This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 2378, Building Better Habits by Dr. Neal of Optimal Health Daily, and I'm Justin Molick. Normally, this is where I read to you kind of like an audiobook, usually an article a day from the best authors I can find and get permission from that can help you optimize your life. But on Sundays, I like to share an episode that I think can help you optimize just a bit more.
I pick an episode from one of our other podcasts in this network, and today's comes from Optimal Health Daily. On that show, my brother Dr. Neal Molick reads an article covering health, fitness, and nutrition, and then on Fridays answers your questions. The question that came in for the episode you're about to hear is a really good fit for this show, so I thought it'd be an excellent bonus episode over here.
If you want to send in a health-related question to him, it could be about diet, nutrition, fitness, exercise, weightlifting, even stress management, and more. You can send a question to my brother by emailing health at oldpodcast.com, and then he'll answer it on a Friday Q&A episode of that show. And of course, you can find the podcast Optimal Health Daily wherever you're hearing this. And with that, let's hear this Q&A from Dr.
Neal of Optimal Health Daily as we optimize your life. Welcome back to another special Friday edition of Optimal Health Daily, where I answer your questions. On the other days, I read health and fitness blogs to you like an audiobook. He has some aware of my voice sounds a little bit odd today.
Here's what I realized. I've kind of become a little bit of a weakling. There was one night, one night where I stayed up to like 1 AM. I hadn't done that in forever, maybe college.
I've been so used to going to bed by like 930 or 10 at the latest, staying up to 1 AM, did this to my voice. Go figure. So I apologize that I sound like this. But bear with me, I think you'll love today's Q&A.
So without further ado and honestly to spare my voice, let's jump right to today's question and start optimizing your life. Hello, my name is André, I live in Norway and I'm 32 and looking at the old people here, they quite fit and they're in their 60s, 70s still go to the gym and train three times a week. But I was just wondering, maybe I should do something about it because for now I have two kids and I train regularly and I eat whatever, I have an opportunity to eat and whenever like there's no schedule for that. Would you just give tips on how to start doing things right to be able to like stay fit for long?
Thank you. Thank you for your question, André. By the way, I must mention that Norway is one of my mom's favorite places in the world to visit. Now, let me tell you why this is a high compliment.
My mom is a world traveler. Literally, she's been to every continent. Yes, even Antarctica. Now, she's not one to take pictures when she's on vacation.
She finds them to be a bit of a hassle. But after visiting Norway, she treated the family to a beautiful slideshow of all the photos that she took and she's been begging me to visit Norway ever since. So it's definitely now on my bucket list. Anyway, back to your question, André.
Now, I've done this before. I'm going to reveal to you my psychic abilities. I'm willing to guess you know exactly which health behaviors you should be doing. You know what you need to do to achieve optimal health and wellness into your later years.
The trick is usually taking that first step and performing those healthy behaviors and then making them a habit. That's the problem. I found that most people don't need to be told that they should exercise regularly and eat more fruits and vegetables. They don't need to be told to manage their stress better or to get more sleep like me in my case.
So to borrow from the Nike slogan, they need to just do it. I was at a conference in San Diego this past fall. And I'm going to quote one of the speakers here, Dr. David Sabgier.
We don't need health information. We need health inspiration. And to me, that says it all. So my question to you and anyone else interested in taking that first step towards a healthier, more well life is this.
What inspires you? Now, based on your question, it sounds to me like feeling your best when you reach the later stages of life, maybe one such form of motivation. But sometimes goals like these, while inspiring, can seem so far away, it leads to inaction. You might end up saying, Oh, that's so far into the future.
I'll get around to it. So to prevent this from happening, here's what you need to do. First, think about the habits that you need to adopt to help you feel your best when you reach those later stages of life. So you mentioned consistently exercising three times a week.
I would agree that staying physically active is one of the best ways to keep your body feeling younger. So let's use that as an example. If you want to exercise at least three times a week, well into your 60s and 70s. And if you're not following a structured exercise program now, this means the first step is to begin exercising.
But here's the good news. You don't need to exercise three times a week starting this very minute. We can work up to that. So where should you start?
