Give me 20 Minutes and You'll Never Have Bad Sleep Again

Sleep is one of, if not the most important variables when it comes to your health, when it comes to your hormones, when it comes to your energy levels, when it comes to getting shredded, when it comes to staying and being in good shape, and just when it comes to feeling good in general. And why do I say this? Well, it's mostly because I'm speaking from my own experience. I used to be a burnt-out banker working full-time And besides that, I managed training, making all my meals, and also trying to start my own business. So there was long days, and I had the mentality and mindset that, you know, I don't need a lot of sleep. I can just run off external substances such as caffeine and relying on coffee to punch forward, to get me through the day. And, you know, I thought that it's just to push through, which in fact was a very, very counterproductive approach to it all. And I'm super, super glad that I understood that. So for the past couple of years, I've been going down this route of trying to really optimize this aspect and area of my life because I understood the importance of it. So I'll throw up some screenshots of this, like before and afters of when I kind of found the ideal protocol for sleep that is bulletproofing and getting me good quality sleep consistently. This is also the same approach that I'm using and applying on all my clients. So I see this live and how it improves people's sleep and more importantly sleep quality every single day. Because that's also a very, very important variable when we talk about this. It's not just about the quantity, it's about the quality. quality of the sleep, and we wanna be somewhere between 50 to 60% worth of restorative, worth of quality sleep every single day, in my opinion. A lot of people are probably closer to 30%, so there's usually a lot of improvement to be made. And this is also one of the questions that I get asked a lot of the times every single day from people, so I thought I'd just sit down, take you through a full, just unscripted, unedited video talking on some of the key pointers that I know for myself has really helped and the things that I, that I stick to even to this day that I know are moving the needle so much. So it's important to, or it's valuable for me to, I guess, keep them in my routine. So let's get into it. If we structure this as a day, we want to start at the beginning of the day. And this comes to the first, the first pointer, which is going to be one of the key, key things that we want to be doing. And that is to make sure that we get some good or get some quality light in our eyes in the morning. As soon as we can upon waking up. This is the first step to getting really good quality sleep. Probably a bit no shit for a lot of you guys, but getting some sunlight in the eyes in the morning, super, super important. Why? It's because light is information and we want that light, those UV rays in our eyes in the morning to trigger that it's daytime. So we can split this this also out throughout the day because of the fact that light is information. We want to get as many touch points of light throughout the day as possible. So the bare minimum I usually say to someone, especially if you're working in an office like a 9 to 5, is we want to get at least 3 touch points of light per day. So that is morning, it's midday, and it's also in the evening when the sun is about to set. If we can tick those off, obviously the more we stay outside, the more— where we can expose ourselves to light, the better. But the bare minimum is to cover those 3 touch points. So how do we do that in practice? Well, obviously get out in the morning, go for a little walk, do something, be outside, just get some light in, in your eyes. During your lunch break, you want to go out, you want to go for a little walk, get some sunlight in your eyes. Obviously, if it's cloudy, you still get the light through the clouds in your eyes, so that shouldn't be an excuse. And then After work or in the afternoon, go for another little walk, get some more light in your eyes there. That is the first pillar. Second, which kind of ties into that a bit as well, is to get some movement done in the morning. We want a bit of a cortisol spike in the morning, so we want to get our body moving, get the blood flowing. Why we want to do this is because of the fact that That cortisol, that first initial cortisol spike is what is then going to decide or dictate when that cortisol then also later in the day starts to taper and then starts to trigger melatonin production. So same thing here, if we're working in an office, a 9 to 5, this is the main reason why I generally tend to always recommend all my clients and people that are working 9-to-5 office jobs to train in the morning. So we make sure we get the cortisol spike there and then. Because if we wait, if we wake up and have like a slow morning or whatever— it's not like I, I like the, the term slow morning— but if we don't do anything and we don't stress the body at all in the morning and then we go work out in the evening, that, that becomes a bit problematic because then we're not gonna time That dip in cortisol with like the bedtime alignment, which is then gonna mess up your sleep pattern and your sleep quality from that or in that aspect. So get some movement done in the morning. It doesn't have to be a workout, but just go for a short walk, go out, jump around a bit, do some lymphatic drainage. Something similar like this is very, very important as well and something that I always do. Some sort of short movement alongside with just being outside and exposing yourself to light. That is the morning routine. Throughout the day, obviously, as I said, the most important thing is always gonna be getting as much light information as possible. And these are obviously the basics, but you already know that. Eating good, eating an anti-inflammatory diet, eating a lot of good quality meat, a lot of eggs. A lot of carbs if you're active and train hard as well. But none of that processed bullshit, because that is also one variable that is gonna affect your sleep a lot. So, a bit no shit. When it comes to the evening, it's the same thing here. Probably all of you already know this, but we wanna try to time eating to around 3 to 4 hours prior to going to bed, so we give our body enough time to digest the food properly. But one of the things that I have noticed works fantastic for me is to rather structure that through— instead of just focusing on time, I structure that through the light in my environment. So for example, during winters in Sweden, I have a shorter eating window because I'm eating when it's bright outside. I'm eating when it's daytime, you know, or when it looks like it's daytime because there's Like the sun basically goes down at like 4 or 5. So during almost the whole full winter, I'm eating my last meal as the sun sets. This is one of the key variables that has helped me a lot as well. Probably not as needle-moving as other things, but once again, light is information. If we're eating when it's pitch black outside, that can become a bit problematic because being pitch black outside, it's a trigger for our body that it's time to go to sleep. We shouldn't be digesting food and Putting energy towards that. So definitely something or a variable that impacts the quality as well. But besides the eating, yeah, 3 to 4 hours ideally before bed in a perfect, perfect world. We also want to be doing a couple of things. Number one, when the sun sets as well, I always throw on my Red light glasses, so wearing a good good pair of of red light glasses that are actually going to block the light, not just bland ones that doesn't even block the block the the blue light. Want proper red light glass or blue light blocking glasses. But why I'm saying red light is because they usually have like red. It looks like it's a red layer. Or the—

