How To April Fool Yourself Into Having A Nutrient-Dense Diet!

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These nutrient-dense foods pack such a punch you only need a bit added to your meal…

  • “Have 5 servings of fruit per day”—popular wisdom in the West
  • “Have 7 servings of fruit per day!”—generally held as the norm in Japan
  • “Have these 12 things that are mostly fruit & veg & nuts each day”Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen
  • “Does the pickle that comes with a burger count?”—an indication of how much many people struggle.

For what it’s worth: pickles are a good source of some minerals (and some healthy gut bacteria too), but are generally too high in sodium to be healthy for most people beyond in the most modest moderation.

But! It can be a lot easier, and without sitting down to a salad buffet every day!

Here are some sneaky tips:

(call it our nod to April Fool’s Day, because tricking yourself into eating more healthily is a top-tier prank)

Beyond soups and smoothies

Soups and smoothies are great, because we can take a lot of nutrients that way without actually oing much eating. And if we’ve a want or need to hide something, blending it does a fine job. However, we’re confident you already know how to make soups and smoothies. So…

Sauces are another excellent place to put nutrients—and as a bonus, homemade sauces will mean skipping on the store-bought sauces whose ingredients all-too-often look something like “sugar, water, spirit vinegar, glucose-fructose syrup, modified maize starch, maltodextrin, salt…”

Top things to use as a main base ingredient in sauces:

  • Tomato purée—so much lycopene, and great vitamins too! Modest flavour, but obviously only sensible for what you intend to be a tomato-based sauce. Use it to make anything from marinara sauce to ketchup, sweet-and-sour to smoky barbecue.
  • Lentils/beans—if unsure, red lentils or haricot beans have a very mild taste, and edamame beans are almost not-there, flavor-wise. But cooked and blended smooth, these are high-protein, iron-rich, flavonoid-heavy, and a good source of fiber too. Can be used as the base of so many savory creamy sauces!
  • Corn—that yellow color? It’s all the lutein. Home-made creamed corn goes great as a dipping sauce! Added spices optional.

Vegetables that punch above their weight

Sometimes, you might not want to eat much veg, but a small edible side-dish could be appealing, or even a generous garnish. In those cases, if you choose wisely, you can have a lot of nutrients in a tiny portion. Here are some that have an absurd nutrient-to-size ratio:

Cacao nibs—one for the dessert-lovers here, but can also garnish a frothy coffee, your morning overnight oats, or if we’re honest, can also just be snacked on! And they keep for ages. Botanically technically a fruit, but we’re going to throw it in here. As for health qualities? Where to begin…

They:

…which is starting to look like a pattern, isn’t it? It’s good against cancer.

Brussels sprouts—if your knee-jerk reaction here wasn’t one of great appeal, then consider: these are delicious if done right.

Buy them fresh, not frozen (nothing nutritionally wrong with frozen if you like them—we’re just doing the extra-level tastiness here). Wash them and peel them, then cut twice from the top to almost-the-bottom, to quarter them in a way that they still stay in one piece. Rub them (or if you’re going easier on the fats, spray them) with a little olive oil, a tiny touch of lemon juice, and sprinkle a little cracked black pepper. Sautée them. We know people will advise roasting, which is also great, but try the sautée approach, and thank us later.

Four sprouts is already a sufficient daily serving of cruciferous vegetables, and provides so many health benefits, with not just a stack of vitamins and minerals, but also have anti-cancer properties, are great for your heart in multiple ways, and reduce inflammation too. They’re literally one of the healthiest foods out there and you only need a tiny portion to benefit.

Kale—Don’t like the taste/texture? That’s OK, read on… No surprises here, but it’s crammed with vitamins and minerals.

  • If you don’t care for the bitter taste, cooking it (such as by steaming it) takes that away.
  • If you don’t care for the texture, baking it with a little sprayed-on olive oil changes that completely (and is how “kale chips” are made).
  • If you don’t care for either? Do the “kale chips” thing mentioned above, but do it on a lower heat for longer—dry it out, basically. Then either blend it in a food processor, or by hand with a pestle and mortar (it turns to powder very easily, so this won’t be hard work), and you now have a very nutrient-dense powder that tastes of very little. While fries are not a health food, an example here is that you can literally dust fries with it and they won’t taste any different but you got a bunch of vitamins and minerals added from a whole food source.
    • If going for the above approach, do it in batch and make yourself a jar of it to keep handy with your seasonings collection!

