How Not To Die

Or at least how to live well.

No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.

— Socrates

If you’re just stopping by then welcome. If you’re a committed Vale Tudo subscriber and fan: don’t skim this one. Read it all. Try it all. This is an extremely valuable and actionable contribution that is worth understanding — then acting on. No perfectionism necessary. But grab the point. Then do it.

He changed his life trajectory in three months; that is a realistic timeframe for a radical recomposition. Try it; you might like it. And a final request before we get into it: please do all the things (asking someone to like something is the single lamest thing I can think of but do hit the “Share” button on this).

Vittorio is a biotech accelerationist and thinker exploring reality, how to transcend biology, and truth. He shares the science of how not to die, or at least how to live well, and his thoughts on human potential. Here’s our recent conversation, raw and unfiltered:

Vittorio, your productivity posting on bio/acc is staggering. Do you have a lifetime of backlogged content that you’re just rolling out now or are you hyper productive? Both?

Appreciate the kind words. The truth? I’ve had a lot to talk about and insights for years: notes, observations, unfinished essays, but during my PhD I never had the bandwidth to ship at scale. Now that chapter’s closed, I’m writing daily. Also, frankly, not enough people who actually lift are writing about health from first principles. I’m just filling a vacuum.

One thing I know to be true about fitness that almost no one agrees with?

Everyone should go to the gym. Not could, should. If you’re not doing hard labor, and you’re not loading your spine or pulling something heavy, you’re decaying faster than you know. Running’s fine sometimes. Walking’s good. But they don’t hit the hormonal or mechanical signals we evolved to require. Modernity put us in chairs, iron is the correction.

Philosophically speaking, I’ve built my worldview brick by brick. That said, Ray Peat reshaped how I think about metabolism and light and biology in general. He’s criminally misunderstood, but there’s genius under the chaos. I also draw from Nietzsche, Strauss, Taleb, and evolutionary psych, always. The lattice matters more than any lone philosopher.

Training

Exercise I love?

Bench and squat, basic, brutal, beautiful.

Exercise I hate?

Machines that trap you on rails. They train you like a toddler learning to walk on a leash. Useful for rehab or raw beginners, but ultimately limiting. Real strength demands chaos. Real tissue demands compound movements. And yes, resistance training is the holy grail for longevity, mood, testosterone, bone density, brain health. Pick a system, it improves it.

Fueling

Recipe? Easy.

Beef tartare. Raw grass-fed beef, yolk, mustard, capers, parmesan slivers. Zero fluff. Peak micronutrient density, delicious, primal.

I’m Italian, so of course I have a weak spot for pizza, but I try to avoid it in the U.S., the ingredients just don’t hit the same.

Favorite protein? Parmigiano Reggiano, ridiculously protein-dense per gram.

Weirdest thing I eat? Snails. Actually amazing.

How do I live what I write?

I don’t posture. I live this stuff because I’d be miserable otherwise. I’ve run the experiments, I’ve paid the costs. My views seem “controversial” only because the world has gone sideways. Evolutionary realities don’t care about cultural trends. Biology doesn’t lie. If you deny it, you suffer, plain and simple. That applies to hormones, sex differences, mating strategies, even mental health. We’re animals with language, and pretending otherwise is why so many are broken.

Supplementing

Supplements?

Underrated: creatine. 5-10 grams a day, every day, forever. If you’re not taking it, you’re leaving strength, cognition, and mitochondrial function on the table.

Overrated: nearly everything else. Most supplements are expensive placebos for people trying to bypass discipline. If you sleep well, train hard, eat real food, and take creatine, you’ve covered 95% of the curve. The rest? Vanity noise. And some can wreck your kidneys if abused.

What makes the biggest difference?

Sleep. Nothing is more potent or more neglected.

People talk about overtraining, but most are just under-recovering. Without quality sleep, your muscles don’t grow, your hormones tank, your brain degrades. That whole “grind till 4am” culture? It’s a death cult.

How much do I take daily? Creatine: 5-10 grams. Everything else is case-by-case. No pills unless they prove their worth.

Am I doing all of what I preach?

Yes, mostly. I don’t write hypotheticals. I train more than I say, my sleep is almost religious, my diet is dialed. I iterate constantly, but the core routines are locked in.

Measuring

What metrics do I use?

I care less about the data porn, more about the signal behind the signal. I’ll check my WHOOP occasionally, do bloodwork twice a year (testosterone, insulin, CRP, thyroid, triglyceride:HDL).

But my top metric?

Do I feel like an apex version of myself?

That includes libido, aggression, clarity, drive. Numbers lie. Your nervous system doesn’t.

Do I weigh food or myself?

Used to. Went deep into the neurotic hole. Came back.

Now, I eyeball everything. Unless you’re a physique athlete on prep, weighing food adds more stress than it saves. The mirror tells the truth. And no, I don’t weigh myself, if I like what I see and I’m getting stronger, the scale is irrelevant.

Bloodwork?

Yes, twice a year

Universal metrics for both performance and longevity?

• Grip strength

• VO2 max

• Resting heart rate

• Fasting insulin

• Muscle mass relative to height

• Testosterone (total & free)

• Subjective well-being: mood, sex drive, clarity

These are the levers that predict both thriving and survival.

Recovering

How do I bounce back from workouts?

Mostly? I sleep. 15 years of lifting taught me the value of rest. If I’m beat up, I walk with my wife or take a day off. Mental reset matters as much as physical. No shame in rest, just don’t use it as a crutch.

Sleep tricks?

Eye mask, earplugs, cold room, early dinner, and no screens 90 minutes before bed. Create a void, then fall into it.

Recovery gimmicks that actually work?

Stretching. Not enough people do it. Not yoga, not Instagram mobility flows, just old-school, long-duration stretching. It works.

Best fitness advice I ever got?

Be better than yesterday’s version of you.

It sounds simple, but it sticks. No one else’s metrics matter. Compete with your past self. Win often.

How I got into all this?

Used to play rugby. Got injured, got fat. My girlfriend left me. I was stuck and alone. One day I looked in the mirror and said never again. I trained like a madman for three months (like 4h/day). Saw abs for the first time. Felt powerful. That moment changed me. That hunger led me to do a PhD in biomedical engineering. I wanted to understand the human body to its core.

Is beauty important to me?

Yes. Profoundly.

Beauty is not shallow, it’s encoded in our biology. Flowers, peacocks, sunsets, art, symmetry. Beauty is a signal of life force. It evokes reverence. It’s moral, even. And yes, aesthetics matter in my health goals. I train to feel good, but also to look like the kind of man I admire. Call it 50/50, function and form.

Triangulating time, money, and health, can it be done?

Absolutely. It’s one of the only true arbitrage plays left. A 60-minute workout doesn’t cost you productivity, it unlocks it. Training boosts cognition, sleep, sex, drive, everything. Dollar-for-dollar, health is a compounding investment.

What we need is a dashboard, an app that maps every choice to ROI across time, money, and lifespan. Imagine: this meal adds 2.4 days to your healthspan, costs $3.42, and boosts alertness by 13%. It’s possible. And when someone builds it, I want in.

Closing

What’s next?

Toxins. The invisible web.

Plasticizers, endocrine disruptors, microdoses of poison we normalize daily. I want to map the terrain, compare ancestral baselines to our polluted modernity, and build strategies for how to actually detox without woo nonsense.

We’re bathing in poison. Most people have no idea. I’ll show them.

Thanks for the thoughtful questions. If it sparks even one person to rewild their biology, train harder, or reclaim beauty, mission accomplished.