The Biggest Lies We Believe Around Health & Fitness | Vishen Lakhiani

Welcome to Category 5 of Extraordinary by Design. We are now in the growth stage of extraordinary by design. So we'll be exploring four categories within growth. First up, health and fitness. This is one of the most important categories to every aspect of our life. After all, our bodies are a vehicle with which we do every single thing in the world. But the fact is, so many of us just do not treat our bodies right. So what we're going to do in this section is I'm first going to share some of my biggest insights on health and fitness that I've gained over the last couple of years. We're then going to explore some common rules on health and fitness. We're then going to do the exercise where you're going to create your vision for your health, for your body, for your fitness levels, for the rest of your life. And then I'm going to point you to some additional resources. The entire exercise will take no more than 20 minutes. So we'll now begin with some of the key insights I've learned about health and fitness. First, you can take your entire aspect of health and fitness and think about it in terms of three categories. Now, these are the three categories that I think about when it comes to my body and my health. The first, of course, is exercise. The second is nutrition. The third is aging. Now, I want to share with you some of the key ideas I've learned in these areas. Let's talk about exercise first. So the biggest issue with exercise is that many of us fail to do it because we get busy. The interesting thing about this is that this is almost a paradox. Of course, the fitter you are, the more you can do. I remember once being on Necker island with Richard Branson, and he mentioned that one of the greatest things about life that any entrepreneur should take care of is their health. And we would see Richard doing all of these activities on a daily basis to keep himself fit. We asked him a question. What advice would you tell every entrepreneur today who wants to make a change in the world? And again, it was surprising. Richard's advice was take care of your health. So one of the key ideas I learned about exercise in the last couple of years is the concept of minimum effective dose exercise. On April 27, 2016, the New York Times carried a beautiful article called One Minute of All Out Exercise May have Benefits of 45 Minutes of Moderate Exercise. It's a mind blowing article and it's just one of several articles the New York Times has published on the power of minimum effective dose exercise. See what scientists are finding is that when you exercise well, you could exercise for four minutes or eight minutes or seven or 10 minutes and get the same results as an hour of exercise. In fact, many health and nutrition experts I know of, such as JJ Virgin, now say that there is no point in an hour long exercise routine. Dave Asprey, another leader in the field of health and fitness, says even common exercises that we are trained to do, such as extended runs, can actually be bad for you. So what is good exercise? Well, what we are now coming to understand is firstly, you can get incredible results in a short amount of time when you do it right. But secondly, you got to understand why we had this whole idea of spending an hour in the gym or with a personal trainer in the first place. Well, it evolved because of economic sense. You see, personal trainers make their money charging by the hour. So when you get someone to spend an hour in the gym, that is optimal for the whole economics of being a personal trainer, not necessarily economical for your body. So the best way to overcome the hurdle of getting enough exercise is to understand that you don't need much. I exercise for no more than than seven to ten minutes every single day. But I mix it up with different forms of exercise which are all based on minimum effective dose. So I'm gonna share two programs that I use. The first is a seven minute daily exercise routine by Christine Bullock. Christine Bullock has been voted one of LA's top trainers. The program is published by Mindvalley and it's called Total Transformation. You can get that on the Mindvalley Academy, but you can also find 5 to 10 minute exercise routines for free on YouTube. So just go and Google for it. There's a whole science behind why these short, compressed but high intensity routines work. So again, if you want it slow and steady, go for a 45 minute routine or an hour long routine. But if you're busy, you can get the same benefits in seven minutes. That's what I do every single day. Now the second tip on exercise is using this little device. It's called the Microsoft Band. What happens is you wear it around your wrist like so. And what I love about the Microsoft Band is that it's designed for a form of exercise called Tabata. Tabata Exercise was designed by a Japanese researcher who was researching fitness and he found that with the right routine, you could get incredible results in just four minutes. So here's how I use Microsoft bandwidth Tabata. When I'm racing to get ready for work, to get my kids on a school bus, to make breakfast, to get in A podcast or a webinar. My mornings get busy and often all I have time for is about 10 minutes. Well, Tabata takes four minutes. It works like this. You basically exercise at high intensity for 20 seconds, then you rest for 10, then you do it again for 20 seconds. You rest for 10, 2010-2010-2010-2010,2010. You do this eight times. Four minutes have now passed and you're tired. Your muscles feel raw, but you get an incredible amount of exercise in that. So with just four minutes of Tabata every single day, you can make remarkable changes in your body. Now, what exercise do you actually do? Well, the Microsoft band is really cool because it actually buzzes you. So