Must Have Measures - Sleep, Activity, Structure, and Metabolism

I believe the best way to improve isn’t to think too much about activities but more about how you will assess outcomes. Continuous feedback let’s you experiment fast, which means you learn fast, which means you improve fast.

These are my must have rolling basic assessment tools, I’ll link what I use with my referral code if you want a discount. Whether you choose these options or something else, I think if you don’t you are losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars (for myself I value these measures in millions) in future income due to lost productivity (health bills that could have been prevented, lack of gains from exercise/sleep) not to mention just being less happy (health == happiness).

• sleep: EightSleep http://refer.eight.sl/26y7gc9f or similar (apple watch, oura ring, etc.)
• activity: Apple watch or similar
• structural: DEXA https://www.bodyspec.com/r/kkMvVe (we do this 1x/quarter)
• metabolic (glucose monitoring): LevelsHealth https://levels.link/r/LVLS-RWPVHAMV or similar (you don’t need to do this forever)

My opinion is if you aren’t tracking at least activity and sleep you are a fool.

Why? Just a little bit of tacking can save you from blowing out your heart, or losing a leg due to diabetes.

Sleep is neglected but vital. Folks will spend 20 k plus on a car and think nothing of it (anti-investment) but shudder at spending 5 k on sleep (one of the best investments that exists). You are literally stupid, psuedo-drunk, fat, and sickly when you are sleep deprived (less then 7 or 8 hours of regular high quality sleep). Most people are underslept, we literally have a sleep epidemic (read Why we Sleep by Matthew Walker for a gentle intro to sleep).

An EightSleep can run 2 k (just the pod) to 4 k (with everything bed, sheets, frame, etc.). For what you get that’s dirt cheap. Not only is the feedback great, but the ability to control temperature, automatically smart adjust temperature throughout the night, and gently wake myself in the morning is well worth it. With better sleep you are VASTLY more productive (over time). Why?

Your body and mind do not change in the day – they change when you sleep. All your exercise or learning effort means nothing if you don’t consolidate your gains during sleep! Stop. Playing. Around.

Activity is so vital, and at about $500 bucks or so an apple watch is a no-brainer. Exercise is not enough. Seriously, exercise (which most people fail to do) is not enough. You MUST, MUST, MUST be active throughout the day. Why? Because your body maintains itself through movement. Movement is literally necessary to many key systems in the body and this is reflected in the numerous, numerous well studied benefits of walking or other light activity.

While activity (standing up every hour, walking around, etc.) is needed for maintenance exercise is needed to create excess capacity. Most of us need focused training because our bodies are starting from a broken state i.e. can’t squat, lack muscle mass, bone mass, are fat, etc. Later in life exercise will be needed to delay muscle loss.

This is why measuring with a DEXA (or bod pod or whatever) is so important – it will tell you in a broad sense whether you have structural weakpoints. It won’t tell you about form or anything like that but you can track your body fat, muscle mass, visceral fat, and bone density. Our goal is to be the top 1% of the decade younger than us.

Finally, glucose monitoring is one of the best single proxies for metabolic health and getting feedback on your diet in real time. Uneven blood sugar tells you how good you are at keeping a steady energy level in your body. Are you able to get energy and put energy away on demand? Poor metabolic health is upstream of numerous, numerous pathologies from heart to disease to various cancers IIRC. My uncle has lost both legs and may not last the year largely (it seems) because of mismanagement of his diabetes. When you don’t track it, it’s easy to rationalize taking a cheat, eating a shake or fries or whatever because it feels “invisible”. The instant feedback of a continous monitor is vital for behavior change and seeing what foods impact YOUR specific biology (and gut microbiome).

There are more advanced forms of monitoring like a horvath clock (you can sign up at https://www.mydnage.com/ and use referral code 1074R32X0863Fc8zwjuak) and blood tests I would recommend but the above are the most important rolling measures. IMO if you aren’t tracking at least these basic areas you are a fool.