Tech mogul-turned-longevity fanatic Bryan Johnson proudly declared that he “loves” haters of his super-strict, anti-aging regimen — among them Elon Musk, who said that Johnson looked better before starting the protocol.
“I love the haters,” Johnson told Fortune.
“Love them. I welcome them, I embrace them, I appreciate them spending their time to comment. They’re standing up, they’re speaking up, they’re not apathetic. I love everything about them, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Musk has been among Johnson’s critics, suggesting in December that Johnson looked better during his Silicon Valley days than he does now after spending millions on thwarting Father Time.
Johnson’s daily routine includes a 5 a.m. wakeup time, a one-hour exercise regimen, four to five hours of “concentrated thought,” and taking 111 supplements.
He follows a 2,250-calorie vegan diet, blood transfusions, and daily health tests, as well as a rigid bedtime routine where he’s hooked up to a machine that counts his nighttime erections.
A user by the name of Matt Paulson said at the time his “unpopular opinion of the day is that Bryan Johnson looked way better before he started spending $2 million/year on his body.”
Musk replied to Paulson’s post with a “100” emoji, indicating he agreed with the sentiment.
After branding his lifestyle under the brand “don’t die,” and since Johnson began touting that he undergoes blood plasma transfusions — including with his 17-year-old son — social media users have quipped that the 46-year-old centi-millionaire is a vampire.
Johnson told Fortune that he finds some of the criticism “funny.”
At the end of the day, “we’re all struggling,” Johnson said, though he added he’s “struggling less than I ever have in my entire life.”
Though Johnson didn’t elaborate during the interview with Fortune, he told an audience at RAADfest 2023 — the Revolution Against Aging and Death conference — in September that he used to be chronically depressed and would wolf down trays of brownies in an effort to feel better.
Johnson nicknamed this nighttime-snacking version of himself “Evening Bryan,” which he said routinely made an appearance at 7 p.m. nightly throughout his 30s when Johnson was working on building the mobile payment startup Braintree, which was purchased by eBay in an $800 million cash deal in 2013.
“I was struggling pretty significantly before—but I’m deeply empathetic to people and I appreciate them showing up. I mean they’re engaging with me, they’re offering me their perspectives and I love it,” added of the haters, according to Fortune.
But, “they want to say that I’m not living life and that I must be in a cage of misery built on myself. I don’t know about that,” he added.
“I talk to many people in the world [and] I’m not sure that many people are thriving with their own mental health and wellness.”
Johnson has said that although his strict daily regimen makes it difficult for him to be in a relationship, he enjoys being the “most measured man” — so much so that he launched his much-touted Project Blueprint for those willing to pay $333-a-month to mimic his extreme routine.
The strict diet provides participants with “67 interventions” in products that include a 6-ounce Longevity drink mix, eight supplements, Johnson’s signature Nutty Pudding Mix, and extra virgin olive oil.
In all, the “stack” of products contains 410 calories.
The products — including the $99 ready-to-mix blend of nuts, seeds, and berries to make Nutty Pudding at home, the dessert Johnson claims to eat every single day — are also available on Project Blueprint’s website, though they’re still labeled “coming 2024.”
Aspiring participants applied to try out the 90-day routine as part of Johnson’s “self-experimentation study” for a minimum application fee of $999.
Johnson then selected 2,500 participants, who began the study earlier this month.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