Bell peppers—Working hard to justify their high prices in the grocery store, these are very high in vitamins, especially rich in carotenoids, including lutein, and as a bonus, they’re also full of antioxidants. So, slice some and throw them at whatever else you’re cooking, and you’ve added a lot of nutrients for negligible effort.

Garlic—once you’ve done the paperwork, garlic not only makes bland meals delicious, but is also a treasure trove of micronutrients. It has a stack of vitamins and minerals, and also contains allicin. If you’ve not heard of that one, it’s the compound in garlic that is so good for blood pressure and heart health. See for example:

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, just imagine what a bulb of garlic can do (come on, we can’t be the only ones who measure garlic by the bulb instead of by the clove, right?)!

But in seriousness: measure garlic with your heart—have lots or a little, per your preference. The whole point here is that even a little of these superfoods can make a huge difference to your health!

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    Get moving! “Move” argues that our lack of movement is crippling us physically and mentally. Find ways to build your life around movement and improve your health.

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  • Lucid Dreaming: How To Do It, & Why

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    Lucid Dreaming: Methods & Uses

    We’ve written about dreaming more generally before:

    How Useful Are Our Dreams?

    Today we’re going to be talking more about a subject we’ve only touched on previously: lucid dreaming

    What it is: lucid dreaming is the practice of being mentally awake while dreaming, with awareness that it is a dream, and control over the dream.

    Why is it useful? Beyond simply being fun, it can banish nightmares, it can improve one’s relationship with sleep (always something to look forward to, and sleep doesn’t feel like a waste of time at all!), and it can allow for exploring a lot of things that can’t easily be explored otherwise—which can be quite therapeutic.

    How to do it

    There are various ways to induce lucid dreaming, but the most common and “entry-level” method is called Mnemonic-Induced Lucid Dreaming (MILD).

    MILD involves having some means of remembering what one has forgotten, i.e., that one is dreaming. To break it down further, first we’ll need to learn how to perform a reality check. Again, there are many of these, but one of the simplest is to ask yourself:

    How did I get here?

    • If you can retrace your steps with relative ease and the story of how you got here does not sound too much like a dream sequence, you are probably not dreaming.
    • If you are dreaming, however, chances are that nothing actually led to where you are now; you just appeared here.

    Other reality checks include checking whether books, clocks, and/or lightswitches work as they should—all are notorious for often being broken in dreams; books have gibberish or missing or repeated text; clocks do not tell the correct time and often do not even tell a time that could be real (e.g: 07:72), and lightswitches may turn a light on/off without actually changing the level of illumination in the room.

    Now, a reality check is only useful if you actually perform it, so this is where MILD comes in.

    You need to make a habit of doing a reality check frequently. Whenever you remember, it’s a good time to do a reality check, but you should also try tying it to something. Many people use a red light, because then they can also use a timed red light during the night to subconsciously cue them that they are dreaming. But it could be as simple as “whenever I go to the bathroom, I do a reality check”.

    With this in mind, a fun method that has extra benefits is to try to use a magical power, such as psychokinesis. If (while fully awake) whenever you go to pick up some object you imagine it just wooshing magically to meet your hand halfway, then at some point you’ll instinctively do that while dreaming, and it’ll stand a good chance of working—and thus cluing you in that you are dreaming.

    How to stay lucid

    When you awaken within a dream (i.e. become lucid), there’s a good chance of one of two things happening quickly:

    • you forget again
    • you wake up

    So when you realize you are dreaming, do two things at once:

    • verbally repeat to yourself “I am dreaming now”. This will help stretch your awareness from one second to the next.
    • look at your hands, and touch things, especially the floor and/or walls. This will help to ground you within the dream.

    Things to do while lucid

    Flying is a good fun entry-level activity; it’s very common to initially find it difficult though, and only be able to lift up very slightly before gently falling down, or things like that. A good tip is: instead of trying to move yourself, you stay still and move the dream around you, as though you are rotating a 3D model (because guess what: you are).

    Confronting your nightmares and/or general fears is a good thing for many. Think, while you’re still awake during the day, about what you would do about the source/trigger of your fear if you had magical powers. Whatever you choose, keep it consistent for now, because this is about habit-forming.

    Example: let’s say there’s a person from your past who appears in your nightmares. Let’s say your chosen magic would be “I would cause the ground to open up, swallow them, and close again behind them”. Vividly imagine that whenever they come to mind while you are awake, and when you encounter them next in a nightmare, you’ll remember to do exactly that, and it’ll work.

