How to be healthier than 99% of people

The biggest problem with trying to be healthy is the overwhelming amount of conflicting information in this space. Some caution against excessive red meat consumption, while others tout its potential health benefits. The exercise realm is no exception. Some believe cardio is a waste of time and you should only focus on weight training, while advocates of cardio emphasize its heart benefits.

It is not surprising. Human health is complicated. But trying to be healthy should be simple.

Being healthy can mean different things to different people. However, most agree being healthy means enjoying a long health span - the period of life where you enjoys good health and free from significant diseases or disabilities. How well you live matters as much as how long you live.

How to increase health span can be boiled down to three core pillars: sleep, physical exercise, and diet. Here are some lessons I have learned.

Sleep is a multi-billion dollar drug that maintains all critical body functions from cellular repair, and immune system regulation, to cardiovascular and cognitive health.

Insufficient sleep is worse than drunk driving. As Matthew Walker explains in his book Why We Sleep, “The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. Short sleep predicts all-cause mortality.”

Good sleep is more than just time spent in bed, but also the quality of it. How much time you spend asleep, how frequently you wake up during sleep, time spent in each sleep stage, etc affects sleep quality.

One way to tell if you have sufficient sleep is if you feel sleepy at 11 am without caffeine.

Here are a few guidelines to follow to get the best sleep.

1. Stick to a schedule

Sleep and wake up at the same time every day.

2. Avoid using electronic devices an hour before bedtime.

Blue light emitted from electronic devices disrupt your body’s internal clock and suppresses melatonin - the hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles.

3. Meditation

Meditate for 10 mins before bedtime if you have a habit of overthinking. Sit or lay down in a comfortable position. Focus on your breathing. Breathe in and out for 5 seconds each. Bring your focus back whenever you catch yourself thinking about other things.

4. A pitch-black bedroom

Any light source can affect your circadian rhythm (the body’s internal clock). Make sure your bedroom is as dark as possible. If necessary, get a sleep mask.

From my personal experience, daily exercise is the most effective way to improve sleep quality.

Engaging in regular exercise offers several advantages, a few of which include:

• Mental health: You can handle stress better, and have better memory and productivity.
• Metabolic health: Lowers the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cancer.
• Cognitive health: Lowers the risk of neurodegenerative disorders such as dementia, Alzheimer, and Parkinson’s disease.
• Immune health: A healthy immune system reduce the risk of common cold and flu.

Physical fitness calms anxiety and trains your body to utilize food for energy rather than storing it. When you exercise, your body stimulates the production of mitochondria. Mitochondria is the cell’s power plant. It produces energy to power your cells which in turn powers you. More mitochondria means more energy to take on everyday challenges and faster recovery from fatigue.

As much as having more mitochondria is desirable, we also want to be sure they are doing their job as efficiently as possible.

Old or damaged mitochondria are like a 30-year-old coal power plant. In the process of producing energy, they release inflammatory free radicals that can lead to chronic diseases. The good news is that exercise also triggers another cellular process called autophagy to mitigate this.

Autophagy means ‘self-eating’. Autophagy breaks down and recycles organelles like aging mitochondria to make way for new mitochondria. It reduces inflammation and aging by repairing cells and organs for longevity.

What’s the plan? The three types of physical activities to focus on are mobility, cardio, and strength.

Mobility

A supple body enables proper exercise form and reduces potential injuries from daily tasks. Most injuries stem from overcompensation due to tight muscles and stiff joints.

For instance, lifting heavy objects with a rounded back because of a stiff lower body can strain the lower back or pull the hamstrings. This might not sound like a big deal, but it has a domino effect on overall health.

Your fitness level goes down during the recovery period. Injury can affect sleep as well. You become less motivated and get stressed easily over trivial things due to poor sleep and a sedentary lifestyle. This in turn influences what you eat. You binge on highly refined foods because they make you feel better. A vicious cycle ensued. These foods further slow down your recovery and make your sleep even worse.

Spending 15 minutes a day stretching your muscles and joints can prevent all of these from happening in the first place.

Cardio

Cardiovascular exercise reduces cancer risk & cardiovascular diseases by reducing chronic inflammation, lower cortisol (the stress hormone), increasing antioxidants, and activating autophagy. Cardio also improves VO2 max - a primary marker of longevity.

VO2 max measures the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use per minute during intense exercise. It reflects your body’s efficiency in delivering oxygen to your muscles and your muscles' ability to use that oxygen to produce energy. People with a higher VO2 max tend to live longer than those with a lower VO2 max.

