Strategic Wellness: planning ahead for a better life!
This is Dr. Michael Roizen. With hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and 14 US patents, his work has been focused on the importance of lifestyle factors in healthy living. He’s the Chief Wellness Officer at the world-famous Cleveland Clinic, and is known for his “RealAge” test and related personalized healthcare services.
If you’re curious about that, you can take the RealAge test here.
(they will require you inputting your email address if you do, though)
What’s his thing?
Dr. Roizen is all about optimizing health through lifestyle factors—most notably, diet and exercise. Of those, he is particularly keen on optimizing nutritional habits.
Is this just the Mediterranean Diet again?
Nope! Although: he does also advocate for that. But there’s more, he makes the case for what he calls “circadian eating”, optimally timing what we eat and when.
Is that just Intermittent Fasting again?
Nope! Although: he does also advocate for that. But there’s more:
Dr. Roizen takes a more scientific approach. Which isn’t to say that intermittent fasting is unscientific—on the contrary, there’s mountains of evidence for it being a healthful practice for most people. But while people tend to organize their intermittent fasting purely according to convenience, he notes some additional factors to take into account, including:
- We are evolved to eat when the sun is up
- We are evolved to be active before eating (think: hunting and gathering)
- Our insulin resistance increases as the day goes on
Now, if you’ve a quick mind about you, you’ll have noticed that this means:
- We should keep our eating to a particular time window (classic intermittent fasting), and/but that time window should be while the sun is up
- We should not roll out of bed and immediately breakfast; we need to be active for a bit first (moderate exercise is fine—this writer does her daily grocery-shopping trip on foot before breakfast, for instance… getting out there and hunting and gathering those groceries!)
- We should not, however, eat too much later in the day (so, dinner should be the smallest meal of the day)
The latter item is the one that’s perhaps biggest change for most people. His tips for making this as easy as possible include:
- Over-cater for dinner, but eat only one portion of it, and save the rest for an early-afternoon lunch
- First, however, enjoy a nutrient-dense protein-centric breakfast with at least some fibrous vegetation, for example:
- Salmon and asparagus
- Scrambled tofu and kale
- Yogurt and blueberries
Enjoy!
