15-Minutes to Make the Alkaline Life 100x Easier

How Just 15 Minutes-a-Day Can Make The Alkaline Life 100x Easier!

You can truly get to 80% of your health goals with just 20% of the effort.  This is fact.  By doing just 20% of the actions CONSISTENTLY, you will get huge results.

This is the cornerstone of all of my teaching, and I have seen it over and over and over in my 20 years of coaching people to their biggest wildest health goals with the alkaline life. 

In my current 8-Week Weight Loss Coaching group I am seeing it already…these are just some of the comments from the first 7-10 days…

This is just implementing the easiest, but most powerful stuff, and getting consistent with it, turning it into a habit so that it happens every day on autopilot.

But you have to know what things to focus on, right? 

What are the 20% of actions that are going to give you 80% of your results.

That’s what today is about…

And think about it… 

If you get to 80% of your goal..just think now for a second how amazing that will be.  Picture yourself, feel how happy you’ll feel, see an image of yourself living your life with vitality and joy at 80% of the way there.  How amazing is that… once you are there – at 80% – how much momentum do you think you’ll have – how EASY will it be to get to the last 20%?

This is the foundation of all of my coaching:

Results > Confidence > Motivation > Momentum – a circle of awesomeness. 

So let’s get into what I have found to be perhaps one of the most important 20% actions for almost everyone….

Your first 15 minutes of the day….

Are you someone who struggles with willpower?  Do you find yourself craving sweet foods or salty carbs mid-morning, mid-afternoon and after dinner?

The simple tips I am about to give you will make that 100x easier.   I’m going to make willpower almost irrelevant for you – it will be strong all the time…

You’ll love how simple this is.  

Your body works on cycles powered by hormones. 

Your sleep/wake cycle is powered by your melatonin/serotonin and cortisol.  Your cortisol and insulin responses, thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), and prolactin (PRL).  

How we start the day impacts the proper regulation of so many of these hormones, and when they are out of balance, it makes it SO much more difficult to stay healthy and on track during the rest of your day.

Let’s start with your cortisol.  Cortisol is known as the ‘stress hormone’.  Too much of it, chronically, is a marker of so many health conditions from cancer to depression to obesity to type 2 diabetes and more. 

But in the morning it’s essential.  Cortisol is the hormone that wakes your body up!   Your cortisol levels are supposed to RISE first thing, and then slowly drop off throughout the day.  This is the normal cortisol curve.

But the way we now behave in the mornings severely impacts this.  When we get up, straight on our phones, getting stuck into the coffee, we take over the body’s natural cortisol production….we don’t get the spike that gets the body moving, and then we’re in a funk for the rest of the day.

Let me explain.  The natural way that cortisol is triggered, thinking back to prehistoric, and pre-tech times, is sunlight.  We would be woken naturally by the sunlight, and then have the beautiful, powerful light of our sun onto our eyes, which prompts the production of cortisol.  

It’s not really like that nowadays is it?  We wake in a dark room and immediately look at our phones, or switch on our dim – well dim relative to the sun – overhead lights in our house.  Whether they’re halogen, LED whatever, they’re not really the power of the sun.

By looking at our phones, we get a really poor, dim quality of light that is enough to trigger the start of cortisol production….but we barely get a whimper.  It just puts it up a tiny bit and then stops.  

This low level of cortisol in the morning is a huge problem for a number of reasons.

1. It doesn’t trigger the cascade of those other critical hormones, including thyroid-stimulating hormones.   Peak TSH levels occur when cortisol is at its lowest.  TSH is meant to be LOW in the AM while cortisol is meant to be HIGH.  If the cortisol isn’t spiked it sends multiple other processes out of balance, including your thyroid health.
2. If cortisol is suppressed early in the morning, it naturally rises throughout the day, leading to what is known as an ‘inverted cortisol curve’, which is a precursor to dozens of serious health conditions – including the big ones of cancer, heart disease, and stroke.
3. This inverted cortisol curve severely impacts sleep quality and quantity, and has severe impacts on your serotonin and melatonin levels – increasing the risk of mental disorders, and…
4. A chronically high cortisol level lowers blood pH, creating low-grade acidosis in the body…and that is ALSO a huge precursor to all of these serious conditions…and
5. When cortisol is out of balance, this severely increases the risk of insulin resistance…which is where we get to willpower and your chances of success.

And we’re only scratching the surface here.   These negative health impacts and increased risk of degenerative chronic disease are scary.  

And then in the context of willpower, it is also making it 100x HARDER for you to live an alkaline life, which then increases that scary risk even more!  It compounds.  It’s a vicious cycle.  And we don’t want vicious cycles, we want that circle of awesomeness, right?!

So, here are some simple steps to fix this…and they REALLY are simple…

To fix your AM cortisol levels, which will then trigger a cascade of everything falling back into place…

STEP ONE:  Morning Hydration

This is essential.  Don’t sleep on how imporant hydration is.  I know it seems simple, I know it seems like ‘oh yeah everyone knows this’ but are you doing it?

Don’t underestimate the power of hydration in managing blood sugar, and insulin and keeping your willpower fuelled and fired up too!

Get into the habit of the FIRST thing you do when you wake up is go and have a big glass of water.  You should be aiming for 100-130oz of water a day, but you can build up to this.  For now, let’s just start building the A.M. hydration habit.  Wake up -> get water.

Hydration is one of the ‘Four Core Actions’ I teach to all of my new coaching students, and we start small, building little habits that become automatic, to make reaching your daily hydration goal completely put on autopilot.  You don’t ever have to think about it, it just happens.

