This post is a crossover to the podcast that I do with Angela, Back and Forth with T & A. It’s generally about nonsense like weird history facts that make us laugh, talking about one of our many adventures, commercials from our childhood, and everyone’s favorite episodes, music. From music we grew up with, to our Christmas playlist.
In episode 49, we listened to our audience, and finally did an episode focused on all the basics of diet and exercise… which, as it turns out, thirty minutes doesn’t allow for too much depth. But it was a great start, and we hope you enjoy the episode.
You can listen to it here: Back and Forth with T & A Ep. 49
Starting with diet, we talked about a key factor most people don’t think about, and that’s timing. In body terms, circadian rhythm. Your body works in cycles, from menstrual to body temperature, to sleep. And timing your food to work with these cycles can boost your health in several ways.
First off, If you always eat around the same time, your body will be more prepared to handle it. It will anticipate the incoming nutrients, and the digestive process will be prepped and ready. But also, there is plenty of evidence that shows timing your meals so that they start and stop in an eleven hour window, and making sure that your last meal is at least three hours before bed can greatly reduce the numbers for getting cancer and other metabolic diseases.
Another thing I try to pass on to my clients is the Salad Principle. I have an entire blog post dedicated to this and how it can be applied to your mental well being as well. But here I’ll apply it to how you can use it to improve your health, and that is if you are filling up enough on healthy foods, you just won’t have room to eat too many unhealthy foods.
I once tried following the Wahls protocol. Terry Wahls is a doctor that has MS, but dramatically reduced her symptoms, primarily through diet. It involves eating a lot of vegetables. And by “a lot”, I mean a “shit ton”. I was packing in nine cups of vegetables a day, including three of “greens”, think spinach and kale, three of “colors”, as in brightly colored peppers, eggplants, carrots, and three “sulfur”, as in cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower. Kale is wonderful since it falls under both “greens” and “sulfur”, and broccoli sprouts may be the absolute king of “sulfur”. She has a book out that gives all the details if you want to try it for yourself.
Three things I can tell you from my six month experience with this diet. First, as mentioned before… that’s a lot of damn vegetables. Second, I had more mental and physical energy than I can ever remember having at any other time of my life. And third, I was eating so many vegetables, that I had no room for any junk food.
I did have to stop after six months because it was a lot of work to constantly be prepping that many vegetables, but mostly it was because I already have a very fast metabolism and am very lean, and I just couldn’t keep the weight on with this diet.
So now I’m trying to get as many vegetables in as I can through kale chips and fermented vegetables. The big shock for me was after laughing at all those silly internet ads about vinegar reducing belly fat, there turned out to be a lot of truth to the nonsense. The effects though are best achieved by getting your fair share through fermented vegetable, which isn’t vinegar but works by the same mechanism. Plus adds the bonus of fiber and probiotics.
And the last big topic I’ll cover about diet will be protein intake. There’s been some great studies showing that if you get the bulk of your daily protein in by 10am, no matter what time of day you workout, you will significantly improve your muscle gains and avoid muscle atrophy.
So, as far as exercise goes, it’s definitely the topic which I have the most to share, but I’m going to keep it simple for this post.
You want to think of your basic foundational movements. Push, pull, squat, hip hinge, and carry. So for push, start by thinking push ups and dumbbell presses. For pulls, pull ups are king, but most of us can’t do those, so I’ll throw in my second favorite, and that’s seated rows.
For squats, I like to start people with goblet squats, then move them to single leg and spit squats before putting them under a bar. For hip hinge, think deadlift or kettlebell swings. Just remember, the best thing for your back, no matter what condition it’s in, is deadlifts. But it’s also the worst thing for your back if you do it wrong.
Carries are pretty straightforward. You pick up as much weight as you can, and walk around with it. You’d be amazed at what this does for your body. My one piece of advice on carries is to watch your posture. You will reinforce whatever posture you carry with, so stand up straight and tall.
On the cardio side, your best time spent would be to focus on “slow and steady” zone 2 training. The general rule is to pick an exercise like jogging or elliptical, and go at a pace that you can still talk, but with some effort. Try to do that three to five times a week.
You also want to increase your VO2 max, and that’s best done by doing a HIIT workout once or twice a week. Go hard, but not too close to your max, because that’s just beating the shit out of your heart without getting gains. Save that level of intensity for running from snow leopards.
Lastly, let’s touch on recovery. You need your recovery to outpace your breakdown. Because when you are working out, you’re breaking down your body. It’s in the recovery phase that you get stronger, and if your workouts are outpacing your recovery, you’re just going to end up damaging your body.
Proper recovery involves getting good sleep, hydration, nutrition, stress reduction, and active recovery like walking.
For sleep, the strongest effector on influencing a good night’s sleep is morning sunlight. Get out there, first thing when you wake up, and get some sunshine. If that’s not possible, shine as bright a light as you can in your morning environment.
For hydration, how much you drink depends on so many factors, so I can’t give you an exact amount, but I’ll leave it at this… your lips shouldn’t be dry, and you should have to pee every couple of hours. And that pee should be fairly clear.
Stress reduction can come in so many forms. Some ways will help you by the way you deal with stress, and others will immediately just make you feel better.
Nothing takes away all my stress as instantly or as completely as touch. Holding your loved one close is one of the best ways to wash away the day’s stress. But if you don’t have a someone to hold, a massage will do very nicely.
Exercise is great, because it’s also a top runner for quickly alleviating your worries and angst, and it does a great job at better prepping your body to handle future stress.
Journaling is another favorite of mine for working through what your issues are, and prepping you for handling what may come at you in the future.
Meditation is a great way of quieting the mind, and can result in huge personal gains, but it takes consistency and practice.
And talk therapy has proven invaluable for reducing the daily stress for millions of people. It’s often a lot of work, but the gains will be long lasting and will help you manage future stress with more grace.
That’s all I’m going to cover for this article, but it pretty much touches on everything I can think of. I’ll pick topics listed in here and take a deeper dive, one by one, in future articles
Please listen to the podcast episode… please listen to all the podcast episodes! We had a blast making them!
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