Strategic Wellness

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ 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:

• Historically, humans ate in certain ways at certain times of day and had very specific kinds of exercise before doing so

  • In terms of how long ago hunting and gathering was… It’s been a tick in the clock on an evolutionary scale, so our bodies are still geared for that

  • We can improve our health by:

    • eating when the sun is up (and not when it isn’t)

    • getting moderate exercise before eating (walking is fine)

    • making breakfast bigger and dinner smaller (see today’s main feature for more on why and how)

• Verb Energy are offering high protein, low sugar snack bars at a very good price (and are today’s sponsor!)

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

One Quick Exercise To Improve Your Walking

Leading over-50's physiotherapist, Will Harlow, reveals one great exercise—that almost no one knows about—that can improve your walking. This exercise can also help with knee pain:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

If you want to skip straight to the exercise itself, you can jump straight to 4:15 for that. We do recommend staying for his explanation, though!

🍽 MAIN FEATURE

Strategic Wellness: planning ahead for a better life!

This is Dr. Michael Roizen. With hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and 14 US patents, his work has been focused on the importance of lifestyle factors in healthy living. He's the Chief Wellness Officer at the world-famous Cleveland Clinic, and is known for his "RealAge" test and related personalized healthcare services.

If you’re curious about that, you can take the RealAge test here.

(they will require you inputting your email address if you do, though)

What’s his thing?

Dr. Roizen is all about optimizing health through lifestyle factors—most notably, diet and exercise. Of those, he is particularly keen on optimizing nutritional habits.

Is this just the Mediterranean Diet again?

Nope! Although: he does also advocate for that. But there’s more, he makes the case for what he calls “circadian eating”, optimally timing what we eat and when.

Is that just Intermittent Fasting again?

Nope! Although: he does also advocate for that. But there’s more:

Dr. Roizen takes a more scientific approach. Which isn’t to say that intermittent fasting is unscientific—on the contrary, there’s mountains of evidence for it being a healthful practice for most people. But while people tend to organize their intermittent fasting purely according to convenience, he notes some additional factors to take into account, including:

• We are evolved to eat when the sun is up

• We are evolved to be active before eating (think: hunting and gathering)

• Our insulin resistance increases as the day goes on

Now, if you’ve a quick mind about you, you’ll have noticed that this means:

• We should keep our eating to a particular time window (classic intermittent fasting), and/but that time window should be while the sun is up

• We should not roll out of bed and immediately breakfast; we need to be active for a bit first (moderate exercise is fine—this writer does her daily grocery-shopping trip on foot before breakfast, for instance… getting out there and hunting and gathering those groceries!)

• We should not, however, eat too much later in the day (so, dinner should be the smallest meal of the day)

The latter item is the one that’s perhaps biggest change for most people. His tips for making this as easy as possible include:

• Over-cater for dinner, but eat only one portion of it, and save the rest for an early-afternoon lunch

• First, however, enjoy a nutrient-dense protein-centric breakfast with at least some fibrous vegetation, for example:

  • Salmon and asparagus

  • Scrambled tofu and kale

  • Yogurt and blueberries

Enjoy!

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Verb Energy: High protein, low sugar bars with organic green tea caffeine!

Forget the overpriced latte, and supercharge your morning with these:

Verb Energy are tasty energy bars that…

• Are high protein, low sugar

  • (they even have a <2g sugar option!)

• Contain 80mg caffeine from organic green tea

  • (so about as much caffeine as an espresso)

There’s a wide variety of flavors, from cookie dough to caramel macchiato, s’mores to chocolate sea salt—see their shop for full list of flavors!

As for price, they do various deals, but to give you an idea, they’re typically just a little over a dollar per bar—so, cheaper than the much more sugary energy bars in your local supermarket!

Click Here To Check Out Verb Energy Bars!

(Psst, use code “STACK” to enjoy 30% off)

🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Tea, apples and berries could stave off age-related memory loss, study suggests

• Precision nutrition vs. low-fat diet: no significant difference in diabetes management

• Memory boost with multivitamins: study reveals improved cognitive function in older adults

• Humans may have evolved a spring-like arch to enable upright bipedal locomotion

• Sleep disorder affecting 1% of people can foreshadow dementia

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

I'm So Effing Tired: A Proven Plan to Beat Burnout, Boost Your Energy, and Reclaim Your Life - by Dr. Amy Shah

It's easy sometimes to feel like we know more or less what we should be doing... If only we had the energy to get going!

• We know we want a better diet... But we don't have the time/energy to cook so will go for the quickest option even when it's not the best?

• We know we should exercise... But feel we just need to crash out on the couch for a bit first?

• We would dearly love to get better sleep... But our responsibilities aren't facilitating that?

...and so on. Happily, Dr. Amy Shah is here with ways to cut through the Gordian Knot that is this otherwise self-perpetuating cycle of exhaustion.

Most of the book is based around tackling what Dr. Shah calls "the energy trifecta":

• Hormone levels

• Immune system

• Gut health

You'll note (perhaps with relief) that none of these things require an initial investment of energy that you don't have... She's not asking you to hit the gym at 5am, or magically bludgeon your sleep schedule into its proper place, say.

Instead, what she gives is practical, actionable, easy changes that don't require much effort, to gently slide us back into the fast lane of actually having energy to do stuff!

In short: if you've ever felt like you'd like to implement a lot of very common "best practice" lifestyle advice, but just haven't had the energy to get going, there's more value in this handbook than in a thousand motivational pep talks.

Click here to check out "I'm So Effing Tired" and get on a better track of life!

May your day see you full of energy,

The 10almonds Team