Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimised practices for waking, working, learning, eating, training, playing, sleeping and sex

How you wake up sets the tone for your day. Do you slide out of bed and slink through your social media, or do you have purpose in your actions? You want to take control of your day from the word go. So hydrate immediately (not with coffee!), then seek light and get moving to reset your internal clock. That’s three simple things to do within twenty minutes of waking—and your day will be primed for perfection.

Getting Owned

In the days before fuel-injected engines, if you lived in a cold-weather city in the wintertime, you couldn’t just hop in your car first thing in the morning, turn over the engine, throw it in gear, hammer the accelerator, and speed off into the rest of your day. If you tried, the car would be sluggish and perform haltingly at first, because the fluids that make the critical components of the engine function were not properly primed. If you persisted in speeding out of the driveway before the fluids were warm, you’d start to damage internal components, throwing off the engine’s timing, resulting in a hefty mechanic’s bill.

Even today, with fancy onboard computers, high-tech fuel injection, and all sorts of automotive bells and whistles, most experts will tell you that it’s not a bad idea to let your car warm up for thirty to sixty seconds and then take it easy for the first few miles, especially if you’re concerned with maximum performance and long-term durability.

Do you want to guess what proportion of people follow those fairly simple guidelines for warming up their vehicles? It’s about the same as those who properly warm up their bodies upon waking. As a society, we tend to be as rough on our bodies as we are on our cars, which is unfortunate, since, unlike cars, we can’t trade in our bodies for a newer model with lower mileage after twenty years of steady abuse. Instead of paying the mechanic, we pay the doctor—neither of which is a fun check to write.

A brief walk through the first hour of the average day should give you a good sense of what we’re talking about here. The first sensation most of us register when we wake up is thirst. If you’ve managed to sleep well, you’ve just gone seven-plus hours without drinking a drop of water. If you’re in a dry climate, worked out the previous afternoon, or partied hard the night before, you likely hit the pillow at a fluid deficit out of the gate. Depending on the temperature of your room and how many blankets you sleep under, you may have even accelerated the dehydration process through sweat. In combination, the vapor from respiration and perspiration can often amount to a pound of water lost overnight. As a result, we regularly wake up feeling like we’ve been nursing on a cotton ball.

You would think that the logical response to this condition would be to get up and drink some water, to lubricate all those critical internal components we need to fire correctly for our bodies to be most effective today and for the long haul. Instead, what most of us do is hide under the covers, hitting the snooze button like a snare drum until the last possible moment, at which point we hurry out of bed, strip our clothes off, step into the shower and pour an average of twenty scalding-hot gallons of water over our body, then dump three more quarts through a drip coffee maker. We rarely think to actually drink any of this water before it goes down the drain or through the filter, which is insane; if the physical sensations we experience when we wake up happened to us in the middle of our day, we’d say “Damn, I’m thirsty” and then crush a glass of water. Starting the day, though, it always ends with us holding a cup of coffee.

I have news for you: the best part of waking up is not coffee in your cup. But, Aubrey, I’m not myself without a cup of coffee in the mornings. I need it. No, you don’t. Waking up your body with coffee is like setting off a fire alarm as an alarm clock. When you’re dehydrated and have nothing in your stomach, the caffeine enters your bloodstream incredibly fast, releasing a flood of stress hormones from your adrenal glands that your body reads as a fight-or-flight trigger. Like you’ve been woken up being chased by a predatory cat. While this is effective in the short term, it’s generally a good rule of thumb to keep aggressive caffeine and feline doses to a minimum first thing in the morning. Drinking caffeine when you are dehydrated may feel good for the mouth, but you aren’t exactly digging out of the hole. The hydrating water in the coffee is somewhat offset by the dehydrating nature of caffeine. Yet we still reach for coffee in the morning, in large part because these adrenal effects are so damn good at dealing with the other problem we face when we wake up: we’re still tired.