    Learning about your own subconscious is a more advanced activity, but once you’re used to lucid dreaming, you can remember that everything in there is an internal projection of your own mind, so you can literally talk to parts of your subconscious, including past versions of yourself, or singular parts of your greater-whole personality, as per IFS:

    Take Care Of Your “Unwanted” Parts Too!

    Want to know more?

    You might like to read:

    Lucid Dreaming: A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life – by Dr. Stephen LaBerge

    Enjoy!

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  • Twenty-One, No Wait, Twenty Tweaks For Better Health

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    Dr. Greger’s 21 Tweaks… We say 20, though!

    We’ve talked before about Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen (12 things he advises that we make sure to eat each day, to enjoy healthy longevity), but much less-talked-about are his “21 Tweaks”…

    They are, in short, a collection of little adjustments one can make for better health. Some of them are also nutritional, but many are more like lifestyle tweaks. Let’s do a rundown:

    At each meal:

    • Preload with water
    • Preload with “negative calorie” foods (especially: greens)
    • Incorporate vinegar (1-2 tbsp in a glass of water will slow your blood sugar increase)
    • Enjoy undistracted meals
    • Follow the 20-minute rule (enjoy your meal over the course of at least 20 minutes)

    Get your daily doses:

    • Black cumin ¼ tsp
    • Garlic powder ¼ tsp
    • Ground ginger (1 tsp) or cayenne pepper (½ tsp)
    • Nutritional yeast (2 tsp)
    • Cumin (½ tsp)
    • Green tea (3 cups)

    Every day:

    • Stay hydrated
    • Deflour your diet
    • Front-load your calories (this means implementing the “king, prince, pauper” rule—try to make your breakfast the largest meal of your day, followed my a medium lunch, and a small evening meal)
    • Time-restrict your eating (eat your meals within, for example, an 8-hour window, and fast the rest of the time)
    • Optimize exercise timing (before breakfast is best for most people, unless you are diabetic)
    • Weigh yourself twice a day (doing this when you get up and when you go to bed results in much better long-term weight management than weighing only once per day)
    • Complete your implementation intentions (this sounds a little wishy-washy, but it’s about building a set of “if this, then that” principles, and then living by them. An example could be directly physical health-related such as “if there is a choice of stairs or elevator, I will take the stairs”, or could be more about holistic good-living, such as “if someone asks me for help, I will try to oblige them so far as I reasonably can”)

    Every night:

    • Fast after 7pm
    • Get sufficient sleep (7–9 hours is best. As we get older, we tend more towards the lower end of that, but try get at least those 7 hours!)
    • Experiment with Mild Trendelenburg (better yet, skip this one)*

    *This involves a 6º elevation of the bed, at the foot end. Dr. Greger advises that this should only be undertaken after consulting your doctor, though, as a lot of health conditions can contraindicate it. We at 10almonds couldn’t find any evidence to support this practice, and numerous warnings against it, so we’re going to go ahead and say we think this one’s skippable.

    Again, we do try to bring you the best evidence-based stuff here at 10almonds, and we’re not going to recommend something just because of who suggested it

    As for the rest, you don’t have to do them all! And you may have noticed there was a little overlap in some of them. But, we consider them a fine menu of healthy life hacks from which to pick and choose!

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  • Can You Repair Your Own Teeth At Home?

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    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small 😎

    ❝I liked your article on tooth remineralization, I saw a “home tooth repair kit”, and wondered if it is as good as what dentists do, or at least will do the job well enough to save a dentist visit?❞

    Firstly, for any wondering about the tooth remineralization, here you go:

    Tooth Remineralization: How To Heal Your Teeth Naturally

    Now, to answer your question, we presume you are talking about something like this kit available on Amazon. In which case, some things to bear in mind:

    • This kind of thing is generally intended as a stop-gap measure until you see a dentist, because you cracked your tooth or lost a filling or something today, and will see the dentist next week, say.
    • This kind of thing is not what Dr. Michelle Jorgensen was talking about in another video* that we wrote about; rather, it is using a polymer filler to rebuild what is missing. The key difference is: this is using plastic, which is not what your teeth are made of, so it will never “take” as part of the tooth, as some biomimetic dentistry options can do.
    • Yes, this does also mean you are putting microplastics (because the powder is usually micronized polymer beads with zinc oxide, to which you add a liquid to create a paste that will set) in your mouth and quite possibly right next to an open blood supply depending on what’s damaged and whether capillaries were reaching it.
    • Because of the different material and application method, the adhesion is nothing like professional fillings (be they metal or resin), and thus the chances of it coming out again or so high that it’s more a question of when, rather than if.
    • If you have damage under there (as we presume you do in any scenario where you are using this), then if it’s not professionally cleaned before the filling goes in, then it can get infected, and (less dramatically, but still importantly) any extant decay can also get worse. We say “professionally”, because you will not be able to do an adequate job with your toothbrush, floss, etc at home, and even if you got dentist’s tools (which you can buy, by the way, but we don’t recommend), you will no more be able to do the same quality job as a dentist who has done that many times a day every day for the past 20 years, as buying expensive paintbrushes would make you able to restore a Renaissance painting without messing it up.

