Exercise Less, Move More

Plus: two quick-and-easy healthy tiramisu recipes!

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The 10almonds Team
July 11, 2023

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⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

  • Tiramisu (lit: tira-mi-su, “pick-me-up”), the Italian dessert, is a great thing for happiness, but how about for health? See today’s video for not one but two quick healthy tiramisu recipes!

  • Today’s featured expert, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, wants us to exercise less, and move more.

    • He wants us to pay particular attention to his four pillars of proactive health:

      • Relaxation

      • Food

      • Movement

      • Sleep

    • Check out today’s main feature for his personal approach to each of these, and why they’re so important (and why they’re in that order!)

  • Of all the cognitive activities we can do to keep our brains young, keeping our language skills polished is one of the most critical (use it or lose it!)

    • Today’s sponsor Babbel offers an easy, fun, and useful (because as a bonus, you learn another language) way to do just that

  • Eucalyptus oil has antibacterial properties against two main oral disease pathogens

Read on to learn about these things and more…

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👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Oatmeal Tiramisu (no sugar needed!)

Tiramisu (lit: tira-mi-su, “pick-me-up”), the Italian dessert, is a great thing for happiness, but how about for health? Behold, not one but two (quick and easy!) healthy tiramisu recipes:

Tiramisu Menu:

  • 0:21 Recipe #1

  • 1 banana

  • 160 g (2 cups) rolled oats

  • 2.5 tablespoons chia seeds

  • sweetener to taste (he uses honey)

  • 480 ml (2 cups) milk

  • 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa

  • 2:54 Mascarpone or cream cheese and vegetable cream for whipping

  • Place in the fridge for 2 hours

  • Sprinkle with unsweetened cocoa

  • 3:57 Finished result”

  • 4:09 Recipe #2

  • 2 bananas

  • 160 g (2 cups) rolled oats

  • 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa

  • 1 teaspoon of instant coffee or 1 espresso

  • 80 ml (1/3 cup) warm water

  • 100 g Greek yoghurt, 2 tablespoons mascarpone or cream cheese

  • Place in the fridge for 1 hour

  • Sprinkle with unsweetened cocoa

  • 7:37 Finished result"!

💬 MAIN FEATURE

Exercise Less, Move More

This is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. He's a medical doctor with decades of experience, and he wants us all to proactively stay in good health, rather than waiting for things to go wrong.

Great! What's his deal?

Dr. Chatterjee advises that we take care of the following four pillars of good health:

  1. Relaxation

  2. Food

  3. Movement

  4. Sleep

And, they're not in this order at random. Usually advice starts with diet and exercise, doesn't it?

But for Dr. Chatterjee, it's useless to try to tackle diet first if one is stressed-to-death by other things. As for food next, he knows that a good diet will fuel the next steps nicely. Speaking of next steps, a day full of movement is the ideal setup to a good night's sleep—ready for a relaxing next day.

Relaxation

Here, Dr. Chatterjee advises that we go with what works for us. It could be meditation or yoga… Or it could be having a nice cup of tea while looking out of the window.

What’s most important, he says, is that we should take at least 15 minutes per day as “me time”, not as a reward for when we’ve done our work/chores/etc, but as something integrated into our routine, preferably early in the day.

Food

There are no grand surprises here: Dr. Chatterjee advocates for a majority plant-based diet, whole foods, and importantly, avoiding sugar.

He’s also an advocate of intermittent fasting, but only so far as is comfortable and practicable. Intermittent fasting can give great benefits, but it’s no good if that comes at a cost of making us stressed and suffering!

Movement

This one’s important. Well, they all are, but this one’s particularly characteristic to Dr. Chatterjee’s approach. He wants us to exercise less, and move more.

The reason for this is that strenuous exercise will tend to speed up our metabolism to the point that we will be prompted to eat high calorie quick-energy foods to compensate, and when we do, our body will rush to store that as fat, understanding (incorrectly) that we are in a time of great stress, because why else would we be exerting ourselves that much?

Instead, he advocates for building as much natural movement into our daily routine as possible. Walking more, taking the stairs, doing the gardening/housework.

That said, he does also advise some strength-training on a daily basis—bodyweight exercises like squats and lunges are top of his list.

Sleep

Here, aside from the usual “sleep hygiene” advices (dark cool room, fresh bedding, etc), he also advises we do as he does, and take an hour before bedtime as a purely wind-down time. In gentle lighting, perhaps reading (not on a bright screen!), for example.

Ready to start the next day, relaxed and ready to go.

If you’d like to know more about Dr. Chatterjee’s approach…

You can check out his:

If you don’t know where to start, we recommend the blog! It has a lot of guests there too, including Wim Hof, Gabor Maté, Mindy Pelz, and come to think of it, a lot of other people we’ve also featured ideas from previously!

Enjoy!

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❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

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Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

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📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Biohack Your Brain: How to Boost Cognitive Health, Performance & Power - by Dr. Kristen Willeumier

The title of this book is a little misleading, as it's not really about biohacking; it's more like a care and maintenance manual for the brain.

This distinction is relevant, because to hack a thing is to use it in a way it's not supposed to be used, and/or get it to do something it's not supposed to do.

Intead, what neurobiologist Dr. Kristen Willeumier offers us is much more important: how to keep our brain in good condition.

She takes us through the various things that our brain needs, and what will happen if it doesn't get them. Some are dietary, some are behavioral, some are even cognitive.

A strength of this book is not just explaining what things are good for the brain, but also: why. Understanding the "why" can be the motivational factor that makes a difference between us doing the thing or not!

For example, if we know that exercise is good for the brain, we think "sounds reasonable" and carry on with what we were doing. If, however, we also understand how increased bloodflow helps with the timely removal of beta-amyloids that are associated with Alzheimer's, we're more likely to make time for getting that movement going.

Bottom line: there are key things we can do to keep our brain healthy, and you probably wouldn't want to miss any. This book is a great care manual for such!

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Wishing you the very best start to the week,

The 10almonds Team