A Day in the Life

For the sake of transparency and because I like to check out how others approach health, I thought I’d post a normal day in the life for me, focusing on food, supplements and health promoting activities.

Let me be very clear by saying that by no means should everyone be doing this much in their day to day lives in the name of health – and every so often I have days where I don’t do much. It’s also important to note that most health coaches or fitness enthusiasts don’t do quite this much – it just so happens I personally love to experiment and tinker around,  and with this regimen I’ve found massive benefits from the supplements and procedures listed below. And while it may sound like a lot, it takes very little time out of my day.

Remember, this is on top of an already very nutritious diet. For the vast majority of us, simply eating right, getting plenty of physical movement, practicing stress reduction and using a supplement or two is plenty in order to improve your health.

A Day in the Life

Wake Up – Anywhere from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. I like to wake up semi-early to get a head start on my day, but some days I’ll just let my body catch up on sleep and wake up naturally.

Upon waking –

• Glass of room temp water, mainly because I’m thirsty and because it helps to get the digestive system going
• Morning supplements – the standards of which are a half-capsule of highly-absorbable B-Vitamins, Boron and half a teaspoon of magnesium citrate
• Morning caffeinated beverage, which is either a half-caff coffee with added L-theanine, or green tea with gynostemma. The caffeine has obvious mental benefits, while the L-theanine, either in supplement form or naturally found in green tea, helps improve focus and enhances the brain’s alpha waves, increasing creativity
• Usually a nootropic, or cognitive enhancing substance – I’m currently using oxiracetam, a piracetam derivative that has a little more “kick”. This, combined with the caffeine and L-theanine, provides quite the boost in focus and mental energy

Total Time = 3 minutes

At this point I get to work on my business. In the winter I’ll use a Verilux “Bright Light” to help ward off the winter time blues, and also to help set my circadian rhythm – this is key for everything from energy levels to proper hormone release. The bright light is also quite energizing. I’ll use this light occasionally in the warmer months as well, especially when it’s too hot in the summer to sit outside in the sunlight.

After coffee or tea – A drink of adaptogens and Chinese herbs. These help improve hormone levels, delay aging, boost immune function, improve fertility, and prevent burnout and adrenal fatigue, as well as having a myriad of other benefits.

My current cocktail is centered around increasing Jing, and includes he shou wu, cistanche, ashwagandha, schizandra, shilajit, and cordyceps, as well as a formula called Restore the Jing. Most of these are mixed into one bag, so I just scoop some into warm water and mix.

Substances that increase Jing, a term from Traditional Chinese Medicine roughly translated as “Regenerative Essence”, have been found to improve hormone levels, delay aging, increase mental performance, enhance fertility, bolster the immune system and leave you feeling invincible. They’ve made a huge difference in my energy levels, confidence and ability to just get shit done.

Total Time = 2 minutes

~ 11 or 12 – Work out 5 or 6 days out of the week. Some days I work out fasted, with no food in the stomach, or some days I’ll have a small snack prior.

• I make a home made pre-workout beverage that contains Betaine, BCAAs, Beta-Alanine, Creatine, and sometimes L-Glutamine. These all improve performance in the gym, enhancing muscle growth and improving energy levels. Betaine is also a superb liver detoxifier, beta-alanine increases the brain-growing, anti-depressive protein BDNF, and L-glutamine is great for digestive health
• Some days I take adaptogenic herbs that specifically improve workouts. It may be rhodiola, cordyceps, a nice Asian ginseng extract, or some combination therein. These don’t have so much of muscle building effects as they do increasing drive and endurance within the gym
• My workout may be lifting weights, going trail running, doing sprints in my neighborhood, etc.
• Immediately after I workout I down a protein shake with either unsweetened almond milk or grass-fed dairy, whey protein powder, and sometimes some extra BCAAs and L-Glutamine, depending on workout intensity. This helps my muscles recover from the strain I just put on them

Within an hour of my workout – I have my first real meal of the day. It’s usually a big salad with plenty of greens, a protein source, some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and some source of slow-digesting carbs, such as beans, squash, carrots, etc. Immediately post-workout is known as the “anabolic window”, so food consumed at this time is preferentially used to repair muscle tissue and won’t be stored as fat.

