Ben Greenfield Daily Routine: A Look Inside His Optimized Day

If you’ve ever wondered what a longevity expert actually does all day, Ben Greenfield gives us a pretty good example. This biohacker, author, and self-described journalist’s day starts with a family Bible huddle at dawn, includes plenty of movement throughout the workday, and eventually ends with a sauna session before he jumps into the pond at his North Idaho home.

Ben broke down the whole thing during his third appearance on The Bossticks, taking Lauryn and Michael through his day hour by hour. And while there’s definitely inspiration to pull from, some of what he does is a little more involved than your average wellness routine. He’s spent decades experimenting with different ways to optimize his health and performance. (We’re talking hyperbaric chambers and ozone). 

We’re sharing the highlights of Ben Greenfield’s episode of The Bossticks below, but if you wanna tune in while you read? Press play, it’s worth it.

Ben Greenfield’s Daily Routine, Hour by Hour

Ben’s day blends faith, family, fitness, and biohacking, starting with an early morning family huddle and ending with his evening wind-down. 

He’s quick to say that while he does incorporate biohacking, he keeps it to about 90 minutes a day so it doesn’t totally take over his life. As he put it, the elaborate five-hour morning routine “sucks the joy out of those extra years that you’re getting.”

Here’s the best way to think about it: As strategic as it is, he plans his routine around his day, not the other way around.

His Morning: Family Huddle and Mobility

Ben starts the day by bringing the whole family together. His family does a morning huddle that includes reading the Bible, praying, and talking through the little things, like how everyone slept, whose day it is to have to the car, and who’s in charge of cooking dinner.

The huddle around 11 years ago during a rough point of his marriage. Ben told Lauryn and Michael that back then, he was rarely home and felt more like the “funny older big brother” than a present father and husband.

He described his role in the home using a thermostat analogy. A thermometer checks the temperature, a thermostat sets it. In other words, instead of just checking the mood, he wanted to set it, bringing everyone together at the start and end of each day.

After the huddle, he spends about 20 minutes listening to the Bible while he foam rolls, stretches, and works on mobility. Folding recovery into something he’s already doing? Perfect example of habit stacking.

His Fasted Morning Workout

From roughly 8:30 to 9:30 in the morning, Ben works out, which he calls his “me time.” Sometimes he does this solo and sometimes he works out with his son. He explains that he fasts while he trains, but only because doesn’t feel good exercising on a full stomach. His routine usually follows a 70% strength training and 30% cardio approach, which leans more toward resistance work as he gets older.

But this isn’t a routine that Ben just hoped would work, he pulls from his master’s degree in Exercise Physiology and Biomechanics. He leans on the fact that research shows that exercise can help counter the effects of things like mild sleep deprivation.

His bigger point is simple: movement doesn’t have to be in the gym. He builds activity in his everyday life, so a workout is something he can do when he wants to rather than being something he has to squeeze in. Sound like something you’re interested in? We get into that mindset more in our guide to building a sustainable fitness routine.

His Workday: The Treadmill Desk

Ben also walks while he works! He uses a walking treadmill desk, where he usually gets about 12,000 to 15,000 steps over the course of the workday. And that’s all without carving out extra time for it!

On the podcast, he points out that 100 years ago, people didn’t even think about having to get their steps in. Most jobs involved physical work, so people were naturally moving throughout the day. Now, plenty of us sit at a desk all day and then head to the gym afterward. Walking while he works is one way Ben gets around that.

His Midday Recovery “Siesta”

Around 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon, Ben takes a 30-minute recovery block that he calls a siesta. He explained to Lauryn and Michael that he wakes up early and tends to get hangry by dinner if he pushes straight through. To avoid this, he uses this midday break to lie down inside one of his biohacking tools. Depending on the day, it could be anything from a hyperbaric chamber to a PEMF mat to a red light therapy bed to an ozone chamber.

For Ben, these are the personal recovery gadgets he tests as part of his work. A hyperbaric chamber delivers pressurized oxygen, a PEMF mat sends pulsed electromagnetic fields through the body, and red light beds use specific wavelengths of light. But as he explained on the show, these are tools that he genuinely enjoys, not things he feels like he HAS to do.

