Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey's Health Routine Involves 1 Meal A Day, Ice Baths, And Daily Meditation

If Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous were still on-air today, the show would have had a field day featuring Twitter's Jack Dorsey.

The 42-year-old billionaire recently joined the Ben Greenfield Fitness: Diet, Fat Loss and Performance podcast, where he revealed his unconventional wellness habits.

These range from simple things such as meditating and walking to work, to more outlandish ones such as taking saunas and ice-cold baths every evening and eating only a single meal every weekday.

While his lifestyle may not be for everybody, Dorsey believes each point in his daily routine is necessary to help keep him sharp and healthy so he can run his two tech companies effectively.

Dorsey's Eccentric Wellness Routine

Here are 11 things Jack Dorsey must do every day in order to stay performant and clear for work:

• Meditate twice a day
• Walk to work
• Do 7-minute workouts
• Take saunas and ice baths every evening
• Use a standing desk fitted with a near-infrared light bulb
• Begin each day with an ice-cold bath
• Take supplements regularly
• Eat only one meal every weekday
• Go on fasting every weekend
• Keep track of sleep
• Write on journal

There is nothing out of the ordinary about meditating, walking to work, doing workouts, or taking supplements. Almost any other person does these things to stay fit and healthy. What caught many people's attention are the things that came next on Dorsey's task list.

Ice-Cold Baths Every Morning

Dorsey makes it a point to start each day by taking a bath in an ice-cold tub. He said being able to go from room temperature straight into the cold helps give him more "mental confidence."

Professional athletes often submerge themselves in ice-cold water to reduce inflammation in their joints and muscles. This is because the cold helps redirect the flow of blood throughout the body.

However, this action can also cause practitioners to develop tachycardia (having a fast heartbeat) or arrhythmias (having an abnormal heartbeat).

Having A Single Meal During Weekdays

Dorsey's idea of eating only one meal during weekdays has also earned him the ire of people on the internet.

The tech businessman usually has a meal consisting of proteins and vegetables, with dark chocolates or berries for dessert. He then washes it down with a glass of red wine. This means from Monday to Friday, he is only operating on just a few carbohydrates and calories.

Dorsey said he struggled a lot during the first few days of trying out the unorthodox eating habit, but after he got used to it he felt "more focused," especially during the day. It also allowed him to sleep better at night.

Previous studies have tried to show some of the health benefits of intermittent fasting, but nothing concrete has been established yet.

An article on Well and Good suggested that fasting can help prime the human brain to be at its most clever. It argued that as hunter-gatherers in the past, humans had to be at their most intelligent to keep themselves from starving to death.

Fasting Over The Weekend

Dorsey also had a different take on fasting over the weekend. He said he would normally not eat dinner on Friday, not eat anything at all the entire day of Saturday, and eat only dinner by Sunday.

He described the feeling he had the first time he went on a weekend fast.

"The first time I did it, like day three, I felt like I was hallucinating. It was a weird state to be in," the Twitter boss said.

"But as I did it the next two times, it just became so apparent to me how much of our days are centered around meals and how - the experience I had was when I was fasting for much longer, how time really slowed down."

However, doctors warned about the dangers of going on extreme fasts. People who are planning to go on a fast should consult their physicians first before trying it out to make sure that it will not result in long-term health effects. It should also not last for longer than 24 hours.

Social Media Backlash

Several netizens took to social media to blast Dorsey's so-called wellness habits. Some accused the Twitter and Square CEO of setting a bad example for others.

Author and professor Roxane Gay said Dorsey is using his "disordered eating" to approximate what poor people and those without access to potable water are going through.

Freelance writer and reproductive rights activist Lauren Rankin said Dorsey's revelation of his wellness scheme serves to normalize and glamorize eating disorders.

In her tweet, author Caroline Moss suggested that Dorsey himself could be suffering from some form of eating disorder.