Only one in seven people report waking up feeling refreshed after sleeping. Almost half of all Americans report feeling fatigued at least three times during the week. As a nation, Americans are owned and controlled by fatigue and the tools used to fight it. We are chronically tired because we are constantly screwing up our sleep. Sleepiness and energy levels are regulated by something called circadian rhythm, which tells your body when it’s time to wake up and when to sleep. You may have heard it referred to as your body clock or your internal clock. And contrary to popular practice, the hands of that internal clock are not powered by Starbucks. They are powered by sunlight and movement. So when you shuffle your feet around a dimly lit house with your comfy robe on, your body can’t tell if you are awake, asleep, or skinwalking as a cave bear. By restricting those important cues that signal the start of a circadian cycle on a regular basis, your entire body gets thrown out of whack. When you add dehydration to the equation, things only get worse. That’s why, despite our best intentions, we so often don’t feel like working out, our brains are in a fog, we suffer from headaches, and we’re generally on edge and just plain tired. Really tired. Except when it comes time to go to sleep, of course, because then, miraculously, despite being tired all day, we can’t sleep. Sound like anyone you know? If not, you need more friends, because the CDC estimates that between 50 and 70 million Americans have a sleep disorder. You have to know at least one of those people!

There are studies on both men and women showing that even mild dehydration resulting from fluid loss equaling roughly 1 percent of your body weight can cause headaches, moodiness, irritability, anxiety, and fatigue. Decreases in mental performance and short-term memory loss can start at as little as a 2 percent loss in water. You ever find yourself being 1 or 2 percent lighter in the morning than before bed? That is enough. And for reference, mixed martial arts fighters commonly cut up to 10 percent of their body weight before a fight. No wonder they are always yelling and pointing at each other in their underwear on weigh-in day! When you consider that 78 percent of Americans are chronically dehydrated, based on their water intake, that does not paint a pretty picture of the start of the average day. It paints a picture of us getting royally owned.

But it isn’t just the water itself that is the problem. We lose electrolytes and minerals over the course of our sleep as well. Minerals are key to modulating and supporting numerous body processes, from the muscles to the organs and even the brain. Without adequate minerals, many of the body’s normal functions start to diminish. Well, guess what, we are just as bad at replacing our minerals on a regular basis as we are at getting ourselves moving and into the sunlight to start our days.

There is a solution to all that: a three-part formula that involves a simple morning mineral cocktail for hydration and adds a little bit of sunlight and a little bit of movement to reset your internal clock, taking you from getting owned to owning it within the first twenty minutes of your day. I’ve tested it, the athletes and high performers I work with have confirmed it, and clinical research has proven it: hydration and circadian balance are the essential ingredients to the consistent perfect wake-up. The formula I am going to walk you through now, then, is about mastering the levels of these essential ingredients so that the morning sets you up for owning the day every time.

Owning It

On an ordinary day a thousand years ago, Emperor Marcus Aurelius had trouble getting out of bed. We know this because he wrote about it in his journal, a remarkable document never intended for publication that somehow managed to survive through the eons. What’s most remarkable is how modern Marcus’s struggle reads to us.

A notorious insomniac but a dedicated public servant, Marcus writes: “At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for—the things which I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?’”

Of course, no matter how much we love our life, getting out of bed is no easy task. As a Stoic, Marcus suggested one remedy for getting over this hump: discipline. His sense of duty was what propelled him through the morning and into the world.

You can have all the stoic discipline you want, but if you don’t handle the first twenty minutes after you get out of bed correctly, you are going to be fighting an uphill battle all day. Tough mornings aren’t tough because of insufficient willpower. They’re tough because no one teaches us how to make them easy, let alone perfect, even though the perfect start to your day is perfectly within reach.

It’s about building momentum. You know this because you’ve had one of these mornings before. When there isn’t a rushed second, when you feel like you’re a step ahead of everything and the whole day feels like it’s at your leisure. Most of us have these days completely by accident, but the reality is, we can have them on purpose, and we can have them regularly.

Hydration

The first step is proper hydration. Sixty percent of the average adult human body is made up of water. About the same percentage of Earth’s surface is covered by water. The world is water, we are water, yet here we are, every morning, essentially starving for it. And we wonder why we wake up feeling miserable so often.

