 Are these seven habits aging you? All right, number one, six small meals a day. By eating all day, you're giving your mitochondria those mini power plants and all yourselves no time to rest up. This is why time-restricted eating is so important. Allowing your body and your gut to rest and adjust between meals not only helps you live longer, but it'll make you feel younger too. And bedtime snacking also ages us faster for the same reason. Please try to stop eating about three to four hours before bedtime. It literally gives your brain a chance to do a deep cleaning while you sleep. And if you eat too close to bedtime, that deep cleaning, that brainwash, unfortunately, never happens. Number two, sitting all day. So if you wanna feel young and youthful, you've got to move your body. You gotta walk every day. Take a walk in the morning. Take a walk after dinner. I've said it over and over again, get yourself a dog. The dog is gonna get you out whether or not it's cold, whether or not it's hot, at least twice a day. And here's a fun fact. Studies of people who walk before dinner versus people who walk after dinner, the people who walk after dinner actually lose weight on the same caloric intake as people who walk before dinner and they don't lose weight. And there's a good rationale why that is, but walking is one of the best things you can do. The other thing that's exciting is you do not have to exercise all at once. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to exercise long bouts to reap the benefit of movement. In fact, there's a new study that was published just this week showing that if you got up and moved for five minutes every two hours while you're at work, you will break the deadly effect of sitting. Five minutes every two hours. Why? Well, I call it exercise snacking and now multiple papers like this one shows that small breaks like for instance, three 10 minute breaks throughout the day gives you more benefit than 30 minutes of continuous exercise. They're easy to do. One of the easiest ones that I can't imagine all of us don't do is while you're brushing your teeth twice a day, do deep knee bends. You're sitting there any hour for a minute or two, just do deep knee bends. And you've got two minutes of deep knee bends. Same thing when you're on your couch, slip down and do backward pushups or front pushups on your couch. Too lazy for that, do a plank on your couch. It's really easy to get up and just do something. One of my favorite hacks is if you work in a building, take the elevator up, but then walk the stairs down. Studies out of Austria showed that people who did that actually got the same benefit as the people who walked up the stairs and rode the elevator down. So walk down, it's easy to get in these small exercises. Most importantly, get a dog. Number three, eating whole grains and corn based products. All right, here's the problem folks. These products are loaded with lectins and eventually all of these products get turned into sugar. Even if a product says organic, low sugar, trust me folks, you don't wanna put it that into your body. You're damaging your gut and therefore damaging the rest of your body. By getting rid of this habit, you're gonna feel younger than ever. Number four, sleeping late or getting irregular sleep. Now, deep sleep is of vital importance because of your brain wash cycle opportunity. And you gotta have wash cycles in your brain to clear out all these inflammatory proteins like beta amyloid, for example. It builds up every day and your brain actually has a wash cycle to clean it out, literally like a dishwasher. So you gotta have consistent sleep patterns. The other thing we've learned, sadly, is you can't make up for days and days of sleepless nights by sleeping in on the weekend. One thing we're learning is that this is literally like jet travel changing time zones. And if you think about it, it makes a whole lot of sense. We now know that your gut microbiome has its own circadian rhythm that does not like to be disturbed. So if you get up at six o'clock in the morning during the work week, but you then say, I'm sleeping in until eight or nine o'clock on Saturday and Sunday, you've literally changed two to three time zones in terms of your gut microbiome. And the more we're learning about circadian rhythms, the more we're finding out that that simple habit of, oh, I'm sleeping in on the weekends to get more rest is doing you more harm than good. Another reason to get a dog. Your dogs work on their natural circadian rhythm. And I can assure you that our four dogs do not understand the concept of sleeping in, get yourself a dog. Number five, eating too much animal protein. Now, sadly, eating over consuming animal protein can lead to insulin resistance, metabolic inflexibility, and even weight gain. Now, a little is fine. Come on, I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, but a lot is not. I'm sorry. Try to cut back to about four ounces of animal protein a day. And like I always say, not only are you what you eat, but you are what the thing you're eating ate. So whatever that cow was fed, you're now eating it too. So when you do eat animal protein, make sure to get grass-fed, grass-finished meat and wild-caught seafood. By cutting back and helping your gut, you're helping to revive the rest of your body too. And you'll feel brand new again. Number six, putting cream or milk in your coffee or tea. Sorry, half and half cream milk nixes the benefits of coffee or tea by binding to the polyphenols, making them useless as nutrients for your body. Now, if you gotta have a creamer in your coffee, opt for a non-dairy option like coconut or walnut milk or macadamia nut milk. Now, Sprouts Carries Hazelnut and Walnut Milk, you can also find it on Thrive Market. So there are alternatives readily available. Number seven, having a smoothie or energy bar before your workout. Now, shockingly, this actually impairs your performance and ages you, but we've all been taught that this healthy smoothie before a workout is going to make you better and better. In fact, it does the exact opposite. Let me give you the perfect example. When I was growing up, if we had lunch, my mother would not allow my sister and I to go swimming for an hour after lunch because we would get cramps and die. Now, there was actually some truth to that old wives tale. After you eat anything, whether it's a smoothie, whether it's an energy bar, a huge amount of blood flow is diverted to your stomach and intestines for the purpose of digesting food. If that blood flow is going there, guess what? It can't go to your muscles and study after study has proven this in humans that exercising on an empty stomach actually gives you improved performance because you have more of your cardiac output available to go to your muscles. The second thing is that you will actually benefit by producing ketones and remaining in ketosis after an overnight fast by exercising and you'll actually get some benefit in increased mitochondrial encoupling. If you exercise on an empty stomach, it makes muscles increasingly sensitive to the action of insulin. Muscles need to be hungry to accept the food you eat. And if they're hungry and if you depleted the amount of sugar storage in your muscles called glycogen, then when you eat, and I really recommend waiting about 20 minutes after your exercise and then take your smoothie or your energy bar, then your muscles will be ready and studies show that you will actually build more muscles and have lower insulin levels because you exercised on an empty stomach. If you eat before your muscles are hungry, your blood flow will go down to your gut, your muscles won't be receptive to insulin and you'll negate the whole thing. So please exercise on an empty stomach and then you can go over to the smoothie bar and get what you want. And just remember a fruit smoothie is one of the most lethal things you can put in your stomach. Make sure to check out the next one here. One of the things that you may have noticed on social media is that vinegar is helped with weight loss. Well, there's nothing magical and mystical about how this happens.