4 Solcast - Episode Four: Alcohol, Solitary Success, Blood Pump Supps and Priming your Bedroom for Sleep

Okay, here we go. Episode 4 of the Soulcast. I'm sitting outside, so if there's a little bit of noise I apologize, but I thought it would be nice to do this outside while you still can. Hopefully it doesn't, doesn't get worse. And also to see if it kind of— I was interested to see if it affected my creativity at all, being out in nature. And I definitely think it does do something, whether it relaxes you and that enables you to kind of think a bit more deeper, or or clearly, but it's been nice so far, so I decided to record out here. Just before the podcast, I drank a hydration kind of thing. I had beetroot powder and citrulline malate. So these are two— you can't really call beetroot powder supplement really, it's just dried up beetroots, uh, whole food supplement as they say. And citrulline malate, which is a more manufactured supplement. But basically they're both nitric oxide boosters. So nitric oxide— blood is going to be pumping around your body a lot better when you have these things. Beetroot as well is very rich in electrolytes, which you need for hydration. I notice if I have a glass of this beetroot powder, I'll put like a tablespoon in quite a decent amount. Mix that with a glass of water and pound that before exercise. You really, you don't feel the need to drink as much water even though you're doing the same amount of exercise, I've noticed. So if you're having trouble staying hydrated, try that one out. It actually tastes pretty good as well. Kind of dissolves as long as you whisk it enough with a fork, dissolve the clumps. Tastes like a— if you've ever had beetroot juice, it's very similar. I recommend drinking that as well. It's quite a low sugar juice. A good brand will be, you know, 95% beetroot juice and then 5% apple juice, and that really takes the edge off the beetroot. It's quite nice and not as much sugar as your generic apple juice or orange juice if you're looking to avoid sugars. Citrulline malate It's another one of those supplements that I kind of introduce to people if they ask me, you know, what's a supplement that I should try that I wouldn't have heard of? And it's in a lot of pre-workout blends, but it's actually more bang for your buck if you just buy the straight powder and take that. And you're also not getting the other fillers in the pre-workouts. A lot of pre-workout brands kind of put in stuff that doesn't really need to be in there. So if you just buy that bulk, get a big bag of it, I do 6 to 8 grams about 20 minutes before I work out, and it really goes a long way to producing a bigger pump. And mostly everyone that I introduce— well, everyone that I introduce it to will go, wow, man, I had like— it fires you up, uh, gets the body heat going. And it's like, it's one of the supplements you can really see the, the effects of. So I like to recommend that to people. People, so citrulline malate. Give that a go, really good pumps. Of course, blood flow to the rest of the body, so if you have erectile problems, you can try taking that as well. I would recommend getting to the root of the erectile problems rather than taking a supplement to kind of boost you, but yeah, it can help if you're in that situation. So I wanted to talk about The idea that you have to be by yourself a lot of the time in order to properly progress in life. And it's one of those harsh truths. If you want to develop a skill or learn something, study properly, you're going to have to do a lot of work by yourself, not in the company of other people. You physically can't spend all your time with friends, family, you know, these other commitments if you actually want to progress properly and succeed in any meaningful way in life. You have to do the work. And you obviously know I'm a huge proponent of having those strong relationships, but you should really conceptualize the idea that Okay, I have my time with my friends, I have my time with my family, I'm gonna be enjoying that when that's happening, but then I also have to realize, okay, you need to sit down, do the work for whatever you're trying to do, just committing that time to bettering your running conditioning, or, you know, lifting more weight in the physical realm, or the mental realm if you're trying to make more money, or, or study something. Write something. You can't write if you're in the room with friends. Like, I wish you could, and you can do some kind of creative stuff, but like studying, you can't really be in a room full of people talking and laughing and everything without your work being impacted. So you're gonna have to be by yourself a lot of the time. The work done in isolation is always going to be your most productive if you you're looking to kind of upskill yourself or learn something new. That being said, don't be resentful of being in either place. So what I mean by that is you have your work and your play, let's say, that incorporates all your relationships and what, what else you do with your time. When you're working, don't be like, oh man, I wish I was my friends. They all went out tonight, but I stayed in. Don't, don't