how do you even explain this in English?

Yeah, it's like a red tinted layer on the glasses. That's how you know it's a good pair. That's number one. Number 2, what I always do is I have a red light panel on and I overuse or overdose on red light as well. So if I'm sitting and working late in the evenings, if I'm having client calls with clients from the US or from Australia, for example, I'm blasting that red light in my eyes at the same time because that red light is— near-infrared light is also what's gonna help us to— like in the mornings and in the evenings, right? Based on how far or how the sun stands, we get different components of, or different combinations of the the light from the sun, right? In the evening, in the morning, the rays that really push through the atmosphere, then is red light and near-infrared light. So once again, that's also information for our body that it's time to start wind down, which is a very important thing. So go crazy on red light. But then when we come a bit further to closer, closer to bedtime, some of the things, or this is where the real hacks start to kick in. The one thing that we really have to understand here once again is I always want to optimize for quality rather than quantity. Because yes, no shit, in an ideal world we should be shutting off all the lights and not looking at any screen and just sitting and having like, what do you call it, a real open fire or something as the only light source. But we're also living in a modern society and I usually say that modern problems require modern solutions. Right, so we know like the no shit, this is how it's supposed to be, but that's not life and that's not reality for a lot of people. So it's about finding once again modern solutions for the modern problems. That's how I view this, and always optimizing for quality over quantity. Because once again, like, every single day for me is not perfect. Sometimes I have late, late client calls, which is not ideal.

But instead of viewing it like that, oh, this is not ideal, it's gonna mess everything up.

No, I just—

Make the most of it. Always play the cards that I'm dealt, the hand that I have right now, rather than, you know, wishing the dealer for new— for some new cards.

So that's how I view it, first of all.

But a couple of the key things that are gonna be massive right before bed are, number one, gonna be grounding. Making sure that we ground before bed is a huge one because throughout the day we're building up a positive charge in our body from EMFs, Wi-Fi, 5G, all these toxins that we're getting exposed to. So a lot of people usually ground in the morning, which is fantastic. I think you should do that as well. But doing it in the evening is going to have the most impact on your sleep because once again, it makes sense. We're getting exposed to all these things throughout the day. Therefore, we want to offload that charge right before going to bed so we can go to bed not affected, not having this charge built up in us. So that, if there's like one little hack that is going to move the needle the most, it's probably going to be that. Making sure that we ground, making sure that we offload this positive charge right before going to bed. This is a Crazy, crazy key. That's that grounding. Once again, red light, if you have that available, I think is fantastic. It does wonders for my sleep as well. But then it's going to be a couple other things. And this is like when you're laying in bed and when you're really, really about to fall asleep.

One of that is to shuffle and have theta waves or brain waves.

