ALCHEMIC PHILOSOPHY
in memory of my mom
THE THREE PRIMARY PRINCIPLES OF HEALTH AND A GOOD LIFE
There are three primary principles for building a healthy life:
They are in this order for a reason.
Sleep comes first.
Nutrition comes second.
Exercise comes third.
This does not mean exercise is unimportant.
All three are important.
All three also affect each other.
The purpose of having only three principles is to make health easier to understand and easier to practice.
You should not need fifty rules running through your mind every day.
Remember three:
Sleep.
Nutrition.
Exercise.
Then pay attention to what happens.
If something is not working, ask why.
Look at what you are doing.
Find what is interfering.
Make a correction.
Try again.
Your body gives you information every day.
Learn to notice it.
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Sleep is the most important of the three principles.
Sleep is when the body and mind recover.
During sleep, the body repairs itself, the mind processes the day, muscles recover, and the body prepares for tomorrow.
Poor sleep affects everything else.
When sleep is poor:
Thinking becomes harder.
Stress becomes stronger.
Exercise becomes harder.
Recovery becomes slower.
Food choices become worse.
Hunger and cravings become harder to control.
Your ability to deal with life becomes weaker.
Protect your sleep.
Go to bed at approximately the same time every night.
Give yourself time to become calm before sleeping.
DO NOT treat sleep as something you do only after everything else is finished.
Make sleep part of the plan.
WHEN SLEEP IS NOT WORKING
If you are not sleeping well, do not simply say:
“I need more sleep.”
Ask:
“Why am I not sleeping well?”
Look at the day that came before the bad sleep.
Did you move your body?
Did you sit most of the day?
What did you eat?
How much did you eat?
When did you eat?
Did you drink caffeine late in the day?
Did you eat sugar?
Were you under too much stress?
Did you take your problems into bed with you?
Did you go to bed at your normal time?
Poor sleep is information.
Use it.
Find what interfered with sleep.
Correct it.
Then see what happens.
This is important because sleep does not exist alone.
Nutrition affects sleep.
Exercise affects sleep.
Stress affects sleep.
Your habits affect sleep.
The three principles work together.
Food is first for nutrition.
Food can also be enjoyable.
But enjoyment is not the first purpose of food.
The body needs nutrients, protein, energy, vitamins, minerals, fats, water, and other materials to function.
The modern world makes this easy to forget.
Many foods are designed to create powerful stimulation through sugar, salt, fat, flavoring, and processing.
Something tasting good does not mean it is good nutrition.
Learn the difference between:
Food that feeds the body and
Food that stimulates the taste buds.
They are not always the same thing.
KEEP FOOD SIMPLE
Start with:
Vegetables.
Protein.
Simple cooking fats.
These are the foundation.
Vegetables and protein come first.
Build meals around them.
Choose whole vegetables.
Choose full cuts of meat and other simple sources of protein.
Cook food at home.
Know what you are eating.
Do not make nutrition complicated.
FRUIT
Vegetables and protein come first.
Fruit comes after them.
Fruit contains vitamins, fiber, and nutrients, but it also contains sugar.
We already live in a world overloaded with sugar.
Use fruit in smaller amounts.
Do not treat something as unlimited simply because it is called healthy.
Remember the order:
Vegetables first.
Protein second.
Fruit after them.
WHAT ARE CARBOHYDRATES?
Carbohydrates include many different foods.
For the purpose of this lesson, when I talk about carbohydrates, I am mainly talking about starch-heavy and refined foods such as:
Bread.
Pasta.
Crackers.
Cereal.
Pastries.
Pizza crust.
Flour products.
Other similar processed foods.
These foods are easy to eat in large amounts.
They are also often combined with added sugar and heavily processed ingredients.
Do not make these foods the foundation of your meal.
Vegetables first.
Protein second.
Carbohydrates last.
Avoid refined carbohydrates as much as possible.
Especially avoid the combination of refined carbohydrates and sugar.
SIMPLE FOOD RULES
Make the rules easy to remember.
No added sugar.
Do not add sugar to food.
Do not make candy, pastries, desserts, sweetened drinks, or sugary snacks part of normal daily eating.
No fast food.
If it is fast food, do not eat it.
No highly processed packaged food.
Avoid food that has been heavily changed from its original form.
Cook at home.
Buy whole vegetables.
Buy whole cuts of meat.
Buy simple foods that you recognize.
Do not make your health dependent on understanding fifty ingredients printed on the back of a package.
Make the rule simpler:
Eat real food.
This is Whole Foods. not ground beef but a full steak, a whole chicken, a whole pig, a head of broccoli not frozen in a package.
THE ORDER OF FOOD MATTERS
The order in which you eat matters.
1. vegetables.
2. protein.
3. carbohydrates/fruits last.
Remember:
Vegetables first.
Protein second.
Carbohydrates last.
Do not begin a meal with bread.
Do not begin with sugar.
Do not begin your day with pastries, sweet cereal, doughnuts, pancakes covered in syrup, or sweet coffee drinks.
The first food entering the body should be real food.
Start with vegetables.
Then eat protein.