That leads me to step two. And this step I brought from Dr. B. J.
Fog from Stanford University. So step two, think about your daily routine. I promise there's a method to my madness. Follow me here.
Let's say your morning routine looks like this. Your alarm clock goes off abruptly at 6 a.m. every weekday. When the alarm sounds, you shut it off, get out of bed, and immediately in your stupor head to the bathroom sink to wash your face and brush your teeth.
This is your morning routine. You with me so far. Okay, so here's what you do. Starting on Monday, try this.
When the alarm sounds shut it off like you normally would, get out of bed, and instead of walking towards your bathroom sink like you usually do, you stop and do five push-ups, or maybe two sit-ups or maybe seven standing squats. Then finish your morning routine by walking over to the sink to wash your face and brush your teeth. Did you catch what just happened there? In a not so sneaky way, we added a new behavior to your routine.
Remember, your routine was getting up after your alarm clock wakes you, walking to the sink, etc. And we just inserted a new healthy behavior in between that. Not only that, but we added a behavior that's quick and relatively easy to do. Five push-ups or two sit-ups or seven standing squats.
Those take few seconds maybe at the most. Note, you do not have to do all of these, and honestly, you could just do one push-up or one standing squat if you wanted, just as long as you do it. Now you may be thinking, how is this possibly going to get me to my ultimate goal of being fit when I'm in my 60s and 70s? Well, here's the genius behind this approach.
Again, I'm going to use my psychic abilities here. When you perform those one or two, or maybe five push-ups or sit-ups or squats or whatever, you'll probably say to yourself, well, this doesn't feel so bad. Why don't I just keep going? Then you might find yourself doing ten push-ups or maybe 20 or more.
And the other really cool thing about this method is that it doesn't require much extra planning or preparation. You'll already have your morning habits. Just add one small extra behavior in between. That's it.
You've just created a new habit. Okay, so this is all well and good for an unstructured exercise routine. But what if your goal is to be able to run three miles or more at a time and then have some bulging biceps as you get older? You could apply these very same steps.
Start by taking a look at your usual routine. If you want to take up running, for example, you need to know when the best time to do this will be. Knowing your normal patterns will help you figure out when the best time will be. So let's say whenever you get home from work, you immediately go to the television and begin watching your favorite show.
So instead of doing this, which is your current habit, what you can do is first be sure to leave your running shoes right next to the television remote the night before. Then when you get home from work the next day, instead of walking through the door and turning on the television, you walk through the front door, head towards the television, and find your running shoes there. Then instead of turning on the television, you put on your running shoes and go for a quick jog. It could be a 10 minute jog, a 15 minute jog, or even a one-minute jog.
It doesn't matter. As long as you put on those running shoes, that counts. And then what you'll do is repeat the next day or maybe the day after. Do the same thing.
Leave your running shoes right next to the TV remote the night before. When you come home and your habit has usually been to walk over the TV remote to sit down and watch a show, you find your running shoes there. And then that cues you to put them on. And maybe you'll go for another minute run or two minute run or five or ten minute run.
Once putting on your running shoes as soon as you get home from work becomes a habit. And hopefully, of course, the jogging that follows, you could build on how long and or how often you run. So from there, you can increase the distance or time or intensity, whatever you prefer. And that will soon become your new habit.
And what's great about this is you can use the same simple steps to create any other healthy habit that you want. You just first have to know your routine and then insert a new healthy but simple behavior in between. Thank you again for the question, Andre. You'll be entered into a very small raffle every month to win a book.
And if you want to submit a question and have a chance to win books from us, it's really easy. You can call in. The number is 61. I love OHD.
Or you could submit your audio question by clicking the red bar along the side of our site at oldpodcast.com. That'll let you record your question, listen back to it, and then submit it to us. Again, that's at oldpodcast.com. I made it through.
My voice is almost about to give out. Thank you as always for listening. Thank you for listening all the way through. I apologize for my voice.
Hopefully, it'll sound better on the next episode. Have a wonderful weekend. I'll be back here on Monday. We're optimal life awaits.