If it’s a “Re-feed Day”, this will be a high carb, high protein meal. Re-feed days help reset my body’s sensitivity to key fat-burning and hunger-controlling hormones, including insulin, leptin and ghrelin, as well as helping to build muscle.

~ 3 times a week – Hyperthermic Conditioning and Cold Thermogenesis – After workouts I’ll sometimes hit the sauna for a good 20 minutes. It’s more than just a way to relax, as saunas

• Increase the release of fat-burning, muscle-building Growth Hormone
• Resensitize the brain to endorphins
• Improve insulin sensitivity
• Release Heat Shock Proteins, which have immune-boosting and longevity-enhancing effects,
• Help to release stored toxins through sweating
• Increase BDNF, a protein that promotes growth of new neurons and protects existing ones, and an increase in which is thought to be responsible for enhanced learning. It’s also a potent anti-depressant

All of this combines to allow my body to easily repair muscle damage from my workout, boost my immune system, improve my mood and cognitive performance from the BDNF, detoxify and possibly enhance longevity, all from just sitting in a warm room for 20 minutes.

I follow this up with an icy cold shower, the combination of which leaves me feeling giddy as a schoolgirl for the rest of the day. Exposure to cold has been shown to

• increase the number and output of Brown Adipose Tissue within the body, which is a type of fat that actually burns regular fat for energy when the body gets cold. Yeah that’s right, just get cold and watch the pounds melt off (more on this in a future post)
• increase adiponectin, a fat-burning, muscle-building hormone
• increase glutathione, our body’s “master antioxidant”
• boost the immune system and may extend lifespan
• increase norepinephrine levels 5-fold, leading to enhanced energy and mental clarity (and schoolgirl giddiness)

Again, I’m reaping massive benefits by just sitting in a hot box for 20 minutes and following that up with 5-10 minutes of a chilly shower.

~ 12 p.m. on days I don’t work out – First meal of the day, usually a low-carb salad with plenty of greens and a protein source. I also consume high quality fish oils with lunch and dinner.

Additional supplements consumed around lunch time – Vitamins D and K2, as well as Vitamin A extracted from cod liver oil, 4-5 times a week. These are fat-soluble vitamins that have a plethora of effects, ranging from being precursors to hormones (Vitamin D), improving androgen levels and androgen receptor sensitivity (Vitamin A), neuro-protection and neurogenesis (all three) and ensuring that calcium gets deposited in bones and not in soft tissue (all of them, especially K2). You can buy well over a year’s supply of Vitamin D/K2 here.

~ Notice that I don’t have breakfast? I loosely practice Intermittent Fasting (IF), where you allow certain periods of the day to be food-free. Considering I usually have dinner around 7, and don’t eat my first meal till around 12, I’m giving myself 17 hours of fasting each day.

This gives you most of the benefits of real fasting, without the discomfort that sometimes accompanies real fasting (which I also do once every month or two). IF helps to reset your sensitivity to insulin and other hunger-controlling, fat-burning hormones, as well as enhancing autophagy, the process by the which your cells “take out the garbage”, and is another potent inducer of the brain-growing, mood-enhancing protein BDNF.

That said, if I wake up feeling particularly hungry for some reason, I’m not afraid to listen to my body and eat breakfast. It’s important to be regimented and disciplined with your diet, but at the same time you need to give yourself breaks and be balanced.

~ Throughout the day – Multiple cups of green tea and gynostemma. You can either carry some tea bags with you in your car, or brew a big thermos with a few bags of each in the morning.

