Healthy is arguably the single most important area of our life without our health we can have all the money in the world the best career the best relationships the most fun hobbies we won’t be able to enjoy any of them because our health is miserable but even though we might know intellectually that our healthy is important when it comes to how we spend our time it’s often first thing that goes work and life gets busy and the first thing we do is we stop sleeping properly, we stop eating, well we stop exercising because who’s got time for those things now as a former doctor turned entrepreneur and productivity expert I’ve been on mission recently.

The principles of productivity to my health and fitness and well-being so I’ve been reading bunch of books about health working with an online health coach, but a lot of the stuff that I’ve learned can be pretty dense and so I’ve been trying my best to translate the things that I’ve learned into simple actionable evidence based hacks that can seamlessly integrate into my life so that the aspects of my health are an autopilot so I don’t have to think too hard about them.

The 3-2-1 Method

According to the CDC one in three adults In US report not getting enough sleep and not getting enough rest in the day I suspect the actual number is higher than this because I very rarely meet people who feels as if they’re getting enough sleep now one simple hack that I found for improving my sleep in a very easy to remember way is the 3-2-1 method

The 3 in the method means to stop eating 3 hours before sleeping this study for example showed that eating within three hours of your normal bedtime was associated with nocturnal awakening which basically means that you’re waking up at night and so your sleep quality is reduced.

The 2 in the method means stop drinking liquids 2 hours before sleep now you might know dirnking caffeine in the evening is likely to distrupt your sleep but actually drinking any kind of fluid even water one to two hours before sleeping has associated with lower sleep quality as well

The 1 in the method means to cut out screen usage 1 hour before sleeping and again there’s bunch of studies that show that if you look at a bright screen one hour before sleeping that’s likely to affect your sleep quality and especially when it comes to phones and stuff the over stimulation that we get from our phones which is literally what our phones are designed to do it’s something that can make falling a sleep a lot harder than It necessarily need to be.

10,000 Steps

You’ve heard this before sitting as the new smoking and they’ve done so many studies about this where basically they show that physical inactivity is this golden bullet that just increases you’re your risk of dying from all sorts of bad things and as you might have heard taking 10,000 plus steps a day is generally a very good thing this meta-analysis of 15 studies for example showed that taking more steps per day was associated with a progressively lower risk of all cause mortality.

This study showed that in sendentary overweight individuals 10,000  steps a day significantly lowered anxiety depression anger fatigue confusion and total mood distress and this study for example showed that for every 500 steps you increase per day of cardiovascular disease decreases by about six percent and so what I’ve tried to do is add as many simples hacks to my life to get to my 10,000 steps.

So firstly the single best thing that I found for this is actually to get treadmill underneath my standing desk it was abiut 300 but is was totally worth is it’s the walking pad C2

The Yogi

“An entrepreneur will work 60 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.” I think that’s very true and again  chances are if you’re reading this article I suspect your stress levels are high as well because you’re probably busy you like to be productive you’ve got lots of things going on and what the doctor said si that I should meditate more and  I was like meditation like who cares but then I saw some studies and those studies showed that.

If you mediate it reduces your blood pressure it reduces cortisol levels which is a stress hormone it reduces your heart rate reduces your cytokine levels which is marker of inflammation it can aslo increase your self-compassion and your attention and your focus and so there’s just like a mountain of evidence saying that meditation is good for you.

Realated articles: here

Automate Your Protein Intake

Speaking of protein intake because that that first time around for the first six months I didn’t eat enough protein and I also didn’t work out enough and I actually lost 2kg of muscle what I’ve realized is I need to automate my protein intake now the amount of protein you need depends massively on who you ask where you look at the sauce and there doesn’t seem to be much of a consensus in the scientific literature about it.

The world health organization for example say you need 0.83 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight perday but most personal trainers and fitness experts that I’ve spoken to say that is nowhere near enough to actually build muscle if you are trying to build muscle and so for me I’m roughly aiming for around 1.5 to 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and this is acutally annoyingly hard to get in my diet because I tend to skip breakfast and then like lunch and dinner it’s like I have to actively think about protein but one thing that I started to do automate my protein intake again based on advice from myfitnesscoach.go

The skincare Routine

The final hack Is my productive and evidence skin care routine and this basically involces just three products I’ve talked to a bunch of dermatologists and this is broadly the stuff they recommend.