A glass of water from the bathroom tap or tipping your head back in the shower is not going to cut it, however. This isn’t just about curing cottonmouth. Health coach and sleep expert Shawn Stevenson calls that first glass of water in the morning “a cool bath for your organs.” Another way of putting it: it’s priming your internal fluids before hitting the road.

All I am asking is that you swap your first-thing-in-the-morning coffee for some water and minerals, in a drink I call the morning mineral cocktail. I’m not asking you to eliminate coffee—God forbid, coffee is delicious—just hold off on it until you’ve hydrated properly and can mix it with some fats like butter or coconut oil to slow it down. (You’ll learn more about the importance of fats in the coming chapters.) The components of my morning mineral cocktail are water, sea salt, and a splash of lemon. I’m not saying that the cocktail is magic, but … it’s basically magic. (Drink it and thank me.)

Morning Mineral Cocktail (#ulink_34ce5e59-6121-5095-aef6-b2086fd5416e)

350ml filtered water

3g sea salt

¼ lemon, squeezed

WATER: DO IT RIGHT

Despite the proliferation of fitness magazine listicles and online hydration calculators, there is no magic formula for the amount of water you should be drinking. Depending on habituation, diet, workload, toxicity, and a number of other fluctuating factors, every individual’s water needs will vary. As a general rule of thumb, err on the side of more water than not enough. Make a good glass or aluminum water bottle your favorite accessory so you have water available to you at all times. If it’s in another room and you’re like me, you’ll probably wait until you are dying of thirst to get up and go chug some water like a toddler who just found his sippy cup after a long day on the playground. Keep your water close, and sip often.

Just as important as drinking enough water is drinking the right kind of water. Water is one of nature’s best solvents, which means that most of the solids it comes in contact with eventually dissolve into it. That’s great when it comes to absorbing minerals, but problematic when it comes to certain solids like plastics that contain harmful chemicals like BPA that can throw your hormone balance out of whack and set you up for a host of associated issues. As such, it’s important to choose your water sources wisely.

In a perfect world, you’d be able to suckle from the teat of Mother Nature and drink spring water exclusively. Spring water has the right balance of what you want (useful minerals), with little to none of what you don’t (chlorine, heavy metals, contaminants). When I switched to spring water, I stayed more hydrated through the night, which meant a better quality of sleep all around. The reason is that my body wasn’t just thirsty for water; it was thirsty for the minerals called electrolytes that are present in spring water but absent in most filtered waters.

I recognize that buying several liters of spring water in glass bottles every day can get expensive, but many of us still have access to free spring water. Before you go buying anything, check findaspring.com (http://www.findaspring.com) to see if there is any clean, free spring water next to where you live. For those of us not quite that lucky and who also do not have a line item for water in our grocery budgets, the next best thing is filtered water—either through a Brita pitcher you fill and stick in the refrigerator, a Pur filter you attach straight to your kitchen tap, or whatever high-quality filter is available near you. This takes care of the problem of things floating in your water that you don’t want. But then you have to make sure you get enough of the stuff you do want. Specifically, you need to add mineral electrolytes, like those found in sea salt, to get you properly hydrated and mineralized. A small pinch of sea salt into distilled or filtered water should help reset the balance. Add a wedge of lemon juice for some additional refreshing nutrients (a lighter version of the morning mineral cocktail) and you’ve optimized your water. It’s what the pro fighters do when they are recovering from cutting weight, and if it’s good enough for the best in the world on their most important day, it should be good enough for us too. (We’ll cover the effects of inadequate mineralization in chapter 4.)

SALT: THE ORIGINAL MINERAL SUPPLEMENT

Sea salt contains upward of sixty trace minerals above and beyond the sodium, chloride, and iodine in regular table salt, including phosphorus, magnesium, calcium, potassium, bromine, boron, zinc, iron, manganese, and copper. Together they are essential for healthy bodily function and contribute meaningfully to optimal performance. Sodium binds to water in the body to maintain the proper level of hydration inside and outside our cells. Along with potassium, it also helps maintain electrical gradients across cell membranes, which are critical for nerve transmission, muscle contraction, and various other functions. Without it, needless to say, we would be toast.

