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Note that often the first-time people ask themselves these questions they have no idea of the answers. That is interesting in itself.  Just answer what you truly feel in your heart and not what’s in that over analytical mind of yours.

The key is to be honest.  The clearer you define where you are now the better you can plan the best route forward.

The latest research is vividly clear, the quickest way to optimize your Health & Vitality is by fusing together bite-sized lifestyle improvements spanning : Exercise - Nutrition - Fasting - Meditation and Sleep Patterns.  Implementing small changes to your lifestyle across all these areas will produce better results than if you place all your time and energy in just one.

Next we're going to explore your starting point in each of these areas.

Physical Health

Optimizing physical health requires a holistic approach that enhances our Mobility, Strength and Cardiovascular Systems.

All too often people mistakenly focus all their time and energy in just one activity, such as strength-training or High Intensity Interval Cardio Training (HIIT) or mobility-training such as yoga.   You need a fine blend of activities that individually targets mobility, strength and cardio.  Don't be fooled into thinking that something like yoga will do all three.

Ten minutes of yoga, followed by a ten minute HIIT session, followed by ten minutes of strength training will produce astounding results in a very short time.  

You have to build this approach in stages.   Before you buy those lovely Nike running shoes to improve your Cardiovascular System with something like HIIT,  you need to built up enough core strength using strength-training.   Before strength-training you need to have a good range of mobility.  To achieve that, you need mobility training such as yoga.

Yoga is the best place to start.  Not only does yoga give you a basic mobility framework,  it provides you with an enhanced mind & body connection which will turbo charge your strength and cardio training.  Everyone should see yoga as a foundation to easily & quickly establish astounding physical health.

Nutritional Health

Today science continues to reveal just how catastrophically damaging our outdated nutritional guidelines of the past 60 years have been.

We would like to say we now have a very clear way forward, but sadly we cannot.   Placing a hundred nutritionist in a room would create a highly volatile atmosphere - no one would agree.  Partly because many would refuse to let go of old dogma.

But the good news is there are areas in which there are no arguments:  Our consumption of sugar; process food and lack of fresh vegetables is making us all sick and depressed.  For example sugar is more addictive and damaging to our brain than cocaine.   Processed meat is worse than smoking.   Wheat produces an inflammatory response throughout the whole body.  It takes up to 3 days for our bodies to finally remove the toxic additives in processed foods,  stressing our bodies beyond belief.  It's a wonder we are all alive.

Does this mean we should never eat meat.  No that's going too far the other way.  It's just that we eat way too much processed meat and not good quality meat.

Does this mean we should never eat sugar or wheat?  No. It's about being aware and slowly, bit-by-bit, changing to a more nutritional rich diet, that no longer destroys our bodies on a daily basis.

If you feel making such a change to your diet incomprehensible, then you're not alone.  To start off with everyone thinks it's impossible, but then slow they do.   The first step is the hardest, which is to lose the sugar.

Fasting

The science into health and longevity has exploded over the past 10 years and fasting is the latest zeitgeist.   Our bodies are designed to experience periods of nutritional abstinence.  Fasting turns on latent metabolic pathways that heal and strengthen the body.  It switches our bodies into a different mode of operation.  

In a fasted state the body converts white adipose belly fat to brown, which the body is then able to burn as fuel.  Fasting also boosts Autophagy which is a natural regeneration process that occurs at a cellular level.  Damaged cells (including cancer cells) are killed off and recycled.  And on top of all that, the body creates new stem cells enhancing the body's ability to repair itself.  

We all need to look into fasting.

One small problem with fasting is that if your diet is high in carbohydrates your body has probably lost it's primeval fat burning metabolic pathway.  Before you launch yourself into fasting you need to first train your body to make that switch into fat burning mode.  To do that you need to move to a Low-Carb-High-Fat diet.

Remember your health & vitality can only improve in achievable bite-sized steps.

Mental Health

Links between our addiction with Social Media and our Mental Health continue to hit the headlines, and for very good reasons.

OK, lets dip into a little bit of science:  Dopamine is a Neurotransmitter known as the brain’s signal for pleasure or reward, and for that reason anything that stimulates Dopamine production is addictive like sex, drugs, rock & roll, sugar, wheat and social media.  

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter giving us feelings of well-being, happiness and satisfaction.  Unlike Dopamine, Serotonin is not addictive.

A healthy brain needs a nice balance of Dopamine & Serotonin.  Unfortunately, Dopamine rules the roost.  If you keep spiking your Dopamine receptors those poor Serotonin receptors don't get a look in.  Then life isn't that great anymore, you don't feel motivated enough to move your life forward and life drags on.

As we all know dealing with our addictions isn't easy,  but there are a few tricks you can use to take back control. Mindful meditation is key to this process.

Mindful Meditation is way more than a means of dealing with stress.

In today's world we never have the time to look up at the stars with a blank mind, pondering insignificant things.   We are always thinking about tomorrow's sales meeting or the argument we had last week.  Our mind is either in the future or stuck in the past.  We are hardly ever present, in this exact moment.  Social Media compounds this issue.   We end up going through life not being in the here and now.

The brain needs space to open out.  Meditation will change the way you experience the world, it will sharpen your mind, you will become more creative, less judgmental and because you are more open you are better able to see the opportunities that come your way.  The power of meditation is explosive.   Maybe we are not able to stargaze underneath a tree all night anymore,  but we can all meditate.  

Sleep

The one ingredient that impacts your Physical, Nutritional and Mental Health is SLEEP.

One of the first things we analyse in the Sohot Health & Vitality Coaching Program is sleep.

Throughout the day your body is able to remove metabolic waste through breathing, sweating and visiting the toilet, but not the waste accumulating in your brain.  The metabolic waste from all that thinking you do throughout the day builds up and only during sleep is the brain able to remove that waste.   This is why, if your quality of sleep is poor, you will wake up feeling groggy & foggy.

When sleeping,  your body goes into repair mode strengthening the body.  They studied two groups of body builders and they found the group who were given an extra hour of sleep built more physical muscle mass than the group who were given an extra hour of weight training.  The Magic happens when sleeping.  

 

Well done.

It's all ways a good idea to re-evaluate this form every six months,  because the best way forward is to know exactly where you are standing right now, not six months ago.

At first, most people find the process of self examination harder than imagined.   Next time you will find it much easier.  You will get better at it.  Your answers will become more precise.

If you are filling this form out as part of our Health & Vitality Coaching Program, please go ahead to book your first Discovery video coaching session with Bill & Elaine.

If you would like information about our Health & Vitality Coaching Program click this link: https://courses.sohotlifestyle.com/courses/health-and-vitality-program