A Good Night's Rest.....Essential for Health.

Hello!!

Happy Monday!!  First off, I must admit...I was at the Bears game yesterday (I'm a season ticket holder), and I ate some food that is NOT part of my SuperHuman program.  I value honesty, so I wasn't going to hide it from those following my blog.  It's not like I ate anything completely terrible, like fast food or highly-processed garbage food, but I strayed from my 100% organic goal. 

Needless to say, I can feel it today.  I feel almost hungover, and I didn't have one sip of alcohol.  Interesting how strong the body's reaction is to improper nutrition once it begins to clean itself out!!

Ok, on to the good stuff for today... I am going to touch on the value of sleep, and proper exercise. 

Sleep

Our bodies operate on a number of natural cycles and rhythms.  The main one pertaining to sleep is the Cirdadian Rhythm, and involves our relationship to the Sun and Moon.  Our bodies are designed to sleep from around 9 or 10pm until around 6am.  The further we stray from that, in either direction, the more it will effect our health.  It took me MONTHS to get back to this rhythm after almost a decade in the restaurant and bar industry.  I know that I felt 5x better immediately upon getting this rhythm back into place.

Our bodies (and brains) also heal and grow stronger while we sleep.  This is essential to increasing strength, becoming more lean, losing weight, increasing our metabolism, finding relief from chronic aches and pains, and preventing chronic illness.  Studies have show that working an overnight shift literally takes years off one's life!!  I will discuss, in later posts, some tips on improving sleep, and many more details about the importance. 

My goal during these 171 days is to be in bed by 10pm, asleep by 10:30, and awake between 6:00 and 6:30am, at least 90% of the time.  Dimming lights, avoiding TV and computer late at night, using candles, certain breathing exercises, and meditation are all ways to increase production of "night time" hormones, which will help you fall asleep.  (And will make for quality sleep)

Proper Movement

Movement is life.  There is no way for a completely sedentary individual to achieve optimal health.  I'm sorry.  I don't make the rules.  We are designed to move.  Now it is how we move that determines our results (both internally and with our outward appearance) in regards to exercise.  Like we spoke about last time, the production of stress hormones is detrimental to our health on a number of levels. Therefore, I do NOT advocate spending hours on the treadmill, doing intense bootcamp style workouts, spin class, or anything else of that manner...unless you are a well-conditioned athlete with proper posture, form, technique.  Also, to benefit from this type of training requires a quality diet, optimal hydration, quality sleep, and low overall stress-levels.  Then someone's body can handle, and adapt to, the added stress.

For most people, they do not fit all these criteria.  Since one of the glaring symptoms/problems presented by this hemochromatosis has been fatigue and general lack of energy, I am not going to jump straight into that type of training.  I am focusing on walking my dog every day (we walk through Fermi Lab, where they smash atoms!), practicing yoga, some corrective exercise, core strengthening, zone exercises (energy cultivation), and light activity such as kayaking, canoeing, etc...  I will work my way up to more intense training, but I do not recommend that anyone participate in running, circuit training, bootcamps, etc... unless they take care of everything else and have built a strong foundation!

WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE GOING TO DIE, STOP DOING WHAT YOU ARE DOING.  Proper movement should leave you feeling more energy than you had prior to the exercise.  You should not feel like your heart is going to explode, or that you may lose your lunch!!  This is an outdated mentality which does more harm than good!! 

Next Time:  Fad Diets, Calorie Restriction, and Balancing Meals!!