK day and you don't feel that same buzz, you hit your baseline, which may be a 45-minute workout, and the B goal. On days when everything hits the fan, like your kid kept you up all night, you're not feeling great, do whatever the minimum viable version is. Maybe that’s a 15 minute walk.

Anything better than zero compounds. One thing with ambitious people is that we often let our hopes for optimal get in the way of being beneficial. So, we lose sight of the fact that you're better off doing a little bit than you are doing nothing. Some will say “I don't have an hour to work out, so I'm just not gonna go.” It’s much better to realize and have these A, B, and C goals so that you can just show up and do something to move the ball forward on a daily basis. Small things become big things in life, and just showing up and punching the clock on a daily basis is really how you create these great outcomes.

My grandfather told me when I was a kid, “You'll achieve much more by being consistently reliable than by being occasionally extraordinary.” That always stuck with me. Figure out a way to structure the ability to show up, and just punch the clock and you'll get so far in life.

It’s funny, I actually wouldn't choose to eat other foods. I really enjoy all of these meals that I have. If one day I feel the need to have a slice of pizza or an ice cream, I'll just do that. I don't stress about it when I need to do that, but I really enjoy both sides of it. With the dates and grass fed butter, I would put them up against any dessert in the world as being that delicious. It’s insane. It tastes like cheesecake or cookie dough.

I’m an enormous fan of a drizzle of raw honey with sriracha. I also started cooking in all stainless steel pans recently. I read enough that made me say it was time to make a change, especially for my son.

I don’t respond particularly well aesthetically to carbs when I increase my intake. In the mirror, I notice a difference pretty quickly. I feel and look best when I'm on a high protein, higher fat diet. The problem is you can't eat a true keto diet while doing the level of endurance training that I'm doing with the running. So I just monitor my energy levels and gauge accordingly.

In Real-Life Diet, athletes, celebrities, and other high performers talk about their diet, exercise routines, and pursuit of wellness. Keep in mind that what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.