    *See: Dangers Of Root Canals And Crowns, & What To Do Instead ← what she recommends instead is biomimetic dentistry, which is also more prosaically called “conservative restorative dentistry”, i.e. it tries to conserve as much as possible, replace lost material on a like-for-like basis, and generally end up with a result that’s as close to natural as possible.

    In other words, the short answer to your question is “no, sorry, it isn’t and it won’t”

    However! A just like it’s good to have a first aid kit in the house even if it won’t do the same job as an ambulance crew, it can be good to have a tooth repair kit (essentially, a tooth first-aid kit) in the house, precisely to use it just as a stop-gap measure in the event that you one day crack a tooth or lose a filling or such, and don’t want to leave it open to all things in the meantime.

    (The results of this sort of kit are so not long-term in nature that it will be quick and easy for your dentist to remove it to do their own job once you get there)

    If in doubt, always see your dentist as soon as possible, as many things are a lot less work to treat now, than to treat later. Just, make sure to advocate for yourself and what you actually want/need, and don’t let them upsell you on something you didn’t come in for while you’re sitting in their chair—that’s a conversation to be had in advance with a clear head and no pressure (and nobody’s hands in your mouth)!

    See also: Dentists Are Pulling ‘Healthy’ and Treatable Teeth To Profit From Implants, Experts Warn

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • Get Better Sleep: Beyond The Basics
  • Stimulant Users Are Caught in Fatal ‘Fourth Wave’ of Opioid Epidemic

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, near a storefront advertising “free” cellphones, J.R. sat in an empty back stairwell and showed a reporter how he tries to avoid overdosing when he smokes crack cocaine. KFF Health News is identifying him by his initials because he fears being arrested for using illegal drugs.

    It had been several hours since his last hit, and the chatty, middle-aged man’s hands moved quickly. In one hand, he held a glass pipe. In the other, a lentil-size crumb of cocaine.

    Or at least J.R. hoped it was cocaine, pure cocaine — uncontaminated by fentanyl, a potent opioid that was linked to about 75% of all overdose deaths in Rhode Island in 2022. He flicked his lighter to “test” his supply. He believed that if it had a “cigar-like sweet smell,” he said, it would mean that the cocaine was laced with fentanyl. He put the pipe to his lips and took a tentative puff. “No sweet,” he said, reassured.

    But this method offers only false and dangerous reassurance. A mistake can be fatal.

    It is impossible to tell whether a drug contains fentanyl by the taste or smell. “Somebody can believe that they can smell it or taste it, or see it … but that’s not a scientific test,” said Josiah “Jody” Rich, an addiction specialist and researcher who teaches at Brown University. “People are going to die today because they buy some cocaine that they don’t know has fentanyl in it.”

    The first wave of the long-running and devastating opioid epidemic began in the United States with the abuse of prescription painkillers in the early 2000s. The second wave involved an increase in heroin use, starting around 2010. The third wave began when powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl started appearing in the supply around 2015. Now experts are observing a fourth phase of the deadly epidemic.

    The mix of stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamines with fentanyl — a synthetic opioid 50 times as powerful as heroin — is driving what experts call the opioid epidemic’s “fourth wave.” The mixture of stimulants and fentanyl presents powerful challenges to efforts to reduce overdoses because many users of stimulants don’t know they are at risk of ingesting opioids, so they don’t take overdose precautions.

    The only way to know whether cocaine or other stimulants contain fentanyl is to use drug-checking tools such as fentanyl test strips — a best practice for what’s known as “harm reduction,” now embraced by federal health officials in combating drug overdose deaths. Fentanyl test strips cost as little as $2 for a two-pack online, but many front-line organizations also give them out free.

    Nationwide, illicit stimulants mixed with fentanyl were the most common drugs found in fentanyl-related overdoses, according to a study published in 2023 in the scientific journal Addiction. The stimulant in the fatal mixture tends to be cocaine in the Northeast, and methamphetamine in the West and much of the Midwest and South.