think like that. And then the other end of that is don't be upset that you're not working when you are having fun and with your friends or with your family, because if you do that in either situation, you're not going to get the full benefit of both. You won't be as focused on your work because you'll be like, oh, I wish I was partying right now. And you won't be as engaged and loving in that play time. So, it's kind of the same concept of just be in the present moment, work when you're working, have fun when you're having fun, otherwise you enjoy neither, which is just silly. Kind of related to that, I guess, in terms of working on your goals and things. The idea that the day, I think, is the only thing that matters in a sense in regards to goals. Like, yes, have these, these long-term plans and ideas of what you have to do, what you want to do, and what direction you want to take, and and things like that. But at the end of the day, the work that you put in, in the 24-hour period— you're asleep for some of that— the remaining hours, what do you do in that period where you're conscious today to work towards those goals? And how do you get there? And you can have goals, but if you're not actually taking steps towards them today, no matter what that is, No matter how small, then your goal isn't going to materialize no matter how well you, you write it down. And in 3 months I want this, and it's like, okay, in 3 months it doesn't exist in a way. It's, it's an idea in your head. So what happens today? What am I going to do today? What am I going to practice today in order to get myself closer to those goals? It also, if you think about it like that, it takes away the potential of you going, I'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow isn't, it doesn't come, right? Tomorrow never comes. So you need to do stuff today, not say I'll do it tomorrow. I'll write something tomorrow. I'll work out tomorrow because you get to tomorrow and then it's just a normal day and okay, you're a day behind, a day lost of progress. Every day that you don't start, in terms of compound interest, it all multiplies, right? So each day that you don't start is just a day of work that you have to put in later down the line in order to get where you want to be. So start today is my point. Don't put the, don't put the work on future You. Present you is the one that has to do the work. You can't say, "Oh, weekend me will do it." It doesn't really work that way. Cleaning a room and how this helps you sleep. So I think there are many benefits to arranging your bedroom in a way that it becomes like a sanctuary of rest and relaxation. Things like properly cleaning a room, putting things away in the drawers. There's no clutter on all the— any of the surfaces. Everything's in its particular place. Get storage containers if you need to kind of neatly organize them. The effort that goes into that— if you have a messy room and put away things, you know, straight away when you come back to the room, you have things maybe in a bag, you put them back in in their spots, not on a chair, not on the desk, just back to where it needs to go. If it's dirty, you know, it goes to the laundry. And just having this idea of having zero clutter in your room is really important and you notice the difference. You're not— your brain isn't subconsciously processing everything that needs to be done in the room. Like that all goes on in the background of your brain. So when you put everything away, your brain doesn't have to think about those potential chores in the future. It just— even if you're not conscious that you're worried about that, your brain's going, oh yeah, we should remember to do that. Like, that's a tab in your brain that it needs to keep going because it's okay, I need to do that, I need to do that. And that's always running in your subconscious. So anytime you do chores and just get things off your mind, it closes that, you know, figurative tab in your mind, like a web browser. And enables your brain to relax a bit more. So cleaning your room is really important. Doing things like an oil diffuser I have, you can change essential oils, you know, lavender before bed, peppermint is a nice just general one, uh, ylang-ylang, I'm not sure if I said that right, um, as an aphrodisiac and just another kind of relaxing one. That's something you can put in there to kind of make the space a bit warmer. A salt lamp, candles. I really recommend a really kind of soft light in a few hours before bed. You don't want to have harsh fluorescent— not that anyone really has fluorescent, uh, lighting in their bedrooms, but sometimes they do in the bathroom, which is horrific. To look at before bed. But having candles and salt lamps and those kind of really quite dim things just really gets your brain— it stops, it stops kind of subconsciously thinking it's the daytime, which is what your brain kind of thinks when it's getting those blue wavelengths of light from the bathroom lights. You're going to feel a lot more tired before bed and feel more tired, you know, Your sleep will be deeper because of that. And you also, because obviously you would have to eliminate the phone