it buzzes you to start the 20 minutes, buzzes you to end the 20 minutes, buzzes you for your start and ending of your 10 second rest routine, then buzzes you again. It makes a tiny little vibration on your wrist so that you can continue. And at the end of this eight minute interval, it logs your data. You can sync it with your iPhone, so you can actually see your data on your iPhone and keep that as a historical record of your fitness getting better. So I love using the Microsoft band. Now, I do different Tabata exercises every single day. Sometimes it's push ups, sometimes it's burpees, sometimes it's sit up, sometimes it's just jumping jacks. So you can mix it up, but you're only doing one exercise in four minutes. And I can tell you the impact this has had on my fitness has been huge. And all it takes is four minutes. So that said, I wanted to give you those ideas so you overcome one of the first big rules of fitness. And that is that it takes a lot of money and a lot of time. Not true anymore. Now let's go on to the second rule. And that has to do with nutrition. Oh, God. Nutrition. This is one of the areas of our lifestyles that has gotten so messed up. And honestly, if you could blame anyone, it would be the food manufacturing industry. Look, let me be honest with you. When I was a student at the University of Michigan, I lived in a house with seven other guys. And very often I remember racing the classes, and this was 1997, 1998, and we would eat a Pop Tart for breakfast. Now, have you ever looked at the back of a Pop Tart? It is not food. It is basically sugar with decoration. Yet through marketing, we as college kids came to believe that to be a legitimate breakfast. Now, here's the second thing. Can you guess what is the second biggest ingredient in Frosted Flakes. Now, if you're thinking sugar, you're wrong. According to Eric Admidis, who's one of my friends and a phenomenal fitness and nutrition trainer, the number two biggest ingredient in Frosted Flakes is actually corn flakes. Number one is sugar. When you give your kids a bowl of Frosted Flakes, you're basically feeding your children sugar. Is it no wonder that according to the center for Disease Control, one in three Americans are now obese? And this obesity epidemic is spreading across the world? You now see this in China, in the UK In France, in Southeast Asia, in India. And it's all got to do with the crap that we are being trained to put into our bodies because it's being marketed as food. So the first bit of advice that you need to take on is to start reading the nutritional tables on food packaging. One of the greatest things that has happened in the last couple of decades is that all foods right now have to have proper, clear nutritional tables. And you really should be avoiding anything that has sugar. It is one of the most, most dangerous substances for your body. So pay attention to your nutrition. Now, we don't have time to go deep into nutrition theory, but I want to share with you three authors whose works you may want to look into. The first is JJ Virgin. Now, her book, the Virgin Diet, is an incredible book because it teaches you the concept that your body is not a machine. It's not about calories in and calories out. In fact, JJ Bergen says that whole model of calories a brule. Rather, your body is a chemistry lab. It functions optimally based on the types of combinations of food that you put in. So you want to make sure that you're putting in the right combos of food. Now, JJ Virgin and her Virgin Diet puts you through a specific diet where you test out the impact of different foods on your system, and then you pull out the foods that don't gel right with you. So you're customizing your diet diet based on your unique needs. Second expert that you might want to look into. If you're really into biohacking, look into the work of Dave Asprey. He wrote the amazing book the Bulletproof Diet. And Dave invented a new form of breakfast, which is. Now, don't get shocked by this, but it's a giant cup of coffee with a slab of unsalted organic butter in it. You're basically drinking caffeine and butter for breakfast. Yet it works, and there's a science behind it. Read the book or read articles about Dave to understand why he's been written up everywhere from Forbes to Business Insider. And he just opened his first bulletproof cafe in Santa Monica. Now, a lot of people at mindvalley are on the bulletproof diet. They're seeing incredible results. Not just dropping weight by skipping breakfast and having bulletproof coffee, but increased energy, increased brain functioning. Now, you could say that some of this is the placebo effect, but either way, it seems to work and it's spreading like wildfire. Now, the third is Eric at Meedes. Eric invented a program called WildFit. Search for it online. I'm currently on that program and I have friends in their 60s who are on that program. And I know at least one friend who has dropped 40 pounds in 90 days. WildFit is a program where over a period of 90 days, Eric conditions you to change your attitude towards food and what you're eating. So it happens over 12 weeks or 90 days. But the trick is this. Eric's an evolutionary biologist, so everything is rooted in science. And he doesn't tell you what's happening next. So I'm on week six of WildFit. As I record this video, I've lost about an inch around my waist. But the weird thing is this. I feel normal. I'm eating healthy, and I've given up all sugar. I've given up certain other foods. I'm not allowed to tell you because it's false to surprise, but I gave up stuff that I always knew was unhealthy, but I was never able to give up in 20 years. And I'm now off it. Even the cravings are off. And my body continues to mold itself into its best possible weight. So I look better, I feel better. I'm 40 years old than I did when I was 