My whole life I have been living relatively healthy, my worst “enemy” towards total healthyness are two things, one has to do with what I eat, the other more of a mental thing. First lets dive down into these two things.
- Dietery issue
In the big picture I eat relatively healthy, my alcholol consumption is almost non-existent. More or less the only thing that makes my diet unhealthy is sugar, more specific, Coca Cola. Why I drink regular cola with sugar instead of zero sugar coke is another story, but simple reason, I believe in the more natural things the healthier something is, for example sugar is procceced from a plant and again the zero sugar coca cola has artificial chemistry to make it sweet which to me is a simple “no thanks”.
There is a catch with the “come from natural sources”, for example lets say vegetables, it’s not so that all vegetables are healthy for humans, but this is also another story, that I will probably get back to in later posts. - The mental issue
It has to do with my high awarness, which has to do with two reasons, 1. born with it and 2. adapted to surrounding environmenet when I was young. Together these two things have made my awarness to a very high level. What it means in real life I register what is happening arround me more than the average person, When this happens, in the long run in tends to exhaust my brain, basically we could use words tired, exhausted, burn-out (in extreme cases), these words are to understand better what I write about.
At the same time high alert and high awarness is not a negative thing, I see it myself as a very positive thing, it just drains your energy easily if I don’t let my brain “rest” enough. One example, I was playing poker many years ago at a table of about 8 people. One of the players was a former finnish poker champion from a couple of years back. The outcome was that I dropped him from the table. And when it happened he was amazed because he was a 100% sure he had found my “tell”, but he didn’t realize that I “automatically without consciously trying” reversed him trying to read me into giving him readable tells that were just a setup for him catching them and ultimately beating him, so basically I was not reading him to beat him, he thought he was reading me even if it was a setup.
So unconsciously my brain has a high alert and high awerness, you might understand that it sometimes is exhausting that you see things or notice things when you just want to relax.
So back to the neural reset. The extreme way is to take say 72 hours where you implement both dietary things and phsyical things to achieve it. Is it doable to everyone? Yes. But the challenge is time, as most of us don’t have the possibility to stop everything for 72 hours so instead I will implement parts of it to my everyday life which will have more or less the same effect, but with a long term effect.
Why the neural reset?
After I was in France for a month and a half, where my goal was to get away from everything that has been stressing my mental state and to restart my healthy way of living that had been lost for about 1-2 years at least, probably even more with not eating healthy enough and not excersising enough (almost no excistent).
France was a good start, I got back on track, and now after being back for about a month and a half I want to take it even further, to became healthy and also to be able to “unleash” my brain in to another level.
Day 1
Just leaving all sugars away and eating healthy and drinking only water. And also reasearching into neural reset, how can it be achieved and what does it take and what is the cost for it. And then I started to make a plan to start implementing it.
At first I will implement it with more strength to achieve a “shock” for the body and mind, and then with time find a balance for good health.
Day 2
Started with sleeping without having any alarms to wake me up. I realized I needed sleep as I woke up at 12:30. At 13:00 I took a cold shower, I mean COLD, like jumping in icewater. I stayed in the cold shower for 45 seconds, with no warm showering after it. Just drying myself. Then making food, beef steak, medium-rare with only salt and pepper, made in butter and olive oil. And drinking only water.
For dinner I will make minced beef with raw egg (without the egg white) and water for drinking.
Today no training, but tomorrow on I will have heavy training at the gym.
Also I will try to minimize screen time (phone, social media, computer etc).
Day 2 ended with a 1 min 20 seconds cold shower.
Phase 1 explained
Cold exposure (cold showers): Forces vagus nerve activation, resets stress response.
Heavy Resistance Training (all of my training): Signals the body to upregulate BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor)—literally repairs neurons.
Diet: For neural reset optimal would be raw animal foods, but here I will keep it a bit more “normal”. But the reason for why this kind of diet is imortant is: the brain is a fat-rich, nutrient-hungry organ, and raw animal foods provide bioavailable nutrients that cooked/processed foods often lack.
Breathing in and out: I will also do breathing excercise 4-4-4-4 before and after training, working etc. I do this 10 times in a row.
4 seconds breath in
4 seconds hold
4 seconds breath out
4 seconds hold
At the end I want to state, I’m not a phyisican nor is this a 100% fact, it is my take on what I have researched myself and doing an “experiment” to find myself a healthy way of keeping both my body and brain healthy.