Do not begin the day by flooding the body with sugar.
Sugar gives a fast rise in energy followed by a drop.
Do not create that cycle first thing in the morning.
DO NOT CONFUSE MARKETING WITH NUTRITION
Marketing tells you what a company wants you to believe you are eating.
Your body receives what is actually in the food.
Know the difference.
Starbucks is the fast food of coffee.
Do not make Starbucks-style sweet coffee drinks part of your daily nutrition.
A large drink filled with syrups, sugar, cream, flavoring, and a small amount of coffee is not simply coffee.
It is a sugary drink containing coffee.
Do not confuse dessert with coffee because it is sold in a coffee cup.
If you drink coffee:
Drink coffee.
Keep it simple.
The same principle applies to food.
Do not trust the picture on the package.
DO NOT trust words such as:
Natural.
Healthy.
Energy.
Fitness.
Low-fat.
Look at what the food actually is.
Better yet, buy food that does not need a marketing department to explain what it is.
A steak is a steak.
An egg is an egg.
Broccoli is broccoli.
Keep food simple.
COOKING FATS
Keep cooking fats simple.
Use fats such as:
Olive oil.
Butter.
Ghee.
Beef tallow.
Do not use seed oils as your normal cooking fat.
Do not use generic vegetable oil.
Vegetable oil is a general name that can describe different processed plant oils or mixtures of oils.
It does not mean that someone squeezed oil out of the vegetables sitting on your dinner plate.
Avoid heavily processed cooking oils.
Avoid oils that have been repeatedly heated for commercial frying.
This is another reason to avoid fast food.
Know what fat you are cooking with.
WHEN YOU EAT MATTERS
Nutrition is not only about what you eat.
Timing matters.
Do not eat immediately before sleep.
Leave at least two hours between your last meal and sleep.
Your body should have time to deal with the meal before you go to bed.
Do not continually place food into the body from the moment you wake until the moment you sleep.
Eating has a time.
Not eating also has a time.
CAFFEINE
Caffeine is a stimulant. (coffee, soda, energy drinks)
Caffeine is not compatible with preparing the body for sleep.
Do not drink caffeine in the late afternoon or evening.
Drink coffee earlier in the day.
Do not use caffeine to continually cover poor sleep.
If you need more and more caffeine because you are exhausted, the problem is not a lack of caffeine.
Fix the sleep.
EAT TO 80%
More food is not more nutrition.
Good food can still become too much food.
Eat until you are 80% full.
Do not eat until you are stuffed.
Stop when you are comfortably satisfied.
Give the body what it needs.
Then stop.
GIVE THE BODY TIME WITHOUT FOOD
Eating is part of nutrition.
Not eating is also part of nutrition.
The body needs time to deal with what has already entered it.
Think of your body as a house receiving packages.
Packages arrive.
Then more packages arrive.
Then more packages arrive.
If the packages continue arriving, eventually the house becomes crowded.
Stop the deliveries.
Give the house time to process and remove what is already there.
The same principle applies to eating.
Periods without eating are useful.
Give the body time to work with what it already has.
INTERMITTENT FASTING
Intermittent fasting means dividing the day into two periods:
An eating window.
A fasting window.
The eating window is the period when you eat.
The fasting window is the period when you do not eat.
For example:
Eating during ten hours of the day and not eating for fourteen hours is called 14:10.
Eating during eight hours and not eating for sixteen hours is called 16:8.
Do not make fasting complicated.
Start with a simple rule:
Stop eating at least two hours before bed.
Sleep.
When you wake up, do not immediately put food into your mouth.
Give the body time to wake up.
Drink water.
Warm water is a simple way to begin the morning and prepare the body for the day.
Then eat when it is time to break the fast.
This is what breakfast means:
Break-fasting.
Breakfast does not mean:
Eat immediately when you wake up.
It means:
This is the meal that ends your fasting period.
Create space between the last food of one day and the first food of the next.
Let the body process the boxes already in the house before sending in more boxes.
YOUR TASTE BUDS CAN BECOME OVERSTIMULATED
Sugar, fast food, sweet drinks, salty snacks, and heavily processed foods create powerful stimulation.
Eat these foods constantly and your taste becomes accustomed to that intensity.
Then simple food begins to taste weak.
Vegetables begin to taste boring.
The problem is not necessarily the vegetables.
Your taste has been trained toward overstimulation.
Stop the sugar.
Stop the fast food.
Stop the highly processed foods.
Give your taste buds time to adjust.
Simple foods will begin to have more flavor again.
Do not compare broccoli with food that has been engineered to overwhelm your taste buds.
Give your body time to change.
PAY ATTENTION TO DIGESTION
Pay attention to what happens after you eat.
How does your stomach feel?
How is your energy?
Do you feel heavy?
Do you feel tired?
Are you hungry again immediately?
Does something repeatedly cause discomfort?
Your body is giving you information.
Pay attention.
Also pay attention to what leaves the body.
Pay attention to bowel movements.
Pay attention to urine.
Notice major changes in frequency, color, consistency, and comfort.
These are signs of what is happening inside the body.
Do not ignore them.
