In this YouTube talk Brendon Burchard argues that waiting for New Year’s resolutions is a mistake; the optimal time to commit to peak health is during the holiday season. He introduces the acronym MEDS—Meditation, Exercise, Diet, Sleep—as a holistic, year‑long health framework. Burchard details each pillar: a "release" meditation technique with a mantra to reduce stress; a personalized exercise regimen (HIIT, weight training, cardio, or any consistent movement) tailored to one’s life stage; the importance of consulting a nutritionist to design a diet aligned with individual biomarkers and to avoid hidden toxins; and a sleep protocol that emphasizes a consistent bedtime‑wake rhythm plus a three‑hour wind‑down (no food, no work, no screens) to improve recovery and overall performance. Throughout, he stresses consistency, adaptability, and the advantage of being in good health before holiday indulgences, making it easier to stay disciplined into the new year. The talk blends scientific claims, personal anecdotes, and concrete action steps for high‑performers and everyday listeners alike.
Chapters
What most people do is they wait till January 1, they punt their health until New Year's. And I'm like, no, no, no. The time to have great health is heading into the holidays. Because when you head in the holidays, you deal with the stress better, you sleep better when traveling or dealing with family. And then when you do cheat on those big days of the holiday, you don't feel as bad. You're already in great health. All I'm here to say is at this stage of your life, if you have never chosen a 12 month period to get in the best health of your life, that's the decision today. Take your meds. Okay, let me give it. It's an acronym. Calm down. Take your meds. M E D S. So you've been with us over the years and we taught this. Meds, you got to get your meds right. What do your meds stand for? Meditation, exercise, diet, sleep. Right, M E D S. Meditation, exercise, diet and sleep. I really believe if you don't yet have a meditation practice, it will change your life forever. If you already have one, get more disciplined on it, do it better. Be more consistent about it. Some of you know I teach, teach something called the release meditation technique. You can learn how to do it on YouTube. Just type in release meditation technique. My video should pop up. I think 2 million people have learned how to do it from that video alone. So I gotta guess, you know, a couple million people around the world have learned how to do that. And all it is is a meditation technique that has a little bit of a goal to it. And that goal is to release the thoughts of mind and release the tension the body. And so to do that we just find a comfortable sitting position or lying position, we close our eyes and we repeat the mantra. Release. As in release, release, release, release. I tend to repeat it out loud, say the word release as a command to myself. Release the tension, Brendan. Release the thoughts, Brennan. I'll say the word release, usually out loud about 10 times. And then I'll go internally with the mantra, just repeating it in my mind over and over and over again for 10 to 20 minutes every single day. Now, during that 10 to 20 minutes, does my mantra get broken? Of course. I'll be thinking the word release over and over on a rhythm. And then of course I'll be like, oh, I gotta do that thing. Oh, I've got this thing going on. Oh, I'm feeling this emotion or the stops coming in. And soon as that happens, I recognize it. As soon as I catch myself and I'M like, oh, got it. Okay. Right now I'm not doing thinking. Return to release, Return to release, Release, release, release. That's my meditation practice. It's not too dissimilar of transformational meditation for those who are transcendental meditation for those who've done tm. It's not too different than most meditations that have a, a mantra. And the idea of the mantra or the repetitive statements or sounds is that it helps you focus on something that's not your thoughts. All I wanted to do was make sure I added physical work to it and a specific goal which was releasing the thought, releasing the tension. And that is so critical to decreasing stress. You already all know all the science behind meditation by now. If you don't, where have you been the last decade? Meditation not only decreases daily stress, it increases life satisfaction over a period of time, improves the quality of your relationships, helps decrease the amount of heart attacks. Like it's a real biological and medical tool to improve your health. And I think it's important that we all realize, okay, let me get on that. So if you've never done it before, please do give it a try. Set it as a goal. Put it as a reminder in your app to do over and over and over again. It will help meds, meditation, exercise, diet and sleep. Let's talk about exercise. Everyone always says, you know, what should my morning routine be or what should my exercise be, or whatever. All I'm here to say is at this stage of your life, if you have never chosen a 12 month period to get in the best health of your life, that's the decision today. And that decision today will involve physical movement, it will involve exercise. And you've got to find what's the appropriate strategy for you at this stage, at this time, at this state of health that you have. And you got to practice it, right? Everyone's got a different one at different stages of her life. I'm in my mid-40s now, so for me it's important. I've got to do a lot of HIIT training and I lift heavier weights. I'm trying to do that because setting strong structure for the future, activating hormones like testosterone for recovery, and trying to get in that place where I feel strong. And I spend a lot of time doing that. I like do two HIIT trainings a week and I do two longer cardio trainings per week. That's my two by four, I call it, right? Two HIIT trainings, two