Starting out on your new Healthy lifestyle.
Before I start saying “do this and do that” to get you into shape for a healthy life that will take you well into your old age, it is very important to understand the angle I am coming from. This way you can take or leave my approach through informed decision. What I express, is my opinion, I have arrived at it, from a long time of studying various different Exercise regimes, science, diets, fitness Industry fads and a host of other things including what has worked for me.
I don’t profess to being superhuman or having great strength, but at 54 I feel pretty good, can run around and hold my own, with people ½ my age and do different physical activities that I know The Average Joe my age, can’t do. My Body fat is stable around 12%, I would like it to be less than 10% and I am working my way to it.
Right that’s enough about me, now I want to tell you the background to the approach that you’re going to take if you stick with me and want to see pretty amazing results. So to start with we have to go back into history, well back in history to our Ancestors who were originally hunter, gatherers.
Our Ancestors lived a completely different life to us. They obviously had no electricity, TV, Cars, remote buttons to do things for them without having to actually move. They lived a very simple and very active life.
1. They Slept
2. They Ate
3. They moved around to find the food to eat
4. They reproduced.
Well, we won’t bother with the reproduction side, we still do that, and I don’t need to explain that one.
Sleep and Nutrition, I refer to as the BIG 2. Get this right and you will feel an unbelievable positive difference in your HEALTH, in a few days.
I want to go into headings 1-3 individually starting with:
SLEEP
In today’s none stop society, we have so many distractions, TV, Computers, computer games, restaurants, you get the point?. All these things revolve around electricity. So what? You may be thinking. But with electricity comes a constant supply of light in our lives. Electricity has not been around very long in the grand scheme of things, and before electricity we had gas lamps and oil lamps, but before them our ancestor’s only source of light was the Sun, Moon and Fire. Therefore when it got dark, they went to sleep, and would most likely sleep until at least first light. Thinking logically, that would equal around 10 hours of sleep per night. This allowed our Ancient man to be well rested for the following day’s business, he had optimum rest. Now the average person today will probably get around 6 hours, because we can stay up and do other things, all thanks to the Electric light Bulb. This has consequences for us modern humans. The reason being is, that for 1000’s of years we got the natural amount of sleep we need, and we are still genetically programmed for this even today. But nowadays most people fall woefully short. To understand the problem with this, we need to look at Why sleep is essential for us to remain at full systems go.
Stages of Sleep
Stage 1.
Rapid eye Movement (REM)
In this stage, hormones vital to recovery start to react with the brain
Stage 2.
At this stage, the brain determines the available hormones and the amounts that it and the body need’s to manufacture to give us maximum recovery.
Stage3.
This is called the overlapping stage, some of the functions of stage 2 are taking place and some of the actions of stage 4 are happening
Stage 4.
This is called the Delta wave stage; this is the stage when body repair is occurring.
A point to note is that Human Growth Hormone levels are massively high during sleep helping to grow muscle tissue.
Interrupted or irregular sleep patterns, will leave you feeling tired and lethargic,
Lack of sleep can cause:
· Depression
· Low motivation
· Cardio vascular disease
· Digestive problems
· Muscular aches and pains
· Headaches
· Allergies
· Irritableness
· Poor thinking
· Loss of lean mass and appetite.
Because we are still genetically programmed by our evolution, we still need to get 8-10 hours of sleep per night to perform at our optimum levels. So the first thing you can do, to help reach optimum health is get enough sleep.
Here are a couple of tips to help you achieve optimum sleep.
Tip No 1.
Don’t stay up dossing on the couch watching TV etc, etc, take the opportunity of this down time to do some reproduction practice (good for putting the male to sleep after anyway).
Tip No 2.
a) Remove all distractions from your sleeping area.
b) Some people like to go to sleep with the TV on, there is no harm in this, however, you should use a timer, so the TV will switch itself off after a certain amount of time, and then there is less chance of disturbing you once you have entered a deeper sleep.
c) A small fan can be very useful to help you go to sleep, the noise from the fan is soothing and if directed at your face at a light setting can induce good sleep.
d) Try to avoid eating within a couple of hours before you sleep.
e) Do not consume too much liquid before sleeping; this will avoid you having to get up to use the toilet.
Get into the correct sleeping habits and you are on your way to improving your Health.
In my next blog I am going to write about a very simple subject, made complicated by conflicting information and the pursuit of your money by big companies. That is Nutrition
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