Unfortunately, salt has become a dirty word over the past few decades—for two reasons: (1) it causes water retention (really just another way to say “makes us more hydrated”), and (2) it increases blood pressure. Both of these claims are technically true. When there are higher concentrations of salt in the body, it is able to hold more water, and your blood will be a little bit thicker. Thicker blood raises your blood pressure slightly because it takes more force to pump.

But is this a problem? While high blood pressure is correlated to cardiovascular disease, an analysis of eight randomized controlled trials showed insufficient evidence that the reduction of salt in one’s diet prevented cardiovascular death or disease. Two further epidemiological studies on populations of 11,346 and 3,681 subjects confirm those findings. There is no conclusively proven benefit to sodium restriction when it comes to preventing heart disease or death—especially for those with a healthy heart. What likely happened here was a classic case of correlation, rather than causation. High blood pressure is correlated to obesity. Obesity is correlated to heart disease. But the increase in high blood pressure caused by salt has not been shown to cause heart disease. As we’ll learn throughout this book, this isn’t the first time that the authorities got their nutrition advice wrong. They should have looked to the history books for some commonsense guidance.

Salt has been a part of our diet for millennia. Roman soldiers of antiquity were “paid” with an allotment of salt. The words salt and salary are derived from the same Latin root word: sal. When we describe people’s worth or utility, we refer to whether they are “worth their salt.” So why was salt such a big deal? Well, if you were a Roman soldier marching around the empire, swinging swords everywhere you went, you had to hydrate and replenish the minerals you lost through sweat, and salt was the surest way to do that.

Can you overdo salt consumption? Of course you can. All medicine becomes poison at a certain dose, but the point of all this is that salt, particularly in its most mineral-rich form, is not the demon it has been made out to be. As for which sea salt to choose, pink Himalayan salt comes from ancient oceanic deposits—long before oil tankers and Jet Skis were crisscrossing Earth’s waters—and also has the benefit of additional iron, which gives it its pink hue. For women who tend to be lower in iron, cooking, seasoning, and mineralizing with pink salt is a great option. But any regular old sea salt will do, as long as it comes from a good source. Kosher salt means nothing nutritionally; it is purely a religious distinction, so don’t get confused. Shalom!

Get Lit

You can give a plant all the water it will ever need, but if it isn’t exposed to enough light, it just won’t grow. It’ll only drown. The same is true for human beings. You can hydrate until you have mineral cocktail coming out of your ears, but that’s only one of the variables in this morning math problem we’re trying to solve. A lack of sufficient or timely exposure to light will short-circuit every attempt you make to start your mornings off with the kind of energy necessary to own the day. This is a problem that everyone faces, from students to self-employed moms to workaholic dads to professional athletes. Biologically we are supposed to wake up with the sun and go to sleep with the stars. This is the timing that our body patterned for millennia, and the essence of circadian rhythm.

To the average person, circadian balance might not seem all that important until you realize that, as your circadian rhythms go, so goes the rest of your life. Women with atypical circadian rhythm, for example, have unusual eating and hormone patterns. This physiological and behavioral cycle follows the typical twenty-four-hour day, and controls a huge variety of biological processes, from the sleep-wake cycle to body temperature, metabolism, and even the life of the cell. The timing of these rhythms can easily become altered by the environment or choices we make, which can cause internal desynchronization. Sometimes this desynchronization manifests as jet lag, sometimes as sleep problems. There is even an association with increased incidence of cancer. Not to mention waking up extremely freaking early, even though all you really want to do is sleep in a little bit. What this means, very simply, is that the more synchronized your circadian rhythms are, the better your life becomes.