Your cardio plan should be as simple as possible.

Pick any cardio exercise that is the most convenient and accessible to you.

Start with aerobic base training. Also called Zone 2 training, this training works within a moderate heart rate range (60-70% of maximum) to enhance aerobic capacity, endurance, and fat-burning capabilities. Increase your mileage by no more than 10% each week. Do this for 3 to 6 months before adding any high-intensity interval training into the mix.

Strength

Our body is made up of visceral fat, subcutaneous fat, muscle mass, and bones. Whereas subcutaneous fat is fat beneath the skin visible on the mirror, visceral fat accumulates in organs such as the liver and arteries. Visceral fat is one of the main causes of chronic diseases.

The best body composition is one with little to no visceral fat, a good amount of muscle mass, and a high bone density. We can get rid of visceral fat through cardio exercises and a healthy diet.

As for increasing muscle mass and bone density, strength exercise is by far the most effective way to achieve that.

We lose 3-8% of our total muscle mass every 10 years and that accelerates after our 60th birthday. As we age, daily activities we take for granted such as carrying groceries or pushing grocery carts, walking up the hills, holding on to guard rail, sitting or standing can suddenly become a challenge. Your legs wobble, your grips weaken, and your bones turn frail. This is the reason why falls have the highest accidental deaths for people over 75 years old.

Strength and resistance exercise is the only way to postpone this decline.

The plan here is straightforward: 3 exercises (a push, a pull & a leg exercise), 3 sets each, 10-15 repetitions per set, and 3 minutes rest between each set.

Push-ups, bench presses, or dips are some common push exercises. Examples of pulling exercises are pull-ups, chin-ups, or rows. And squat, lunges, or deadlifts are some popular leg exercises.

Focus on proper form with a full range of motion. Your body will adapt to these exercises over time so it is important to continuously raise the bar. This can be in the form of higher repetition, reduce rest time between sets, increase time under tension, increase leverage, and added weights.

Food

If there’s only one lesson you can take from eating, it will be to cut out high sugar, ultra-processed food. Eliminate ice cream, instant noodles, chips, chocolate (dark chocolate as an exception), cake, pizza, pastry, sugary and alcoholic drinks from your diet. To name a few.

Insulin resistance is the biggest factor that drives most modern diseases.

An ultra-processed diet high in sugar is the expressway to insulin abuse.

Your health will be way ahead of everyone else by cutting out sugar. Instead of following a particular diet (vegan, carnivore, paleo, etc), my advice is simple: eat real food.

What is real food? Food in its original form. Food that has no nutrition facts label. Grains, beans, fruits, green vegetables, nuts, seeds, poultry, seafood, and fatty oil such as olive oils and avocado. These are food that nourishes the body.

The distinction between real and processed food also underly an important message - what’s important is not what’s inthe food but what’s been done to the food.

All processed foods are engineered with three goals in mind: convenience, long shelf-life, and flavour.

Which ingredient can achieve all these three? Sugar. Sugar makes food last longer and tastes better.

In addition to sugar, nutrients like polyphenols and fibre are destroyed in the process to make way for additives, preservatives, emulsifiers, and flavour enhancers - all to achieve these goals.

It is what’s been done to the food - removing essential nutrients and adding highly inflammatory chemicals - that wreck the body.

Cutting out sugar inevitably put you in the direction of eating more real food. That is all there is.

Here is a recap on the three pillars.

• Get 7-8 hours of high-quality sleep every day.
• 15 mins of mobility exercise daily.
• 2-3 times of cardio exercise each week. Start with aerobic base training.
• 2-3 times of strength exercise each week. Focus on push, pull, and leg exercises.
• Cut out highly processed and sugary food from your diet.
• Eat real food such as grains, nuts, seeds, dark leafy greens, fruits, and olive oil.

Staying healthy is simple but not easy. It is not a sprint but a marathon. Consistency is key.

Transformational changes will set you up for failure.

The best way to start, regardless of where you are right now, is to do things that require the least amount of effort.

Look for a tiny unhealthy habit and replace it with a slightly healthier habit.

One at a time.

You are not after the healthiest habit but 1% better than yesterday type of incremental improvement.

Think of 2 pizzas with a side green this week instead of 3 pizzas last week; run an extra 100 meters this month; do one extra push-up next week.

Each of them is not a monumental achievement.

But they will move mountains in due time.