cardio trainings, that's four times a week. And that's perfect for me based on what I'm trying to do and how I want to feel in my life. You might be a marathon runner. You might be somebody who loves CrossFit. You might be somebody who just likes to take a long walk each day. I don't care what yours is, but you need to know what it is and you need to be consistent at it. And what most people do is they wait till January 1, they punt their health until New Year's. And I'm like, no, no, no. The time to have great health is heading into the holidays. Because when you head in the holidays, you deal with the stress better, you sleep better when traveling or dealing with family. And then when you do cheat on those big days of the holiday, you don't feel as bad. You're already in great health. And I really believe that doing that now also ensures if you do on January 1st, set that big idea, I'm gonna eat healthier. Guess what? It's so much easier to glide back into than begin fresh. Right? I want you to glide right back into it if you're going to prioritize it even more at the new year versus hope. So what's the exercise routine for the next 90 days for yourself? Figure that out and try to create something that's sustainable for you. Don't be like, I need to exercise every day for 90 days. I'm like, that may or may not work sometimes. You got a brand new baby, you're doing a launch, something goes crazy on the house. I do believe everybody who's capable of walking can take a 30 minute walk every day. And I hope that you do that. If anything, get outside for 30 minutes a day, take a stroll, I promise you'll feel better. Okay? The D. What does the D stands for? Meditation, exercise, diet. Diet. Now, this is gonna be my encouragement for many of you. I'm not gonna propose. Don't worry. I'm not here to propose a certain type of diet for you. I am here to propose that you figure it out with a professional, that you go for the first time in your life, if you've never done it before. Give yourself the gift of spending 100 or 200 bucks and going to see a nutritionist so that you can figure out for your body type, for your age, for what's going on in your body with your hormones and your blood work. What should you be doing in your diet? People will spend hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars on goofy things throughout the year, but they won't spend a couple hundred bucks to figure out what their body's allergic to, what they're low in, in terms of their body. Are they low in B vitamins, are they low in D, are they low in iron? Because these things have significant effect on your mindset. You know, if you're low in any given, you know, mineral, any given hormone, any given blood work, if you will, then what's going to happen is that affects your productivity, that affects how you feel. And so many people, they're exhausted because they're not doing the things that would activate the more positive molecules in their brain. They're not, you know, doing the things that would affect the, their estrogen or the testosterone in such a way that would enable them to heal, Recovery, fuel, energy. And they're eating so many things that are poisoning their body on a consistent basis. They can't understand why they don't feel well. They're drinking so many, so much alcohol or so much caffeine that they're poisoning their gut. And now their gut is constantly in trouble. So now they're constantly fatigued and they can't figure it out. They do everything else right. You know, they meditate, they walk, they journal, they eat well, but they're doing things that are compromising their stomach. And as you always know, whatever you put in your stomach also goes to your brain, right? It's not brain, body. It's. The whole thing is connected, baby. It's so critical. Meditation, exercise, diet and sleep. Number one question. I get all the time from high performers. Many of you guys know I'm blessed to work with Olympians. I'm blessed to work with, you know, Fortune 50 CEOs, some of the most powerful influencers in the world. They're all my high performance coaching clients. And sleep comes up for all of them, 100% of them. Because there's certain times when you're running at an intensity where your sleep gets compromised or you allow it to be compromised. So a couple ideas here. My usual suggestions are, most people, they just got to get a rhythm for when they go to bed. When they get up, that's 60% of the battle. When are you going to go to bed? When are you going to get up? Create a rhythm for that. Stick to it. That's 60% of the battle. Really. The wind down is another 20% of the battle. The wind down, what you do in the three hours before bed. So if you've studied my work before, three, two, one, sleep, which became famous on the Internet last year, three, two, one, Sleep, which is three hours before bed, no food. Two hours before bed. No work. One hour before bed, no screens. That's it. Three, two, one. Sleep. Three hours before. No food. Two hours before, no work, one hour before, no screens. If you'll try that for 10 days, you'll be like, oh, my God, Brenda, I've come back to life. Because sleep is the foundation of exercise, of good choices, of productivity, of happiness. And those things are so easy. Get your routine down. Do three, two, one every night. Then simple suggestions for most people, and this is from worldwide studies, it's so simple. Make sure your room is completely dark. Drop the temperature down to around 68 degrees, or for some of you, even lower. And I know that might be, like, cold. I'm like, put on a blanket. Whoever cares? But if it's crisper out, you sleep better. And I think that's important, too. I'll leave it at that. I'm asking you to do that this month so that you go into November and December, the holidays, the transition of the year. Strong and capable of maintaining that discipline throughout the first part of next year. Get in the rhythm right now.
