Health Basics — Start Here

80/20 Principle

If you only focused on these four things, you’ll be doing 80% of the work towards your health and towards your longevity:

• Prioritize natural foods
• Utilize exercise and fasting (and heat + cold exposure)
• Meditate daily
• Prioritize sleep hygiene

Yes, there are other things you can keep in mind but you don’t want to be one of those people that worries about every little detail, you want to be healthy but enjoy your life. The above 4 principles will get you there. Let’s go into each one in more detail

Prioritize natural foods

Your body craves nutrients and foods that are closest to their natural state will provide those for you. I’m sure you’re heard this before but a good rule of thumb is to purchase single ingredient foods by only sticking to the periphery of the supermarket. So apples, not applesauce.

Eat more fruits and veggies, avoid processed vegetable oils (olive oil and coconut oil are fine), and reduce the amount of processed carbohydrates and refined sugar you consume.

Don’t be super rigid about this though, remember the 80/20 rule. If you focus on providing the inputs your body needs, there’s no harm in getting a treat from time to time. Yes sure, it would be better if we never ate refined sugar, or processed carbohydrates, or greasy fatty fried foods but these companies have spent millions of dollars coming up with the perfect combination of salt, sugar, and fat that makes these hyper-palatable foods damn near impossible to resist. Who are we to compete against them?

I try to find treats that I know I can eat without going overboard and I try to buy healthier options when I can. So for instance one of my go to’s are Newman O’s (instead of Oreos, since we don’t cross a picket line right??). I can eat two or three cookies and be satisfied. If I get a pint of ice cream, I’ll eat it in a bowl with some strawberries and nuts. That keeps me from mindlessly downing the entire pint while watching Netflix, which can easily happen.

Exercise and Fasting (and heat + cold exposure)

The term “hormesis” refers to the idea that a mild amount of stress results in favorable adaptations in your body, which protect it against more severe stress later. Important to mention though that this stress can only be beneficial to you if it is intermittent; we all know chronic stress will kill you.

Exercise and fasting are the most accessible ways to create a hormetic response in the body (check out my 1 hour per week workout here), but heat and cold exposure are great for this as well. So hop into that sauna or hot tub from time to time, pop into a hot bath, or take a cold shower.

What you do doesn’t really matter as much as the principle behind it: acutely stress out your body by challenging it and creating an adaptive response. If you’re pushing your body even slightly, that’s a win. Set the bar low for yourself, you don’t have to do 20 minute ice baths, even just ending your shower with 30 seconds of ice cold water is a good start.

Meditate Daily

This should honestly be number one on the list. You always hear how important meditation is and you’re like “yeah, yeah I get it, it’s good for you, tell me something I don’t know” until you are finally able to get a habit going yourself (see here if you want to copy my easy as it can get meditation routine) and then you get it. It’s life changing, it’s like going from being on a rickety boat in the middle of a storm to zooming out and seeing the storm from above.

Doesn’t matter how you get started, just start for 2 minutes a day. It’s worth it.

Prioritize Sleep hygiene

Sleep is one of those things we all do but we don’t pay much attention to. I’m here to tell you it’s incredibly important to prioritize it. Set yourself up for a good night’s sleep as many nights as possible by doing the following:

Set a bed time alarm and a wake up alarm and stick to it

Our bodies like routine and if you work with your body, your body will work with you. Just like you get hungry at the same time everyday because your body releases particular hormones, you can get sleepy at around the same time if you keep a consistent schedule.

Day: expose yourself to natural light, increase your body temperature, and move

In the morning, your body needs signals to know it’s time to get moving. So open the blinds and look outside for a couple minutes, do some Wim Hof breath work, jump around for 60 seconds, take a 30 second cold shower, etc.

Anything that stimulates your body will serve you and set you up for the rest of the day.

Night: eliminate blue light, lower your body temperature, and chill out

In contrast, when you start to wind down for the day, your body will begin to create the internal state necessary for you to fall asleep. Generally, you want to relax and take it easy. Meditation will help here as well.

If possible, cut out screen time in the evening or at the very least buy some blue blocking glasses (I use these). Your body uses external cues to determine when it’s time to get ready for sleep and light is one of the biggest ones.

Another cue is lowering your body temperature, which your body does every night while you’re sleeping. You can do this by taking a warm shower a few hours before bed (the hot water brings your blood vessels closer to the surface and when you get out, your internal heat will quickly dissipate, lowering your body temperature). Another thing I do is place an ice pack on my upper back as I’m getting ready for bed.

Most importantly, set a bed time routine for yourself where you do all these things. I have an alarm set for 10pm and at that point I will brush my teeth -> meditate -> read. I can’t control when my body gets sleepy, so I’ll just read until it’s ready to go to bed. Sometimes that’s before 11, sometimes I’ll stay up reading past midnight. I figure my body knows when it’s ready for sleep best so I just follow its lead.

Only use your bed for sleep

And finally, since your body uses cues and associations without our conscious awareness, using your bed only for what it’s intended purpose will help as well. Sexy time is ok too you rascal, but definitely don’t read in bed, don’t work in bed, and for god’s sake don’t eat in bed: that’s how you get ants and you don’t want ants.

Conclusion

That’s about it. As mentioned, you could get more granular but there is a point of rapidly diminishing returns with this stuff. If you ensure you’re giving your body what it needs, being super neurotic about it will only make things harder for you and for the people that have to put up with all your weird routines. And we know stress is terrible for your health. So don’t stress; do the minimum effective dose mentioned above and focus on the important things in your life.

Thanks for reading!