Hey guys, it's Michael Kummer here. Did you know
that I'm almost 40 years old, but I can honestly say that I'm now healthier, fitter and stronger
than I've ever been. And that's despite the fact that I used to be a professional athlete in my
early twenties. And so some people notice that and they ask me, or keep asking me, what do you do?
What do you eat? How long do you sleep in all of these questions to kind of find out
what is it that I'm doing that put me in that position. And so in this video,
I want to talk about the five core pillars that make up my lifestyle and that have helped me
be the healthiest, the strongest and the fittest that I've ever been. Now, before we get started,
make sure you subscribe to this channel and you click on the little alert button,
so you get notified when I publish more videos. I should also mention that I have documented
all of the information that I'll cover in this video in even more detail on my blog. And I'm
going to put a link down in the description, check that out If you want to learn more.
The first thing that I do is I protect my sleep.
I'm annoyingly protective of my sleep, ask my wife and friends and family. I try to go to bed at the
same time every day. And I wake up roughly at the same time everyday. And I do that because it best
supports my circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is like a clock that every cell in
your body, it goes by and operates by. And it's, it's been driven largely by
the sun. Just from an evolutionary perspective, humans got up when there was light
and they went to bed when it was dark because they couldn't see anything anymore. In particular,
before fire was invented or how they learned how to make fire. And so this is something
that's ingrained in all of us, your circadian rhythm and the more you can do to protect that
by having a consistent sleep and wake time by doing certain things before going to bed or
avoiding certain behaviors like blue light exposure, like alcohol consumption,
like late meals and all of that. If you abide by certain rules,
you can properly support your circadian rhythm and you can sleep very well. And sleep is truly
the foundation. I believe of anything that happens during the day. If I don't sleep well,
my workout performance is gonna not going to be the same. My mental performance is
not the same. I don't recover as quickly. I don't, my body doesn't have the ability to
restore. So it's all-around sleeping well and getting enough quality sleep, and there are a
couple of things that I do to ensure that I get high quality, during most nights. And one is I try
to avoid late meals. The later I eat, the more my stomach has to work and digest while it's supposed
to do other things, the less good I sleep. The other thing that I do is I try to avoid
drinking before going to bed because alcohol, even though it makes you sleepy, disrupts your sleep,
especially your deep sleep and your REM sleep, depending on when you drink and how much time you
leave between drinking and going to bed. I also try to control the temperature in my bedroom,
both by setting the A/C down a little bit. So it remains cool, but more importantly, but by
ensuring that the temperature under the covers is supportive of my sleep. Because as you fall
asleep, your body temperature decreases or has to decrease by two to three degrees Fahrenheit.
If you get in the way of that, by being too hot, then you might have trouble falling asleep.
And then the body temperature, temperature drops during deep sleep before it's likely warms up
during REM sleep. And then it further warms up as you get ready to get out of bed. So what
I do is I have a temperature-controlled smart mattress. It's called a Pod Pro by Eight Sleep.
And I have a separate review about that, both on my blog, as well as on my YouTube channel.
So check that out if you're interested, but by controlling the temperature of my mattress,
I support my sleep as good as it possibly can. The next thing that I do is I follow a
species-appropriate diet as I call it. And what I mean by that is yeah. I make animal meats,
fats and in particular organ meats, the center of my diet. Because evolutionarily
humans have evolved on hunting and eating animals and thriving on the protein, on animal protein and
animal fat and in particular organ meats, so that is the center of my diet. And
just to give you some context I think five years or so ago, I started with the paleo diet
and then transitioned into a ketogenic diet, so low carb, high fat, and now I'm more doing
a mix of both. And I like to call it. It's just an animal-based diet. So meats, fats and organ
meats are at the center of that diet. And I supplement that with seasonal fruits
and with the least toxic plants. And that has really helped, me to perform both physically as
well as mentally optimally. What that means is also that I avoid most plants, plant foods. So
most of the most vegetables I don't eat because they contain toxins. They're plants, natural
defense mechanisms that are not good for me and not good for us as humans, I avoid processed
carbs or grains legumes, and all of things. That humans have not eaten from an evolutionary
perspective. So stick with the few simple types of foods that humans have eaten for millions of years
because that's what our bodies, our metabolism, our digestive system, our brain and everything
else is accustomed to. So I eat a lot of meats pasture-raised, grass-fed, grass-finished eggs
from pasteurized. Hens we actually have our own chickens, so we get eggs from their
wild-caught seafood. Seasonal fruits like berries, peaches, bananas, maybe avocado. And
that's pretty much it. That's what I have in my diet. And that's what has helped me
thrive and be the best I can possibly be. Next is exercise. Again, from an evolutionary
perspective, if you think about it, what have humans done? They've walked long distances
in search for food in search for shelter. Et cetera. So they walked a lot. They had them,
times of high-intensity type of exercises went ahead to sprint, but either running away
from a predator that was trying to kill them or running after an animal that they tried to kill,
they lifted heavy stuff, you know, stones and rocks, et cetera.
