Prioritize lengthening your “healthspan” (functional, active, and cognitively sharp years) over merely extending lifespan, aiming to be biologically younger than your chronological age.
Adopt a foundational framework for healthspan focusing on the “trichotomy” of sleep, cold stress, and dietary restriction, understanding their interconnected benefits for longevity.
Shift your diet to primarily whole foods, ensuring all your dietary sugars, starches, and fats come from unprocessed sources, avoiding refined sugars and oils.
Follow the “right side” of the food triangle by making leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, stems, mushrooms, and bulbs the majority of your diet, supplemented with fruits, berries, nuts, seeds, and legumes.
Consume plenty of fiber, especially from diverse sources like beans, nuts, and plants, to support gut health and regulate inflammation, a key driver of aging.
Avoid being in a chronically fed state by not eating constantly from morning until night, as this was not typical in evolutionary history and can disrupt important bodily processes.
Decrease your meal frequency by compressing your eating window, which naturally leads to practices like alternate-day eating or intermittent fasting, allowing the body to enter a fasted state.
View not eating as a viable and liberating option in your toolkit, especially when faced with inconvenient or unhealthy eating situations, rather than feeling compelled to eat.
Avoid eating late at night, as glucose clearance slows and insulin resistance is higher in the evening, which can contribute to metabolic and weight issues.
Challenge the idea that daily balanced meals are essential; comprehensive nutrient adequacy may be measured over days or weeks, not every single day.
Recognize that your metabolism is likely not “broken” or “slow,” as it generally scales with your body mass; the focus should be on what fuel your body is burning (carbohydrate vs. fat), not just the rate.
Understand that you cannot out-exercise your mouth; dietary intake is a more significant factor in weight management than exercise output due to thermodynamic realities.
Take contrast showers in the morning (10 seconds warm, 20 seconds cold, repeated 10 times, ending with 2 minutes of cold) to feel alert and energized for the day.
Take contrast showers in the evening (10 seconds warm, 20 seconds cold, repeated 10 times, ending with 2 minutes of cold) to promote sleepiness and fall asleep faster.
Gradually acclimate your body to sleeping in a cooler environment by slowly reducing the number of blankets or lowering your room’s thermostat, as humans are highly adaptable to sleeping cool.
Create a sleep environment conducive to your body’s natural core temperature drop by avoiding warm rooms, warm pajamas, and heavy blankets.
After evening contrast showers, dim bright lights and use red lights, avoiding screens and blue light, to support natural melatonin production and sleep.
If experiencing secondary insomnia, consider gradually increasing melatonin supplementation after 30 minutes in the dark before bed, noting that starting with a high dose can cause morning grogginess.
For mild cold stress, aim for water temperatures around 80°F down to 60°F, and air temperatures around 60°F down to 32°F, exercising caution below these ranges due to increased risk of hypothermia or injury.
When exposed to cold, prioritize covering your ears, face, toes, and fingers, as protecting these extremities can significantly increase your tolerance to cold.
After intense physical activity, sit in a bathtub filled with cold tap water up to your waist to reduce fatigue and aid in recovery.
Engage in mild cold stress to naturally lower your respiratory quotient, which indicates a shift towards burning more fat for fuel.
Understand that consistently changing your diet to healthier whole foods will naturally alter your palate and taste acuity, making previously enjoyed unhealthy foods less appealing over time.
Blend whole foods (rather than juicing) to rupture plant cells, potentially increasing nutrient access while retaining essential fiber.
Explore methods like hydroponics to stress plants, as this may increase their phytonutrient content through a process called xenohormesis.
If you find yourself sticking your feet or hands out from under the covers at night, it indicates your room is too warm or you’re using too many blankets, hindering your body’s natural cooling process for sleep.
Learn about the Respiratory Quotient (RQ) as an indicator of your body’s fuel source (1 for carbs, ~0.7 for fats); aiming to lower your RQ shifts your body towards burning more fat.
Consider that many benefits of exercise, such as irisin production and brown adipose tissue increase, may be mimicking the body’s evolutionary cold stress responses, which were survival mechanisms for winter scarcity.
Recognize the biological overlap between cold stress and dietary restriction, as both activate similar genes and represent evolutionary “metabolic winter” conditions that are beneficial but largely absent in modern life.
Live a dietary restricted lifestyle to adapt more quickly to periods of extreme restriction, as Ray found it made his 23-day fast feel normal.