and PC to get rid of those electronic lights, I usually try and do that, you know, an hour and a half before bed. I'll put my phone away, I'll turn my laptop off, put it on airplane mode, you know, and then the rest of my night I don't touch the technology and I find that really helps. You're not worried about social media or, you know, maybe you had an argument with someone on Twitter. Happens to us all. You don't want that in your brain before you're trying to go to sleep. You want to be relaxed and not worry about the stuff of the day. So, that's a great way to both reduce that electronic light. So, put away your stuff for an hour and a bit. 2 hours really before bedtime. Stretch, obviously, before bed. Big proponent of that. Other things in your room that I think help make it a bit nicer, you can look into: posters of aesthetic interests of yours. For instance, I have a few good quality photos of Arnie. Bob Paris, another really aesthetic bodybuilder. So I have a few of them around, a few photos that I've taken myself, kind of printed little memories, but they all fit in the room. Good little conversation starters as well. As far as it comes to your bed, you can get a nice quality pair of sheets, couple, a couple sets, so you can have one in the cupboard ready to go when you, when you wash one. And thinking about how long you spend in your bed and how much of your life you spend in bed, I think it's really worth it to spend the money on a nicer set of sheets. Higher thread count, uh, Egyptian cotton I hear is good. Silk or silk blend can be nice depending on what kind of area you're in in terms of your climate, whether you need a thicker one or a thinner one. You're spending a third of your life in bed, so investing in the, the comfort and quality of your sleep there is really going to go a long way. If possible, keep your work laptop out of the bedroom. You don't want to be thinking about emails. You don't want to have that in your mind as you go into bed. So try and keep your work laptop in another room. You want to do everything that you can to cue your brain to associate this place with relaxation. This means when you walk in at the end of the day, you've had a shower, you've had dinner, you've come into your room and you just go, "Oh, I can relax here. This is my little cocoon. Everything's nice. It smells great. It's clean." That can be a little sanctuary if you've had a, you know, an average day or you've been at work. The other thing is that it cues your brain to associate this area with sleep, which will in turn make your sleep process a whole lot better in terms of how long it takes you to get to sleep. And the depth of your sleep, 'cause your brain's kinda fully relaxed and turned off, and it's not worrying about all those things that can happen. Another good thing you can do in terms of your pre-bed routine to further condition the brain for sleep is a cup of tea. Chamomile tea with glycine and zinc. ZMA is what I have before bed. Highly recommend. You sleep like a rock. Your dreams will be vivid, which is always fun. Have a little adventure going to sleep. Having that tea before bed can further condition your brain. The temperature change of the tea actually benefits sleep as well. Your body associates all these things and it all helps time your circadian rhythm and get those hormones and everything, and the chemical messengers that are kind of priming your body for sleep, to get them firing at the right levels. We're gonna go to a break. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna walk about 800 meters, find a tree nearby, and do a max set of pull-ups. So if you have the opportunity to— you can hang off the side of your house Or if you have a pull-up bar, use that. Obviously a door frame. Just go do a max set of pull-ups, chin-ups, whatever you feel like. See what you can do. Just get a bit of blood flowing, a bit of a back pump. Good thing to do every now and then. So I'll see you in a bit. Welcome back. Hope you enjoyed that walk. I hope pull-ups went well. Tree I found, it's quite thick but still decent, so got a good back punch then. A listener asked me about Alcohol. I guess I'll just give my general thoughts, a few different techniques you can use to mitigate the effects of alcohol, strategies you can employ that make you not as hungover. Just little tips and tricks that I've found. My experience with alcohol years ago was binge drinking, as is the culture, unfortunately, at university. I don't think it's very good for you, let me just preface that. I don't advise it, but it did happen. Now I've tailored down a lot. My intake of alcohol will be 2 or 3 glasses of wine a fortnight, probably, something like that. That's what I regularly drink. Even then it can be a bit lower frequency. I just, I'm not going out to nightclubs as much, so there's never really the opportunity, or not opportunity, because I don't really want to do it. But the binge drinking is just not there. When you are going out, it's part and parcel of the experience. If you are serious about your fitness goals, I do recommend cutting it out as part of your regular intake. If you have one beer after work every day, that's