    “The No. 1 thing that people in the U.S. are dying from in terms of drug overdoses is the combination of fentanyl and a stimulant,’’ said Joseph Friedman, a researcher at UCLA and the study’s lead author. “Black and African Americans are disproportionately affected by this crisis to a large magnitude, especially in the Northeast.”

    Friedman was also the lead author of another new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, that shows the fourth wave of the opioid epidemic is driving up the mortality rate among older Black Americans (ages 55-64) and, more recently, Hispanic people. Friedman said part of the reason street fentanyl is so deadly is that there’s no way to tell how potent it is. Hospitals have safely used medical-grade fentanyl for surgical pain because the potency is strictly regulated, but “the potency fluctuates wildly in the illicit market” Friedman said.

    Studies of street drugs, he said, show that in illicit drugs the potency can vary from 1% to 70% fentanyl.

    “Imagine ordering a mixed drink in a bar and it contains one to 70 shots,” Friedman said, “and the only way you know is to start drinking it. … There would be a huge number of alcohol overdose deaths.”

    Drug-checking technology can provide a rough estimate of fentanyl concentration, he said, but to get a precise measure requires sending drugs to a laboratory.

    It’s not clear how much of the latest trend in polydrug use — in which users mix substances, such as cocaine and fentanyl, for example — is accidental versus intentional. It can vary for individual users: a recent study from Millennium Health found that most people who use fentanyl do so at times intentionally and other times unintentionally.

    People often use stimulants to power through the rapid withdrawal from fentanyl, Friedman said. And the high-risk practice of using cocaine or meth with heroin, known as “speedballing,” has been around for decades. Other factors include manufacturers’ adding the cheap synthetic opioid to a stimulant to stretch their supply, or dealers mixing up bags.

    Researchers say many people still think they are using unadulterated cocaine or crack — a misconception that can be deadly. “Folks who are using stimulants, and not intentionally using opioids, are unprepared to respond to an opioid overdose,” said Brown University epidemiologist Jaclyn White Hughto, “because they don’t perceive themselves to be at risk.” Hughto is a principal investigator in a new, unpublished study called “Preventing Overdoses Involving Stimulants.”

    Hughto and the team surveyed more than 260 people in Rhode Island and Massachusetts who use drugs, including some who manufacture and distribute stimulants such as cocaine. More than 60% of the people they interviewed in Rhode Island had bought or used stimulants that they later found out had fentanyl in them. And many of the people interviewed in the study also use drugs alone. That means that if they do overdose, they may not be found until it’s too late.

    In 2022, Rhode Island had the fourth-highest rate of overdose deaths involving cocaine in 2022, after Washington, D.C., Delaware, and Vermont, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The fourth wave is also hitting stimulant users who choose pills over what they perceive as more dangerous drugs such as cocaine in an effort to avoid fentanyl. That’s what happened to Jennifer Dubois’ son Cliffton.

    Dubois was a single mother raising two Black sons. The older son, Cliffton, had been struggling with addiction since he was 14, she said. Cliffton also had been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and a mood disorder.

    In March 2020, Cliffton had checked into a rehab program as the pandemic ramped up, Dubois said. Because of the lockdown at rehab, Cliffton was upset about not being able to visit with his mother. “He said, ‘If I can’t see my mom, I can’t do treatment,’” Dubois recalled. “And I begged him” to stay in treatment.

    But soon after, Cliffton left the rehab program. He showed up at her door. “And I just cried,” she said.

    Dubois’ younger son was living at home. She didn’t want Cliffton doing drugs around his younger brother. So she gave Cliffton an ultimatum: “If you want to stay home, you have to stay drug-free.”

    Cliffton went to stay with family friends, first in Atlanta and later in Woonsocket, an old mill city that has Rhode Island’s highest rate of drug overdose deaths.

    In August 2020, Cliffton overdosed but was revived. Cliffton later confided that he’d been snorting cocaine in a car with a friend, Dubois said. Hospital records show he tested positive for fentanyl.

    “He was really scared,” Dubois said. After the overdose, he tried to “leave the cocaine and the hard drugs alone,” she said. “But he was taking pills.” Eight months later, on April 17, 2021, Cliffton was found unresponsive in the bedroom of a family member’s home.

    The night before, Cliffton had bought counterfeit Adderall, according to the police report. What he didn’t know was that the Adderall pill was laced with fentanyl. “He thought by staying away from the street drugs and just taking pills, he was doing better,” Dubois said.

    A fentanyl test strip could have saved his life.

