2020 has been a rough year for many of us. However, it also made us realize how important it is to keep ourselves healthy. Many have re-evaluated their diet and exercise and seems like for 2021, more than before, people are planning their New Year resolution seriously.
Regardless of reasons why we exercise or improving nutrition, we should all focus on improving our health. When I say health, it doesn't just mean not getting sick but able to control your metabolic health including, immune system, blood chemistry, weight and so on. Even if you are athlete, the performance will decrease when the above parameter are not up to normal. You may have seen the news about some bodybuilders have suffered tremendously from COVID-19. Well they may look fit but that does not mean that they are healthy. Models on the magazines may look fit but we don't even know what kind of health issues they are going through to maintain the physique.
If the 2021 goal is to improve your health, here are some things that we all should work on.
1. Learn to control your insulin
Insulin is a very important hormone. Without it we cannot survive for our body cannot obtain nutrients from food source. However, insulin secreted for long duration of time will lead to insulin resistance then to weight gain and lower immune system. It is important to eat, however, you don't have to eat all the time even when you are working on building strength and muscles. Start off with consuming 3 meals a day including snacking. Those meal should be consists of natural food sources, such as vegetables, meat, fish, seeds, nuts as much as you can. 3 meals day will allow the body to lower the insulin level and actually teach the body how to utilize energy that is stored in your body called fat.
2. Build your strength and muscles
When people start exercise, they normally start with cardio like walk, run, and hike. Although those exercises are important, however, building your strength and muscles are by far more important. Some of the reasons are strength and muscle mass determines the physiological age. In other words, more strength and muscles you have the body function as efficiently as when they were younger. There has been number of studies showing how our physiology improves as strength and muscles increase even if at the older age. Work on learning how to do complex exercises such as squat, deadlift, push, and pull exercises.
Also, by having more muscles does improve the insulin sensitivity as well, which leads to topic we've discussed earlier. Improving insulin sensitivity means that the body can handle more insulin without having negative health issues.
3. Train your body to rest
Sleep usually is the challenging topic for the most. However, it is vital for improving our health and making us stronger. Even if you are not good at sleeping with proper scheduling, you can train your body like you do with exercise.
Start off with set a time to go to bed and time to wake up. Make sure it is a time that seems reasonable for you based on your schedule. Don't worry about getting 8 hours yet. If you can, great! If not, don't stress out over it.
Once you get yourself set up with sleep schedule, have some ritual set up before entering the bed. For example, I stop looking at PC, Cellphone, TV 30 minutes prior to my bed time. That means I many need to improve my work speed to get stuff done before hand.
If you can stick with that plan for 14 days, see if you can increase the duration of sleep by changing either bed time or wake up time. Don't make drastic change. 30 minutes change would be good enough. Little by little, you will be able to get at least 6 hours of sleep without too much issues.
4. Minimize stimulants usage
When we consume too much caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, etc, the body does get side affect. Many of these stimulants are used to either get energy or let the body relax. However, there has been enough evidence that is showing that it does disrupt with our system.
Usage of alcohol or marijuana is common to help sleep better. However, looking at physiological recovery from sleep with aid, it is far from being ideal. If you have a stress issues that require you to use aid to help sleep or relax then you may need some help. Try adding 500 mg of magnesium 30 minutes prior to your bed. Results may not happen immediately and may need to repeat for few days but the body will learn to relax rather than brain going like crazy.
Same thing would go with caffeine. If you need to rely on caffeine every single day, you may need some help. If you have energy issue in the morning, try adding salt to your food little more than usual. Mineral deficiency, especially salt deficiency, is very common and can lead to lower metabolism.
5. Drink more water
Yes, its water again. Which mean, yes, it is that important. I know some people does not like drinking water, however, our body needs it. Start off with drinking glass of water at each meal. Take entire 2021 to see if you can increase the water intake to a gallon a day.
It is a new beginning. Lets strive to create new you so you can enjoy all the new things that are in store for us in 2021.
Kota Shimada
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