• the combo is a powerful antioxidant one-two punch
• the green tea contains EGCG, which helps the body burn fat through multiple pathways
• green tea contains small amounts of caffeine as well as L-theanine, which work in concert to improve mental functioning
• gynostemma improves insulin sensitivity
• gynostemma is adaptogenic, helping the body cope with all the stressors of modern life, and also significantly increases Superoxide Dismutase, or SOD, another of our body’s powerful endogenous anti-oxidants

~ Most days – A serving of greens powders. I’m a big fan of Vitamineral Green as well as Green Vibrance, although sometimes I’ll switch it out and do just spirulina or chlorella. These greens are insanely nutrient dense, helping to fill in the gaps in my diet and bolster my nutrition, which is important considering most food today is nutritionally inferior to what it once was, and because I spend five days a week working out hard and pushing my body. The mixed greens also contain probiotics.

~ Hiking and Yoga – I hike about twice a week, more for personal enjoyment than anything else. But it’s a great way to catch up with friends and as I stated in my previous post on meditation, just being in the woods has been proven to lower stress levels. Yoga is possibly the most healing activity one can do, improving everything from stress levels, hormone levels, depression, fatigue, even boosting the immune system. I aim for 2-3 sessions of yoga a week, each session lasting only 20-30 minutes each.

~ Sometime in the afternoon/evening – a few more adaptogenic/Jing boosting herbs. Usually around this time of day it’s just the use of tinctures and possibly some ashwagandha to help keep cortisol low during my stressful job.

 

~ Meditation in the evening – Currently 20 minutes a day. The benefits are endless – Read about them in my first and second posts on meditation.

~ Dinner roughly 3 hours before bed – Dinner is almost always lower in carbs, not too big and consumed early, to keep insulin low by the time I go to bed. If you have too much insulin floating around the bloodstream when you put on your night cap, a whole cascade of fat-burning, muscle-building and tissue-repairing hormones won’t be released while you sleep.

Evening supplements 4-5 days a week – One capsule of kelp, mainly for the iodine, which improves thyroid function and detoxifies toxic halogens such as fluoride from the body. Zinc and selenium as well, as both are essential for proper androgen levels, and selenium also helps boost thyroid function, keeping my metabolism buzzing like a caffeinated humming bird. If it’s your first time taking kelp or an iodine supplement, I suggest taking it in the morning as it can provide quite the boost in energy levels.

~ A few hours before bed – Reduce the use of blue light coming from cell phones, computers and tvs. This wave length of light has been found to suppress melatonin release and shift circadian rhythms, pushing them back. You can download a free app called f.lux for your computer and smartphone that gradually tints your screen more and more red as the sun begins to set, blocking blue light.

~ Twice a week 30 minutes prior to bed – A few times a week I hit the hay early (9-10 pm) and use 1.5 – 3 mg of melatonin a half hour prior to bed. Melatonin is the main hormone your body produces to help you fall asleep; it also entrains your circadian rhythm, meaning that when melatonin is consistently produced (or consumed) at the same time, you will naturally and easily fall asleep at this hour.

According to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences,

Circadian rhythms can influence sleep-wake cycles, hormone release, body temperature and other important bodily functions. They have been linked to various sleep disorders, such as insomnia. Abnormal circadian rhythms have also been associated with obesity, diabetes, depression, bipolar disorder and seasonal affective disorder.

Further,

A Harvard study shed a little bit of light on the possible connection to diabetes and possibly obesity. The researchers put 10 people on a schedule that gradually shifted the timing of their circadian rhythms. Their blood sugar levels increased, throwing them into a prediabetic state, and levels of leptin, a hormone that leaves people feeling full after a meal, went down.

In other words, having a properly tuned circadian rhythm is pretty damn important. The use of occasional melatonin along with exposure to a bright light source in the morning, either to outdoor sunlight on a bright day or a Verilux lamp, helps to entrain a healthy circadian rhythm.

The majority of people shouldn’t use melatonin every night however – it is a hormone after all, and if you continuously consume exogenous hormones, your body will stop producing it’s own.

And that about does it. Remember, this is all in the name of experimentation and seeing how far I can take things. I want to see just how much energy and motivation I can have. I’ve tried hundreds of different supplements and protocols in the past, and this is the cream of that crop. I’m sure in the future I’ll be able to narrow this list down even more but in the mean time, this is giving me the best results.

I encourage you to try some of this out and see how it effects your day to day life, and feel free to contact me to get a highly effective, personalized plan.