And that's kind of what I tried to mimic with my functional fitness regimen. So I do
CrossFit or barometric, CrossFit-influenced exercise routine. I lift heavy a lot. I get
my heart rate up. I do it high intensity. I don't do it for very long, so I don't go for
a two-hour jog or anything because jogging or running, wasn't something that our ancestors
would have done a lot they either walked or they sprinted or they fought. So it was
all high-intensity or just very casual walking. And that's kind of what I try to implement as
my fitness routine. And that has helped me be as strong and as fit as I am at almost 40 years old.
Stress management is another important pillar of my lifestyle because
we don't live a simple or simplistic life. Our life is hectic and complicated. There are a
ton of priorities that constantly compete for our attention. And so it's very difficult to remain
in a good state of mind. There are a couple of things that I do to help me manage stress and
change the way that I perceive stress. Because at the end of the day, it's all about perception.
If something appears to be very stressful, but it's not affecting you the same way it affects
maybe something. Then you're probably less likely negatively impacted from a health perspective than
someone else. And so what I try is I try to change the narrative on how I perceive stress
and the way I do that is by a couple of different, but easy techniques I do breathing.
So during the day I take the time and practice nose breathing. I focus on my breathing, you know,
inhale, exhale slowly, slow exhales. Et cetera. There are actually a couple of good books that are
linked down in the description that can help you find out breathing techniques that work for you.
I also have a device that's called Calmigo. That helps me focus on breathing and it gives
me some visual cues and sound cues, et cetera. I have a couple of devices that
use textile stimulation that can help activate my parasympathetic nervous system. To kind of
suppressed the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the fight or flight response.
And the parasympathetic one is responsible for resting and digesting and, you know, relaxing, et
cetera. So I used those textile simulation devices like Apollo or TouchPoints. I'm going to link them
down below as well to help me relieve stress or better manage stress. And then one of the things
that has helped me a lot is to brain dump. And what I mean by that is, especially before
going to bed, you know, I go to bed, my head hits the pillow and then suddenly stuff pops up into my
head like, oh, I have to do this tomorrow. Here is an idea that I could talk about or, you know,
stuff that keeps my thoughts, racing in my head spinning and to prevent me from falling asleep.
And so what I do. I take the opportunity. Whenever something pops into my head and
I write it down. In my case, I have a reminder list on my phone that I use, but you can do it
on paper if you want to. But I write everything down. That's in my head with as much detail
as necessary. To really offload whatever is going on in my head and put it away, store it somewhere
so I can pick it up from the app tomorrow. My brain then knows that it won't be forgotten.
It's going to be there for me tomorrow, but I can stop thinking about that. And I called it brain
dumping and has caused a dramatic improvement in how I manage to do list-induced anxiety or stress.
Right? The last thing that I do is I try to avoid environmental toxins and
that's particularly true for endocrine-disrupting chemicals, like estrogenic or xenoestrogens as
there are sometimes. And in the nutrition world, they are called phytoestrogens,
so estrogenic compounds that you can find in plant foods, and I've written a very in-depth
article about xenoestrogens and how to avoid them. And I've recorded a video on some of
the best products. Plastic-free chemical-free products that we use in the Kummer household
so check that out. I'm going to link everything down below in the description. But the bottom
line is I try to avoid bottled water because the plastic bottle has endocrine-disrupting
chemicals that leach into the water. The same goes for plastic food, storage containers,
most skincare products like deodorants et cetera, that have those chemical sunscreens are very.
At least most brands and many, many other things that I've talked about in my article. So check
that out, but these really sums it up. These are the five things that I do protect my sleep, eat a
species-appropriate diet exercise, regularly, lift heavy, do high-intensity stuff, manage stress and
avoid environmental toxins as much as possible. And if you do that, then you can be the best
you can possibly be. And that's why I recorded this video. I really hope that
you can take some of those tips here and apply them to your lifestyle and make sure you can
be the best version of yourself. And if you do, then there is no reason, even at an older age,
that you can't be healthier, fitter and stronger than you were when you were younger.
And with that said, I appreciate you sticking with me. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up.
If you didn't like it, let me know in the comments, what I could have done. Until next time.