25. And it all has started kicking in after six weeks of WildFit. And I cannot wait to see what the next six weeks weeks they're going to be bringing in. So again, Eric at Meaty's, phenomenal guy, amazing teacher. Look into the WildFit diet. Now, we have spoken about exercise, we've spoken about nutrition. Let's get to that third pillar of health, and that is aging. So here's what you got to know about aging. According to Singularity University, there is an extremely good probability that we are going to be extending our lifespans to hundreds of years. So let me put it this way, and I'm going to give you a mathematical model so you can calculate this for yourself based on the latest data. I, as a 40 year old man, living in the Western world will live to be 115 years old. My son, who is 8 years old, will live to be 135 years old. And if you are 25 or 30 years old, you're likely to live to be 125. Here's what Singularity University says, and here's how you can do the math for yourself. You see, medical research is getting so much better that every year you live right now, you are adding an extra three months to your lifespan. Now, the average lifespan for a man or woman in the Western world right now is about 80 years. As I'm recording this video, it's 2016. Every year from now until 2030, if you're alive, three months is being added to your lifespan. So over the next 14 years, you're basically adding three years to your lifespan, which means if your life expectancy is 80 right now, by 2030, it's going to be 83. But here's the fascinating thing. The rate of progress in medical technologies to increase lifespans is so rapid that by 2030, every year you're alive, you're going to be adding an extra year. So if you're 50 years old in 2030, right, and you have, you have 33 more years, because remember, your lifespan is going to be 83, you now get to double that. You do not have 33 more years. You have 66 more years. So you would live to be 116 years old. And that's how you do the math. Now, if you are a teenager, if you're 20 years old right now, you will be 34 by 2030. Now, if you're going to be 30 years old by 2030, 30, you know that you have roughly 54 years because your lifespan is going to be 84. Well, you would double that. You actually have an extra 108 years. So what this means is that you would be living to be 138. So that is insane, isn't it, when you think about it? But here's the bad news. While we can slow down aging, we cannot reverse it. So however much you age right now, you would be at that level as you get older. So what you want to do is to slow down aging as much as possible. And as we grow older, certain things do happen to our body. You can slow it down. Here are a couple of tips on how you can slow down aging. Firstly, eat well. We've already spoken about that. Secondly, exercise. Third, meditate. Meditation has had a profound impact in studies on slowing down aging. It makes your heart healthier it slows down telomere shortening. It basically makes you live longer and healthier. So meditate. It is one of the best ways to slow down aging. But there are other practical things you can do. Let's take wrinkles, for example. One of the biggest causes for wrinkles is sunlight hitting your skin, ultraviolet rays. No matter how old you are, you should always be going out with some form of sunscreen on your face that will help you slow down aging considerably. So with these ideas in mind, know that health and fitness is totally under control. There are many rules about it that you can discard, from how much exercise you need to what foods are acceptable foods, to your lifespans. And when you learn to discard these brules, you're ready to approach your health and fitness in a whole different way. Now that we're done with that, let's get started with the exercise. So the first part of this exercise is for you to think about the rules that you might be having on health and fitness. Ask yourself these questions. Do you believe that you're genetically inclined towards obesity or towards being skinny? What are your beliefs around food? Do you believe that culturally you have to eat a lot of carbs? You have to eat a lot of pasta? Do you believe that you have to stay with your family's diet even though you know that might be unhealthy for you? Do you believe the crap that is on television regarding food and nutrition out there? Do you believe in superfoods? Do you believe that juicing is healthy? There is evidence both for and against all of these. Do you believe you live as long as your parents? Do you believe you're aging well? Do you believe you can slow down aging? Keep in mind that whatever you believe about your health will be true for you. This is how powerful beliefs are when it comes to health and fitness. And I share this story in the book the Code of the Extraordinary Mind. A group of researchers came to a hotel to investigate hotel maids. They wanted to understand a really interesting phenomenon about hotel maids. Why is it that these women worked so hard hauling vacuum cleaners up and down stairs, flipping over bed sheets, and running up and down to clean out rooms as guests arrived. Yet many of them were obese. So they created a fake study. The researchers would grill these hotel maids on their daily activity. How many rooms they cleaned, how many mattresses they flipped over. And at the end of this study, they would implant a certain belief in these maids heads. Basically, it went something like this. The researchers, to some effect, would basically say, wow, Matilda, you must Be really fit. Because based on what you're telling me, According to the CDC's recommended level of exercise, the center for Disease Control's recommended level for daily exercise, you're there, you're considered healthy. And that's all. Now they came back, the researchers came back 30 days