I’m sad to say that my creative storm has come to an end. But as you can see from my list of “things to research” from last week, I certainly have enough to keep my hands full until the next wave of innovation. I’m pretty psyched about the dent I’ve already made in the list, tackling the mammoth topic of SEO last week. One topic down, twelve more to go!
The two major themes that have been spiraling around in my mind the past few days is diet and wake up times. Ever since my post a few weeks ago on Hypothyroidism and Temporal Organics, I’ve really been focused on analysing my nutritional habits, exercise habits, and how those relate/don’t relate to my productivity, creativity, and overall mood.
For me, both nutrition and exercise are challenges – nutrition because of the requirements of my thyroid medications and exercise because, well, I’m a little lazy. In an attempt to recommit to taking my medication properly, I reread the pharmacist’s instructions and noticed several caveats that makes things interesting: 1) I can’t eat anything for an hour after taking meds (on an empty stomach), and 2) I can’t eat anything with iron, calcium, or dietary fiber for at least 4 hours after taking meds. That’s right, 4.
So that eliminates almost all breakfast foods – toast (fiber/iron), yogurt (calcium), scrambled eggs with cheese (calcium), and even milk in my coffee…sweet.
After puzzling over the situation for several days, I decided that the best thing to do would be to wake up early (I’m talking 5am early) to go to the gym and then have something to eat after I’m home and have showered (perhaps around 9am). Not only will this get me up and help with the meds/food situation, but it will also help tackle the whole exercising issue. This seems like a brilliant plan, except for one thing: waking up at 5am consistently.
This past week I did manage to do it – once. And it was absolutely glorious. There is something really special about seeing the world that early, a brightness and a possibility that you don’t get at any other time of day. Also, it was so cool to start work at 9am and really start it, as opposed to the normal routine of sitting at my computer and surfing the net until sleep finally wears off.
So now I am on a quest to figure out exactly how I can integrate waking up earlier into my life.
Also, I’m really interested right now in the role of chemicals in our foods and what an optimal diet really is. Not a diet with the intent of losing weight, but a diet that is a sustainable effort to fuel my body with the best nutrients and resources to help me be my best both physically and mentally.
I am currently working through Paul McKenna’s 25 minute mind programming audio file from his book, I Can Make You Thin. While I’m not so much interested in the making me thin part, I am interested in the four golden rules he outlines:
- Only eat when you’re hungry
- Eat what you want, not what you think you should have
- Eat slowly and consciously
- When you think you are full stop eating.
These principles are totally simple and kinda “duh,” but to be honest I truly believe that many of us forget these basic ideas because of all the crazy diet, weight loss, and nutritional information that gets thrown at us all the time. Been listening to the program daily for a week and am noticing that my awareness of hungry versus emotionally hungry is increasing. Sweet.
I’m also going to be hitting the book store to check out Dr. Junger’s Clean. This cleansing program came out in May ‘09 and has had some pretty positive reviews. And while I’m not into the whole cleansing thing, I’ve heard that the text has some good info on food that contains toxins, harmful chemicals, etc, which is something I’m interested in learning about.
So the two focuses for research and testing right now are early rising/exercising, and optimizing my diet.
Hey, if I can optimize my website search results, I can optimize my health too, right?
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Twitter: evanhadkins
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food is a great read. He advocates three rules: eat food (ie. as little pre-packaged processed stuff as possible), not too much, mostly plants.
If you are wealthy enough organic is an option for a lot of things now.
Hey Evan! Great to hear from you! That is totally the sticker, isn’t it – “If you’re wealthy enough” – if I was wealthy enough I’d have a personal chef take care of all this for me!
But I think that raises a very crucial point in the fight to enjoy a healthy, nutritious diet – cost. And there are larger questions of how this affects the Uncommon population at large. If you are already wealthy then finding a diet that works for you is easy, just a matter of picking and choosing. But if you are working toward leaving your job, setting up your uncommon vocation, and managing a family/home, there may not be too much extra cash to eat a diet that will keep you at your peak performance (and arguably this is the time you’d need to be at your peak the most!).
Anyone have thoughts on how to make this work?