First it was my amazing Sista Sabrina sending me home with 2 birthday cakes from my birthday get together at her house last Sunday
"If it stays in my house here... I'm throwing it all away!"
she smartly said (she's a health nut Workout Hero like myself in case you didn't know :) )
It was way too delicious to waste so home with us it went! Bit of a story of how she ended up with TWO birthday cakes, so perhaps I'll save that for a different day.
Then on my birthday Tuesday, Bethany made a super delicious Pumpkin Honeybun Cake.
A recipe by one of her favorite recipes guru Youtuber Julia Pacheco. Here's the recipe in case you want to try it yourself -- it's actually not too bad for you at all.
This thing was so good that upon feeding a small piece to Kason, he proceeds to grab Bethany's hand which had a fork in it, and directed that fork towards the cake, and then to his mouth. He wanted MORE!!
Needless to say, the word "Cake" he certainly now knows! :) What I appreciate so much with my LIYFF Meal Plan (Lovingly Includes Your Favorite Foods) is that it is a framework for getting to enjoy your life guilt free.
Here's how that is done:
Step 1: Get your Anti-fragile Workout in... which creates a nice little DEMAND in your body for calories and nutrients
Step 2: Get your protein in
Step 3: fill up the rest of your TCA (Total Calorie Allowance) with whatever calories you want.
That's how I've been living this week, having a good percentage of my TCA eaten up (pun intended :) ) by cake and Halloween candy, but haven't gained a pound!
I obviously don't plan on living like this long term, and it's very seasonal. I still have noticed a dip in energy though as these kind of calories, although delicious, my body sees more as "lower quality", and don't quite burn as cleanly for fuel.
I'll be glad when all these sweets are gone and back to normal eating.
With that said, let's get to some more age defying, forever young making tips, strategies, secrets, hacks, etc...
I believe we are up to #32 and have the end in sight of our little series here... and today we are going to approach the topic of sleep.
We all know how important it is and how we're supposed to get the usual 7-8 hours of sleep, yada yada yada. and you've likely heard the cliche slew of tips about turning off blue light and not drinking caffeine within 6 hours of bedtime...
... but what about when you have trouble actually FALLING ASLEEP... Here are tips I've found that worked really well for me:
32) It's Future Me's problem... Ugh. Do you ever have that where your mind is racing so much and you just can't fall asleep? Here's a trick I picked up from Sarah Knight in her hilarious book Calm the F*ck Down (yes, that is the name of her book :) )
She calls it "Tonight Me meet Tomorrow Me"
The way she explains it is that you sort of divide your personality in half, and each half has certain responsibilities.
As your mind is racing and causing you to not fall asleep, you simply tell yourself, "Well, those are worries for Tomorrow Me.
Tonight Me's responsibilities are to go to sleep. Tonight Me can't do anything about it now." When I read about it, I immediately thought it was something similar for when someone uses a credit card and thinks,
"that bill is Future Me's problem. Today's me gets to have these nice shoes!" :)
Along that same line... I read the book Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs, where it was his humble quest for bodily perfection and to do something about his middle age "dad-bod".
So went on a hilarious mission to radically improve every element of his body and mind. When it came to the topic of stress and anxiety, his answer was very unusual...
Tip #33) He simply outsourced his worry.
He literally went onto the internet, hired a Virtual Assistant from the Philippines for like $5/hour... and said to them... "I want you to worry about this so and so for me for the next hour, please."
Guess what? It actually worked and A.J. felt worry free! Said it was the best $5 he's ever spent!
Tip 34) Thoughts are Things??
You can also just wipe out a notebook, pen and paper, and start jotting down everything you're worried about or that has you concerned and feeling stressed.
Our stressors and worry is so weird like that -- it's like they want to be validated and heard. They want to exist in the real material world here and not just in our head. Suddenly moving them thoughts to the paper, and you instantly feel better and "lighter."
I'm not smart enough to know how it works, only that it does.
Tip 35) Get it nice and cold in your room
To help get some deep sleep, I have the temp right in the mid to upper 60's, and have the fan on, so the air has that chill to it. Then I wrap up with about 2-3 blankets like I'm a burrito and in my own little cocoon of lovely warmth.
I have all 4 dogs that snuggle up with me too and so it's so cute how they know my nightly routine. They'll patiently wait till I'm all done settling in and wrapping the blankets around to get nice and cozy. Then they'll all pounce on me to snuggle up into cuddles -- which feels like I have another blanket on me.
There we go, some good stuff to hopefully help you out in the sleep department. There's whole books written on this subject so we'll circle back to it in the future.
So till next time, may you stay on the Path of the Workout Hero and get some good sleep because your awesome future awaits!
Your Guide & biggest fan,
Mr trainer man Erick