still drinking every day, and it's gonna have some long-term effects as well as being, you know, a couple hundred calories that you can really do without. It's just all empty nutrition, empty calories. When I do drink, if I'm drinking a relatively large amount, I'll drink vodka and soda water. This is probably the cleanest drink you can get in terms of something that's still quite enjoyable to drink. Vodka, soda water, and soda water I mean sparkling mineral water. Because you don't want to get one that has sugar in it. You literally just want carbonated water. Mineral water is nice, get those electrolytes in as well, a little bit. Soda water, lime. The lime is the essence of the flavor of the drink. It helps take the edge off the vodka and is quite refreshing as well. You're drinking a glass of water with every drink of alcohol, which also goes to help you hydrate throughout the night. What I've also done, which is, is kind of fun, is to do vodka, soda water, and a flavored branched-chain amino acid drink. So you'll, you'll end up getting quite a few grams of amino acids in while you're drinking, which is pretty useful. If you just kind of make it in the glass, dissolve the BCAAs in a little bit of fizzy water, add the vodka, and then top it up so it kind of mixes well, you get that flavor, whatever flavor your, your amino acid drink is. Still wouldn't recommend that as much because you're going to have sweeteners in a lot of things like that. Which aren't good. So now I stick to the Vox Soda and lime. Fresh lime, cut up, really use a lot of lime per drink. Ice, of course. Great way to get a Don't have vodka and tonic, tonic water. Tonic water actually has as much sugar as regular soft drink. A lot of people don't know that. They think they're drinking healthy, especially when they're having gin and tonic, because it's not like it tastes sweet as such. But go check out the nutritional information on the bottle. There's actually quite a bit of sugar in those. So don't use tonic water, use soda water. No sugar, no calories. When I'm— in order to prepare for drinking in the night, I will skip breakfast usually. So I'll fast, I'll have coffee, maybe if I know I'm gonna be out to dinner, the calories of the alcohol and things, I'll just skip breakfast and you feel a bit lighter. There's not as much food in your system, so when you do come to drink as well, you get a bit drunker. Per drink that you drink, which is nice. Don't have to drink as much to get the same experience. Electrolyte powder, really critical. If you get a good quality electrolyte powder, you can hydrate a lot more effectively than just drinking water. This is the reason why people would drink Gatorade, but if you actually look at the, the raw electrolytes in terms of how many milligrams are in there. It's not that much. So get a, an electrolyte powder, proper one, smash that with water before you go out to drink. When you get home in the morning, just, just mainline that electrolyte powder as much as you can. It's going to do a lot to keep the water in your body, replace a lot of the stuff that alcohol uses up in your body. And make you just feel better in general. Less of a hangover, of course. When you wake up, have a salty meal upon waking. So you guessed it, my go-to is usually eggs, scrambled eggs, sea salt, butter, sourdough toast. I'll have that when I wake up. A lot of salt to help replenish again your electrolytes. A shower to hydrate before before bed, a shower to hydrate in the morning. You're gonna be absorbing a lot of the water throughout the skin. Everyone feels better after a nice hot shower. You're clean, you sleep better. So make sure you're not too drunk to have a shower and take care of yourself before you get back to bed. What I'll also do is only have pre-drinks. So it helps to reduce spending when you're out. And when you rock up at the club and you're kind of chasing that high of the drunk of the pre-drinks, definitely don't have any extra drinks past midnight. It's never really worth it. Only drink when you can get a decent amount of sleep after. One of the biggest reasons you feel like shit is because you have 6 hours sleep at the most, after compounding on the fact that you've drunk and also not really eaten properly and all that. The other thing that I want to comment on is the anxiety that alcohol gives you. I don't know if everyone's aware of this. I know a few people aren't that Whilst they may have felt it, alcohol actually gives you anxiety for several days after drinking. So you have a big night, oftentimes after a big night, not often, but sometimes I'll uncharacteristically feel anxious and I'll be kind of freaking out a bit in my head and it'll only click maybe like 20 minutes later, oh wait, actually I went out on the weekend and it's 2 days later, but I'm still feeling these anxious feelings that I personally don't really feel that much due to the way that I manage my stress and exercise and stretch and do things to reduce my waking anxiety. So when it pops up like that, I really notice it. So if you're an anxious person, don't drink. It's gonna exacerbate that. There are a lot of negatives of alcohol, but in