later and they found that just by implanting the belief in the maids heads that what they were doing was recommended daily exercise, something shifted. These maids actually saw their cholesterol count drop. They actually started losing weight. Nothing changed about their routine except a single idea that their work gave them the recommended daily level of exercise. Now what does this say? This says that your beliefs are influencing your body. You can choose to believe that your work is good for you. You can choose to believe that the foods you're eating are great. Now this is an excuse to eat crap. But every time you eat something healthy and you tell yourself that it's healthy, you reinforce positive beliefs. Every time you exercise for four to seven minutes and you tell yourself you're getting the workout potential of an hour long workout, you're reinforcing healthy beliefs. Your body is deeply impacted by the power of your beliefs. Now with that, let's go ahead and do the exercise and in three minutes and come up with your vision for your health and fitness. So once again, I'm setting my iPhone timer for three minutes and I'm going to ask you a couple of questions to guide you along. Let's begin. You should have a pen and paper ready. Here's what I want you to think about rapidly. Write down your vision for your future health. Describe how you want to feel and look every day. But what about how would you want to feel and look 5 or 10 or 20 years from now? What eating and fitness systems would you like to have? What type of food would you want to enjoy? How often do you want to exercise? What health or fitness systems would you like to explore? Is it yoga? Is it minimum effective dose exercise? Or maybe Tabata training? As I mentioned, don't think about systems because society or peer pressure tells you you need to be doing it. Rather, do your own research, read about what's available out there and try to make your own choice. Are the fitness goals that you're writing down things you'd like to achieve purely for the thrill of knowing you accomplished them? Whether it's hiking a mountain, learning to tap dance, or getting into the routine of going to the gym. Why are you setting these goals? Because you want to push yourself to do more often. If you set goals to do something that you feel you aren't going to enjoy, you're going to be selling yourself short and it's going to be hard to make it a habit. So when it comes to fitness and health, set goals for beautiful activities you can do that you know you will enjoy. I enjoy my once a week gym workout. I enjoy my tabata training. I have friends who absolutely love yoga. But don't force yourself to write down goals that you feel you might not enjoy. Set goals for how you want to look in the future. What would your hair be like? Your waistline, your legs and your butt? How would you like them to look? How would you like to feel in a swimsuit? How would you like to feel in your favorite shirt or dress? Would you like to be able to run a marathon when you're 50 or take up something fascinating like rock climbing? I have a goal to be able to consistently do at least 50 push ups every day, even when I'm 80. How many push ups or what other health metric you care about would you like to be able to do when you've gone 80 and beyond? What would your daily, weekly and weekends look like when you make health a key priority in your life? So time's up. You can now put down your pens. And remember, you can go back to this anytime. You can spend an hour on this in a cafe and figure out how you truly want to expand your vision for yourself when it comes to health. But you've already done a great job. You've explored rules on health. You've looked at some common methods to go forward. Exercise, nutrition and aging. Slowing down techniques that you can start looking into so you're on good footing now. I just want to leave you with two additional tools that you can explore in this particular chapter so that you can go further with your health. The first is a video from me called Set Points. See, many of us have goals for aspects of our lives, but we don't realize that there are certain aspects of our lives that we need to preserve. Our body's ability to do certain things as we age is one of those. Set Points is an exercise. It comes from my book, the Code of the Extraordinary Mind that teaches you how to preserve your body in whatever good shape it's in right now so that even when you're 80, you can do those 50 push ups. So watch the video of Set Points in the next page. It's just five minutes, but it's a powerful idea on how to preserve what you got so you age beautifully. Second, along with extraordinary by design, if you own the code of the extraordinary mind. You should have access to my meditation program, the six phase meditation. The six phase meditation is designed based on a scientific methodology. You're up leveling six phases of your life. But the beautiful thing about this methodology is that science has shown that a lot of the techniques that I embedded in the six phase meditation actually helps your body. Take for example, phase number three, which is forgiveness. While science has shown that when you practice forgiveness, it actually has a positive impact on your body. People who are doing endurance training actually see higher levels of endurance after a forgiveness exercise. People can do a higher vertical jump after a forgiveness exercise. We don't actually know why this is happening. I lay out some of the scientific studies and the researchers who did them in my book, but we know it works. Now, the six phase has six different phases of meditation, but when you combine them, they actually have a profound beneficial effect on your body. So these two additional resources should help you do wonders with your health and fitness. Thank you.