His Evening: Sauna and Cold Plunges

Later in the afternoon, Ben shifts into what he calls thermal stress with his family. They have a large communal sauna that fits around 20 people, where they hang out, talk, and read together. Then they head to the pond and jump in.

The routine isn’t as interesting as how Ben thinks about it. For him, the sauna and the cold plunge don’t feel like chores he has to check off a to-do list. He thinks of them the same way he thinks about pickleball or tennis: something he does with his sons for fun that just happens to also be good for him.

Family Dinner and Evening Ritual

Ben finishes his day with a family dinner at 7pm that sounds more like a nightly party than a meal. Ben plans it deliberately and makes a point of being there and always being on time. Here’s what a typical evening looks like at his house:

• A father-son book club
• Ben playing the family a song on guitar, then everyone singing together
• Bringing out everything they each cooked and eating together
• Playing games during dinner for an hour to 90 minutes
• Doing the dishes together as a family

Funny enough, he talked about how guests will come over surprised and say that he “didn’t have to throw a party for them.” Ben’s response? That’s just what an evening is like at his house! But this commitment came at a cost: he built his business more slowly and travels less. It’s also one part of a much bigger effort to rebuild trust with his wife.

What Ben Greenfield Eats: Cyclic Low Carb

Even though Ben literally wrote a book on low-carb diets for athletes, he eventually moved away from strict keto after experiencing the downsides himself. Now he follows what he calls “cyclic low carb.”

In practice, he doesn’t eat that many carbs during most of the day, maybe a handful of blueberries with breakfast, so his body stays in fat-burning mode. Then at dinner, he’ll have anywhere from 200 to 300 grams of carbohydrates. He also prioritizes what he calls paleo-esque starches, like dark chocolate, sweet potatoes, and red wine instead of grains and pasta that don’t sit well with his gut. 

He also likes eating his carbs at night because he finds it helps him sleep and fuels the next morning’s fasted workout.

His Hair and Sleep Routines

Don’t think that Ben Greenfield’s hair care and sleep routines are just as fascinating as the rest of his regimen. As far as hair goes, he’ll run a fine-tooth comb through his hair, rub in a GHK copper peptide serum, and use a red light helmet he keeps on his desk. He described the copper peptide as something that supports things like collagen and hair follicle growth.

His sleep routine, on the other hand, leans heavily into managing his environment. Ben keeps his phone in airplane mode at night and plugs it into a dirty electricity filter. He also talks about how because his family built their home themselves, they don’t even have Wi-Fi; it’s hardwired with shielded Ethernet. 

The conversation gets a little tech-y from there, so we definitely recommend tuning into the full episode to hear Ben explain it all himself.

What We Can Learn From Ben Greenfield’s Routine

You don’t need a hyperbaric chamber or a 20-person sauna to find some inspiration from Ben’s routine. In fact, here are a few takeaways worth stealing:

• Move in the morning. Even 20 minutes of stretching and mobility while you listen to something inspirational counts.
• Walk more during the day. You don’t need a treadmill desk to incorporate more movement into a sit-all-day job.
• Protect family rituals. A morning check-in and a sit-down dinner are free, and they’re the things Ben says actually changed his life.
• Keep a consistent wind-down. Getting your phone out of arm’s reach at night is a low-effort place to start.

The bigger lesson from Ben is about balance. He’s spent two decades in the longevity and biohacking world, and his current take is that the tools are worth using but were never meant to become your whole identity. If you wanna go deeper on the science-forward side of all this, we cover more of what that looks like in our guide to biohacking with Gary Brecka.

What Do You Think of Ben Greenfield’s Daily Routine?

So, could you keep up with a day like this, or does the pond plunge alone rule you out? Ben’s full conversation on The Bossticks goes way beyond the super productive schedule and covers things like GLP-1 micro-dosing, peptides, and the documentary that reframed his priorities. Needless to say, you’d be missing a lot if you didn’t tune in yourself. 

If this episode caught your interest, keep going with our roundup of the best supplements for longevity, then dig into the rest of the Dear Media Network! Home to over 100 top-rated pop culture, entertainment, and lifestyle podcasts hosted by today’s most talked-about celebrities and creators, there’s a host, show, and episode for every kind of listener.