some situations it's fun. It is fun to have a few drinks with good friends that you haven't seen in a long time. In some situations it does call for drinking a lot of drinks. For instance, if you're on holiday with your best mates in Europe, Croatia, on on the beach partying, you're probably gonna have a few drinks and you should just enjoy it. Try and mitigate, you know, the damage to your body, the hydration, but also just enjoy it because it happens sometimes, it calls for it sometimes, and it is a lot of fun. Don't do that often though. That's where stuff gets hairy. In moderation. Now, the amount that I drink alcohol, it's not going to kill you. It's not going to completely ruin your life, your body, if you drink 2-3 glasses of red wine every few weeks. It can be done. It's nice to do over dinner with a spouse. Maybe you've, you've been working hard for a few weeks and you just have a Saturday night, a Friday night, couple of glasses of red, a nice dinner, and just relax a bit. Not that you need alcohol to relax, but it's a unique feeling, and it can be incorporated in that way with respect, with consciousness. You're not drinking to get rid of any bad feelings that you have. It's like anything, it can be used well, it can be abused. Hopefully everyone did that walk in the break that we had. Walking is great for a number of reasons. It's something I recommend anyone do, full stop. If someone comes to me with a question, how do I lose weight, one of the first things I'll say, a great, you know, exercise to do that's very minimal impact, it's not going to aggravate the joints a lot, It's a great exercise to do almost as like a general body maintenance. There's blood flow, you know, joints are moving around. It's, it's a fundamental human movement that we don't do enough of in today's society. If you go for a decent walk, you may not feel as stuffed as you do after a a run, but you're still doing decent exercise. So don't shy away from that if you think it's not enough to, to make changes. If you're not doing any exercise, just literally walk. Go around the block. Once you're out, like, just say to yourself, I'll do a block. Once you're out, you'll do 2 blocks easy, and it kind of stacks from there. A lot of ideas will come to you when you're walking. I find The walk that we did just then, ideas for the second half of the podcast came to me. Ideas and problems get solved by your subconscious when you're walking. You— something will pop up and you go, oh, that's how I handled that situation. I'm not sure why it does that, probably due to the general blood flow. You can kind of— your brain can wander because you're doing an automatic movement. Walking, you don't need to think about walking or really concentrate on it. Oftentimes if you're walking, you'll be in nature, which is always great, more calming. You're getting out in the sun, hopefully, if you're walking outside. Stan Efforting recommends the 10-minute walk. He's kind of popularized this notion of walking after every meal for 10 minutes. It's, it's really doable and it really helps digestion. If you're feeling quite full and heavy after a meal, go for a 10-minute walk afterwards. Go around the block, get everyone— if you've just had a family dinner, get everyone to go together. Can be a bit more family time as well. But at the end of that walk, you— it's almost like It moves everything around further down. Great for digestion. Blood flow, again, helps with digestion. So I really recommend walking as much as you can. Not to the point of excess, obviously. You don't want to be walking for hours and hours and hours. You can also listen to a podcast just like this one. Learn things. While you're walking. Like I said, you don't have to concentrate on it, so you can do other things while walking. I would also recommend walking just for the sake of walking. You don't want to be distracting yourself from physical movement with music or podcasts all the time. It's good to have that time where you just focus on the physical movement at hand. You're gonna be a lot more conscious in, in the activity So, walking is good is basically the essence of that. I wanted to close with a poem that was first read to me by my dad a long time ago. It's a great poem. It's really stuck in my mind and the sentiment is a little bit sad, but it's a very powerful poem by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Allegedly it was written about his dying father, so there was a kind of significance in when my dad showed it to me. But I'm gonna read it. Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right. Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. So there are themes of death, kind of fighting against that final curtain. Go have another read of the poem. Hopefully I read it okay for you. It's a beautiful poem and I have it printed out in my room just as a little reminder of the themes within that. So that's it for episode 4 of the Soulcast. Thanks for listening. If you're following me on Twitter, great. Follow me on Gumroad, subscribe to the podcast there if you're listening to it on Spotify or SoundCloud. And have a great rest of your day, good night, or good day.