Playing in the background. Why this is super, super good is because this is going to help your brain manually trigger entering into that deeper sleep, deeper restorative sleep stages and brain waves, rather than having to go through that process like by yourself. Then it's going to take you a bit longer. So it kind of acts as a, as a switch. You flip that switch And then boom, you're into a deep restorative sleep state quicker. So what I do is I put a brain— it's called Brain Waves, I think. I'll see if I can link it in the description. It's a playlist on Spotify that I shuffle. I put it on sleep timer, 45 minutes. Then obviously I'm putting my phone on airplane mode. I'm going into settings, making sure that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are ticked off. Super, super important. EMFs disturb your sleep as well, so you cannot have any electricity around you. That is going to massively disrupt your sleep. And then I put my phone on the side, I lay in the bed, and I usually pass out within seconds. A couple things there as well. I always try to unplug all of the sockets besides my bed, so there's like no electricity or little electricity around me as possible. Very, very important. Obviously, if you have a Wi-Fi router or something in your head, or in your home or room, make sure to plug that out. And then just have everything turned off. Same thing I do on my computer. If I have that in my room, I shut off Wi-Fi, shut off Bluetooth, put it on airplane mode. So Try to eliminate as much electricity and EMFs as possible. That is also a huge thing that is gonna do massive things for your sleep. Yeah, I guess one more thing there that popped up, putting my screens on with this red filter. I don't know if you're gonna see this now, but You can have this red filter on your screens. So I'm doing that both on my phone and also on my computer a couple hours before bed, just to try to cut out as much of the blue light as possible. Also, whilst I'm wearing blue light blocking glasses, if I'm sitting in front of the screen as well, I think that is the most important. Obviously, I want us to view this as a band-aid to the problem because it's not optimal to sit in front of the screen. But once again, optimal is to stare into the wall or stare into an open fire and do absolutely nothing. But that's not life for everyone, unfortunately. So we have to make do with what we have and control the variables that we can. If I've had a stressful couple of last hours leading up to bed as well, what I usually tend to do is something called NSDR, or just a relaxation— relaxing breathwork routine that is going to help manually trigger you to enter into a rest and digest nervous system state rather than fight or flight. So if I'm having a hard time falling to sleep because my nervous system is just fired up, that's what I do as well. But if I'm pairing some breathwork with grounding and some red light, it's literally impossible not to fall asleep. Making sure your room is cold as well. This is all the basic stuff. Cold and dark. Yeah, I guess no real need to cover all of those things. But if we're gonna summarize this, it's light diet, making sure we get a good Light information throughout the day. It's grounding, it's some sort of breathwork or NSDR before bed, and it's red light. And then we have the kind of Band-Aids, which are red light glasses, making sure we are eating 3 to 4 hours before bed or following a like light diet where we structure our eating throughout when it's light outside, and working out in the morning if you're having an office job. office job. I think that kind of sums the most important variables for this. But obviously I'm only speaking in like broad terms here. These things might apply for you, it might not. The most important thing is always going to be to kind of, as I said there, do the most of what you have available. So what I do with all my clients as well is obviously look at their full life and their full daily schedule and structure and find a solution for however that looks. Because it's a lot easier to get really good sleep if you're able to structure your day around the sleep, right? But that's not life in all or always. Sometimes we have to just make do with what we have. So that's the most important thing and try to just optimize for quality over quantity. Obviously tracking your sleep so you know if the things that you're doing is impacted it in a positive or negative way. That's a huge thing as well. You know, we can't manage what we don't measure. So yeah, I guess some final words there. If you want some help with this on a personal level, you've been struggling with this for a long time, reach out, send me a DM, and I'll see if I can, can help you out and see if we can find some solution for your personal situation. So yeah, hope this helped. Hope this was a bit valuable, and hope you found some little thing that you maybe can try to implement in your routine to see— hopefully see some improvements in your sleep and your sleep quality, most importantly. And yeah, let me know if you have any further questions about the topic. I think it's a very interesting topic. As I said, I've I've really been digging deep into this to try to find what works best for me. Because what I've realized as well is with now having good quality sleep almost every single day, you know, I'm waking up, I'm feeling super, super energized, I'm feeling super, super productive. I have— I don't have to rely on coffee or caffeine to get me through the day. I'm also waking up bricked, which is a very key component here. And a key variable. Compared to how it was back in the days when I wake up and I had no energy, I had to rely on coffee, I had to rely on all these things to get me through the day. So crazy improvements also just from a health perspective. I effortlessly keep the shape that I am in now even though I've been training so, so much now for this Ironman, a lot of cardio, still keeping most of my muscle. I would you know, have to thank probably my sleep and my diet for that, to be honest.

So yeah, one last thing that I, that I just remember—

supplements. There are some supplements obviously that can help with sleep. I think most of you guys are already familiar with these as well, but the main 3 ones that I like are always going to be L-theanine, glycine, and magnesium glycinate. So if you want to have a bit of a supplement stack to boost the sleep as well, it's going to be those.

3.

That's it, guys. Let me know if you have any questions, and have a wonderful rest of your day.