    This article is from a partnership that includes The Public’s Radio, NPR, and KFF Health News.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    USE OUR CONTENT

    This story can be republished for free (details).

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

    This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Putting a Halt to Feeling Lost, Anxious, Stressed & Unhappy

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    Starting From the Middle

    Today’s video (below) dives straight into the heart of the issue, examining the victim mindset, with Dr. Gabor Maté immediately, and quite vulnerably, sharing his personal experiences conquering feelings of despair and anxiety.

    As one of the comments on the video says, Dr. Maté is a “person who teaches about something because they experience it themselves”. And it shows through his approach.

    With raw honesty, Dr. Maté empathizes with those grappling with inner turmoil, offering hope by emphasizing the power of healing in the present moment.

    What is His Method?

    Explained simply, Dr. Maté urges individuals to seek trauma-informed care and therapies that address underlying wounds; he emphasizes the pitfalls of relying solely on medication, and instead highlights the idea that triggers can be seen as opportunities for self-reflection and growth. He urges individuals to approach their triggers with compassionate curiosity rather than self-judgment.

    In short, Dr Maté’s empathetic approach immediately calms the viewer, whilst providing knowledge crucial to self-improvement.

    Let this video act as a reminder that we should take our mental health as seriously as our general health.

    How was the video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Ready… Set… Flow!

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    Time to make your new year plans? Or maybe you’ve already made a list, and you’re checking it twice. If so, now’s the time to make sure that your new year’s plans will flow:

    “Flow”, as you may be aware, is the psychological state generally defined as “a state in which we feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing it, at a peak performance level”; the term was coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and has risen to popularity since.

    We wrote about it a little before, here:

    Morning Routines That Just Flow

    The above article details how to start the perfect day, but how to start the perfect year? Firstly, it’s good to get the jump on the new year a little; see:

    The Science Of New Year’s Pre-Resolutions

    …and we also agree with Dr. Faye Bate, who preaches taking the path of least resistance when it comes to healthy habits:

    How To Actually Start A Healthy Lifestyle In The New Year

    Because…

    Getting into the flow

    The most hydrating drink is the one that [contains adequate water and] you will actually drink. The best exercise is the one you’ll do. The best sleep is the sleep you can actually get. And so on.

    We see this—or rather its evil counterpoint—a lot in diet culture. People frame their willpower against the temptations of donuts and whatever, and make Faustian bargains whereby they will eat food they find boring in the hopes it will bring them good health. And it won’t. Because, they’ll give up quickly.

    Instead, each part of our healthy life has to be engaged with with a sense of flow. Again, that’s: “a state in which we feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing it, at a peak performance level”

    So we need to find healthy recipes we like (check out our recipe section!), we need to find exercise that we like, we need to find an approach to sleep that the Geneva Convention wouldn’t consider a kind a torture, and so forth. And, ideally, not just “like” in the sense of “this is tolerable” but “like” in the sense of “I am truly passionate about this thing”.

    And that’s going to look different for each of us.

    Running is a great example of something that some people truly love, whereas others will do almost anything to avoid.

    And food? We’ve written before about the usefulness of a “to don’t” list; it’s like a “to do” list, but it’s things we’re not going to even try to do. For example, a person with two addictions is usually advised to quit one at a time, so quitting the other would go on a “to don’t” list for now. The same goes for food; you need to enjoy what you’re eating or you won’t “feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing it”, per flow. So, do not deprive yourself; it won’t work anyway; just pick one healthy change to make, and then queue up any other changes for once the first one has started feeling natural to you.

    For more on “to don’t” lists and other such tricks, see: How To Keep On Keeping On… Long Term!

    Staying in the flow

    …is not usually a problem, you would think, because “…and just keep doing it, at peak performance level” but the fact is, sometimes we get kicked out of our flow by something external. We covered some of that in the above-linked “How To Keep On Keeping On” article, such as figuring out showstoppers in advance (for example, “if I get an injury, I will rest until it is healed”) and ideally, back-up plans.

    For example, let’s say you have your dietary plan all worked out, then you are invited to someone’s birthday celebration a couple of weeks in, and you don’t want to rain on their parade, so you figure out for yourself in advance how you are going to mitigate any harm to your plans, e.g. “I will simply choose the healthiest option available, and not worry if it doesn’t meet my usual standards” or “I will simply fast” if that’s an appropriate thing for you (for some it might be, for some it might not be).

    For more on this, see:

    How To Avoid Slipping Into (Bad) Old Habits

    Take care!

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