STRESS AND DIGESTION
The mind and body are not separate machines.
Stress affects the body.
Do not eat while rushing.
Give yourself time to eat.
Do not turn every meal into another stressful activity.
Eat.
Let the body receive the food.
Then move.
Do not immediately perform hard exercise after eating.
Do not run.
Do not do a heavy workout.
Walk.
3. EXERCISE
Exercise is the third principle.
Most people hear the word exercise and immediately think of:
Gyms.
Heavy weights.
Running.
Hard workouts.
Those things are useful.
But they are not where exercise begins.
Exercise begins with one simple idea:
Move your body.
The body was built to move.
Use it.
Move it more then you sit or lay during the day and you will be able to say you are exercising.
THREE SIMPLE MOVEMENT RULES
Start here:
Stand more than you sit.
Stand when eating.
Walk after eating.
These rules create movement throughout the day without requiring a complicated exercise program.
Do them every day.
STAND MORE THAN YOU SIT
Modern life makes sitting the default.
You sit while working.
You sit while eating.
You sit while driving.
You sit while watching television.
You sit while using a computer.
Hours can pass while the body barely moves.
Change the default.
Stand more than you sit.
If you can do something standing, stand.
Do not automatically search for a chair.
Move around the room.
Change positions.
Use your legs.
Use your body.
Sitting should not be the body’s only position for most of the day.
WALK AFTER EATING
After eating:
Walk.
Walk within the first hour after the meal.
Do not run.
Do not turn it into a difficult workout.
Take a normal walk 10 to 15 min right after eating.
Your muscles use energy.
Walking gives your muscles work to do after food enters the body.
Do not eat and then remain motionless for hours.
Eat.
Stand.
Walk.
Keep it simple.
MUSCLE MATTERS
Muscle is not only for appearance.
Muscle is part of the body’s energy system.
Muscle uses glucose.
Muscle gives the body strength.
Muscle supports movement.
Muscle protects physical independence.
Muscle gives the body physical reserve.
Build muscle.
Maintain muscle.
This becomes increasingly important as you age.
Do not confuse being thin with being healthy.
A person can weigh very little and still have too little muscle.
Too little muscle means less strength and less physical reserve when the body is injured, sick, or under stress.
The goal is not simply:
Weigh less.
The goal is:
Build a body capable of doing work you do everyday and maintain it as long as possible.
STRENGTH, ENDURANCE, AND FLEXIBILITY
Walking is important, but walking is not everything.
The body needs:
Strength.
Endurance.
Flexibility.
Strength allows you to lift, carry, push, pull, stand, and protect yourself from physical decline.
Endurance allows you to continue moving without becoming exhausted.
Flexibility allows your body to move through a healthy range of motion.
Build all three.
You do not need to build them all in one day.
You need to keep using them throughout your life.
MOVEMENT IS MORE THAN A WORKOUT
Do not wait for a workout before you move.
Walking is movement.
Standing is movement.
Stretching is movement.
Cleaning the house is movement.
Carrying groceries is movement.
Working in the yard is movement.
Taking the stairs is movement.
Strength training is movement.
A workout is one part of an active life.
It is not the entire thing.
Move throughout the day.
THE THREE PRINCIPLES WORK TOGETHER
Sleep, nutrition, and exercise are not separate systems.
They form one system.
Sleep allows recovery.
Nutrition gives the body the materials and energy it needs.
Exercise gives the body a reason to use those materials and energy.
Then the body returns to sleep.
Recovery begins again.
The cycle continues.
This is why sleep comes first.
Sleep shows you how well the rest of the system is working.
WHEN SOMETHING IS NOT WORKING
Use the three principles as a way to investigate your life.
Start with sleep.
How am I sleeping?
If sleep is poor:
Why?
Then look at nutrition.
What am I eating?
How much am I eating?
When am I eating?
Am I eating sugar?
Am I eating fast food?
Am I eating too close to sleep?
Then look at exercise.
Am I moving?
Am I standing?
Am I walking after eating?
Am I building and maintaining muscle?
Then look at stress.
Look at your habits.
Look at what changed.
Look at what you did differently.
Do not ignore the result.
The result gives you information.
OBSERVE — ASK WHY — CORRECT — CONTINUE
The three principles are not meant to remove thought.
They are meant to remove unnecessary confusion.
Start with simple rules.
Follow them.
Then pay attention.
If something is working, continue.
If something stops working:
Observe.
See what is happening.
Ask why.
Look for what changed.
Correct.
Change what is causing the problem.
Continue.
See what happens next.
This is how experience becomes knowledge.
This is how you begin to understand your own body.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Health can become extremely complicated.
Books, websites, advertisements, diets, supplements, experts, companies, and social media can give you thousands of rules.
Do not begin there.
Begin with three words:
Sleep.
Nutrition.
Exercise.
Remember the order.
Protect your sleep.
Feed the body real food.
Move every day.
Then pay attention.
When something stops working, investigate.
Find what is interfering.
Make a correction.
Continue.
You do not need to remember everything.
You need a foundation.
Sleep.
Nutrition.
Exercise.
Start there.