Aaaaand it begins… the cave season ☠️

Surprise Surprise… I rant about food 🤓

New Computer Feature 🔓UNLOCKED🔓

Intervals & Volume Eating hacks

90min @ 310w raw (400g/carbs)

According to the current science I didn’t read but heard from a bunch of different Dr.s that go on podcasts and promote their book, what is the best bang for your time investment to get best results. This is in order from greatest impact with least investment to the most time-consuming with the least impact. Don’t want to read this? Just sleep better, move more, and eat more real food. Lots to unpack, but that’s the gist of it.

SLEEP
The current scientific consensus from every Dr in different sectors is that sleep is hands down the best health pillar to focus on. Here are a couple of insane facts: the Monday after daylight savings day, when we spring forward and lose an hour, has a significant spike in death from heart attacks. Correlating with people being so unhealthy that just an hour’s loss of sleep is enough that they die… what? 

Another crazy stat is the effect poor sleep has on your testosterone. 1 hour of sleep loss is equivalent to around 20mg of injectable TRT per day! Which is way above a medical dose. So if you only get 3 hours of sleep, you would need 100mg of TRT to bring your hormones back to the normal range. 

So anything you can do to improve sleep duration and quality is well worth your time. It’s why hippie shit like grounding works: if it helps you get 5% better sleep, that’s significant. Here are the top 5 things you can do to improve sleep: 

1: 3-4hr fast before bed | no food near bed reduces body temperature ✅
2: Cool environment temperature | sleeping in cool room reduces core body temperature ✅
3: Get fresh air / CO2 low | Open a window at night and turn the fan on, CO2 builds fast and disturbs sleep ✅
4: Increase blue light in the eyes early morning / Reduce blue light before bed. | This deals with your circadian rhythm leading to balanced hormones around bed like low cortisol and high melatonin ✅
5: Cut off Caffeine 6-8hrs before bed | this one is obvious, caffeine reduces the feeling of being tired, making you stay up longer reducing your sleep ✅
————-
MOVE
It’s hard to choose between movement and diet as the next thing to focus on, but from what I understand, it’s easier to out-move a bad diet than to out-diet no movement. Here are the top three scientifically proven things to focus on when moving:

#1 Strength Training 
(Not so important in your early ages, but as you get older, holding onto muscle mass becomes harder and harder. Things like grip strength and body weight squats are a huge predictor of death after 60. You don’t need much, 15 to 20 minutes 2 to 3 times a week have been shown to be enough, Especially as you get older.

#2: Endurance 
(VO2 max is another crazy predictor of early death. After about the age of 25 you can no longer increase your VO2 max, you can only slow it’s decline. It’s why being fit early in your age and not being obese young is important, but if you missed that window like I did, things like cycling 6 to 8 hours a week are huge for your VO2 max later on in the age. 

#3 High Intensity
(you need to hit all pillars of intensity to get the most bang for your buck). Low impact, low intensity movement like yoga or walking often has some of the best benefits for the time investment. A lot of studies also show that you need high intensity short duration, 10 to 30 second all out efforts occasionally in the year. so basically just walk 8 to 12,000 steps a day, start your morning with a light stretch by just getting on the ground and getting back up, and maybe once a month sprint to the stop sign all out for 15 seconds.
—————

DIET
Diet is crazy important but takes a lot of work to reverse some of the habits you’ve built. It also takes money to purchase the right foods and the knowledge on how to prepare them. That’s why this one is the last in the list even though it may be the most important depending on your current diet. Perfecting your diet is a long journey that takes insane consistency, and dedication.

Everyone has different genetics and gut biome and goals so there is no perfect diet for everyone. But if you follow this simple sentence, you can’t really go wrong.  “Eat real food, mostly plants, not too much.” Notice I didn’t say only plants, so don’t get triggered about some vegan propaganda. It means by volume more of your food should be from plants rather than animals as animals are much more dense in calories making it easier to over eat often. Here are my top five things to focus on when improving your diet.

#1: TRACK EVERYTHING 
Depending on how much your meals vary, you may only need to do this for one month. But you need to weigh out and measure and track every single thing you put in your mouth at least once a year for 30 days. This will give you context to how much you’re actually eating, as most people think a bag of cashews is 100 cal when in reality it’s at 1700. Tracking will also hold you accountable as do you wanna feel like a fat ass by tracking “AN ENTIRE BOX OF OREOS” in your app. Probably not, so it could stop you from over eating just by simply putting friction of tracking in front of eating.

#2: MACROS
Macros determine how you look, micros determine how you feel, calories determine your size. And in my experience, focusing on protein, and getting enough of it has been one of the biggest impacts of benefits that I’ve seen. 

It’s hard to know what your macros are if you’re not tracking your food though. And protein doesn’t have to be the main focus, you can also look at fat and carbs depending on what it is you eat more often.

3: FASTING
For the general public fasting 14 to 16 hours a day is going to reverse damn near all of their ailments. Reducing blood pressure, repairing diabetes and a whole host of other benefits. Now, if you’re more on the side of being an Athlete, this gets a little tricky , but still limiting your eating window to a minimum of 12 hours and extending it on days you don’t train to 14 to 16 hours is backed heavy in the science.

#4: VARIETY
Change up what you’re eating based on your activity level and the seasons. Everyone wants to be on a team like team carbs or team fat or team animals. Each diet has its pros and cons so if you can balance it all well, like by being keto some days and plant based other days and maybe even carnivore other days, you may be able to see benefits from multiple diets.

Personally, I side with plants more than I do animals, but that’s also because I eat 4000 to 7000 cal a day giving me a greater window to bring in nutrients and macros. If you’re only able to get in 1500 to 2000 cal a day, I don’t think a strict vegan diet would be the move.

# 5: MICROS
Micro nutrients are the vitamins and supplements you take. Ideally, your diet is so perfect that you don’t need to supplement, and kind of a side quest is that I think is funny is that everyone thinks vegans need all these supplements and are malnourished yet less than 1% of the population is upholding $1 trillion industry? More meat eaters use supplements than vegans just saying, supplementation can be a great addition no matter what your diet is.

Things like vitamin D3 and K2, omega-3‘s, magnesium, creatine, and iron are some of the best bangs for the buck. I also take a nootropic stack of L-tyrosine, and El dopa as those are  building blocks for dopamine, and dopamine is linked to motivation. If you’re feeling unmotivated, you probably have a deficiency of dopamine or the building blocks for dopamine. 

tThis is the least important aspect of the entire health pie, yet so many people put this one at the top as by taking two omega-3 pills is somehow going to reverse an entire unhealthy lifestyle. Supplements really only work when everything else is in line.

Top Sports

Tyler Pearce Ⓥ

Health Upgrades (Which ones to focus on?)

2 Photos

16 Comments

Segments

Sign up to view more activities from Tyler Pearce Ⓥ

Aaaaand it begins… the cave season ☠️

Surprise Surprise… I rant about food 🤓

New Computer Feature 🔓UNLOCKED🔓

Intervals & Volume Eating hacks

90min @ 310w raw (400g/carbs)

Want to see more?

The #1 app for runners and cyclists

Sign Up for Free. Track your progress and reach goals. Join 100 million active people on Strava.

See More from Tyler