The strongest synchronizing agent for the circadian system? You guessed it: light. Specifically, blue light. Even more specifically, environmental light, aka sunlight, which is the most natural and abundant source of blue light. None of this should be too much of a surprise. The natural life-giving, regulating force of the sun—whether we understood it as a source of blue light or not—has drawn humans toward it for millennia. It’s why we find ourselves wandering out so often to look at the sky during dawn and at dusk. It’s why sunset cruises are so popular at beach vacation resorts. It’s why the road up to Haleakala Crater on Maui is packed at 4:00 a.m. during the high season in anticipation of the epic sunrise. It speaks to us. It’s our body being drawn, unconsciously, to the energy and rhythm of the sun. When we deny it, we begin to fall out of our own rhythm. When we accept and engage it, things begin to fall into place.

To rely on the sun to live in accord with Earth’s natural biorhythms, however, is virtually impossible in modern life. Everyone would have to go to bed shortly after it gets dark (for most of us equator huggers, that’s around 9:00 p.m.) and wake up when it’s light (around 6:00 a.m.). The real world often requires a different schedule. Maybe you’re a very early riser, or you sleep during the day and work at night, or you simply decide that nocturnal pleasures outweigh the delights of dawn. (Personally, I enjoy when the house is quiet after 10:00 p.m., so I prefer a midnight–7:00 a.m. sleep schedule.) Whatever the reason, you and the sun might not be on speaking terms on occasion. This creates a twofold problem: circadian rhythm disruption and a lack of means for fixing it.

This is what Duncan Keith, assistant captain of the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks, was feeling during his 2014–15 season. His body clock was getting out of whack because he traveled a lot and worked at night in a profession where he spends most of his time during the season in darkness. A lot of hockey cities are in the frozen north, above the wall where the wildlings live, and two-thirds of the regular season schedule take place there, coinciding with the curious daylight savings custom. This meant that walking outside to get some sunlight was rarely an option for Duncan. As a result, his circadian rhythms were often out of sync with the ebbs and flows of his life. It was enough that he was noticing an effect on energy and alertness come game time.

To help solve Duncan’s problem, we talked about a tweak to his routine that everyone can, and should, make to their own routine to reset their circadian rhythms. He got into the light every time he woke up—from sleep or from a nap.

The results of this blue-light tweak, with other supplement and nutrition improvements to Duncan’s game-day protocol, speak for themselves: not only did the Blackhawks go on to win the Stanley Cup that year, but Duncan was named Finals MVP as the winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy. ESPN called his performance during the postseason an “indefatigable two-month surge” and “one of the most dominant … in NHL history.” He played more than thirty minutes per game and logged more than 700 minutes of playing time over the course of the playoffs—both of which are ridiculous numbers that put him in rarefied company as a defenseman. I’m not going to take any credit for his performance—he’s a fucking savage—but the adjustment to his postsleep light exposure and the rest of the tips and tactics you’ll find in this book certainly didn’t hurt! And it certainly won’t hurt your performance either.

Movement

I haven’t said anything about order for these first three essential ingredients to the perfect wake-up, but I will tell you how I start the best of my mornings: I wake up quietly. I have my morning mineral cocktail. I step outside into the rising sun. Then I sneak up on my just-waking fiancée. With ninja stealth, I make a slow and calculated attack. She protests, I laugh. I tease her in a bad Portuguese accent about her nickname “Miss2Jits” and the fact that she is a blue belt and I’m just a white belt. Eventually she’s had enough of my mouthiness and we grapple to see who can gain dominant position.

To me, there is no better start to the morning than this. It’s a chance to practice my “jits” and wrestle with a beautiful naked woman. While it’s a disaster for keeping the fitted sheet on the mattress, it’s totally worth it. If you’ve never tried coed naked jujitsu, you haven’t really lived! (Side note: Remember how popular those Coed Naked sports shirts were? Whatever happened to those?) But this isn’t just a fun little diversion to delay getting to work. There is real science behind adding a few minutes of playful activity in the morning. Even light exercise boosts circulation and improves cognitive performance. It releases endorphins and, most important of all, helps entrain that fickle bastard, our circadian rhythm. In addition to sufficient blue-light exposure, regular activity—however brief—sends strong cues to the body that it is time to wake up and get going. It helps set that internal biological clock.

Prescription

The morning prescription comes in three parts: hydrate, get lit, and move it.