And when it comes to willpower, blood sugar, insulin and cravings…

1. Proper hydration helps maintain blood volume and supports proper circulation. This can enhance the body’s ability to utilize insulin effectively. 
2. Proper hydration supports kidney function to maintain stable blood sugar levels.
3. It helps regulate vasopressin, a hormone that helps balance water balance in the body. Increased levels of vasopressin (which can occur with dehydration) have been associated with higher blood sugar levels.
4. And of course, dehydration often leads to the feeling of hunger, meaning we reach for those sugary snacks….

It’s easy, it’s free, anyone can do it, you can start right now…and we start small: just remember to get that big glass of water the moment you wake up.

STEP TWO: Morning Light

Remember how we talked about that essential spike of cortisol being triggered by the morning light?  Well, this step simply involves you getting it!

There is a profound impact of morning daylight exposure. Cortisol follows a diurnal rhythm and is naturally higher in the morning to help promote alertness and wakefulness.

Exposure to natural daylight early in the day, ideally within the first hour of waking, helps to anchor and synchronize our internal biological clock, or circadian rhythm, which then signals to our brain to initiate a cascade of hormonal responses, including that spike in cortisol.

This not only aids in boosting our energy levels, enhancing mood, and improving cognitive function, but also contributes to better sleep quality at night, as it helps to regulate the production of melatonin.

When the cortisol is spiked early, and we have a lovely regulated cortisol curve (like the picture below), insulin is MUCH better managed.

All you need to do is wake up, have that glass of water, and get outside and get sunlight (even if it is cloudy) onto your eyes.

[source]

STEP THREE: No Screens or Caffeine for 45 mins.

To make sure that you get the full morning cortisol effect, you want to avoid the two exogenous (external) stimuli that will artificially raise cortisol, and prevent the body from producing its own: screens and caffeine.

Soooo many people reach for their phones the moment they wake up, and this crummy, dim light will promote the cortisol release, but just a little bit…and then it will stop.  Please refrain from phone usage until you’ve gotten outside and got that natural light!

The same goes for caffeine.  Just give your body the chance to produce cortisol on it’s own accord, and THEN you can have the coffee.  Just give it a minimum of thirty minutes.

This will have a huge impact on your cortisol, insulin and a huge, huge, huge impact on your sleep that night.

STEP FOUR: Supplement: if I had to pick just TWO it would be…

There are always a zillion supplements you could recommend, but if I had to pick just TWO to help with sleep quality, and supporting the brain (and especially that decision-making centre of the brain) it would be these two:

• Magnesium L-Threonate: this form of magnesium is recommended due to its unique ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, effectively increasing magnesium levels in the brain.  This is my recommended mag l-threonate supplement.
• Phospholipids: the phospholipid form of omega 3 is also able to cross the blood-brain barrier, and having adequate levels of healthy fats in the brain is just so flipping important for so many processes, particularly endocrine functions.  Using this supplement alongside your regular EPA/DHA omega 3 is a very smart move.  You don’t need to take this on top of your regular omega 3 daily dosage, simply have some days of just phospholipids, some days of just regular omega 3, and some days a mix.  I don’t want to add to your supplement expenditure!This is my recommended phospholipid supplement.

Now, Willpower….Let’s Fix That!

Willpower is not a strategy, willpower is not to be relied on.  Especially if you’re coming from a place where your diet has not been fantastic and you have been more of a standard American diet than an alkaline diet. 

SO many people in my 20 years experience see willpower as being their strategy.  They simply think – I am going to be healthy.  I am going to do this.  I am going to be strong.  And it sets them up for failure.  Willpower is NOT a strategy.

However, we can set ourselves up to turn it into a more reliable tool, but it is not a strategy.  You can’t get to a consistent healthy lifestyle by relying on willpower. 

And there are two main reasons why we can’t rely on willpower.

Firstly, there is the phenomenon of ‘decision fatigue’.

This now-widely accepted concept only really came to the fore in the late 90’s when studies showed that each day willpower is a finite resource. When you are faced with something requiring self-control, it uses up your supply of willpower.

This is willpower’s flaw #1 when it comes to your food choices.

Secondly, the fuel of willpower is unreliable.

The 2nd flaw is that it effectively runs on glucose. The more up and down your blood sugar levels, the more erratic your willpower will function.    This is cruel.  When we are at our lowest blood sugar levels, when our body is craving something sweet and unhealthy our willpower deserts us.  Pun intended.   But seriously, how hard does this make things?  When your blood sugar drops, your willpower disappears.  We. Have to fix this. 

Because when you combine these two factors:

1) willpower gets depleted with every decision of self-control throughout the day
2) willpower is hugely erratic when your blood sugar dips

Is it any wonder that as the day goes on the likelihood of you crashing and eating foods you know you shouldn’t skyrocket, and that it gets harder the longer the day goes on?

You Have 15 ‘Strong’ Minutes Per Day

Most people only have about fifteen minutes of self-regulatory capacity available at any given time, and so many influences deplete it. 

Remember willpower isn’t only about whether you resist the cookies or not. Any activity requiring focus, from reading to checking emails to writing that assignment vs reading a gossip magazine – these all deplete your willpower reserves.

Our brains were not designed for this modern life we lead. But we can still thrive. We just must adapt our strategies so we’re not relying on willpower, or our outdated hardware, to help us navigate our modern food choices.

If we work with what we CAN control, we can effortlessly bypass temptation, keep consistency, and continue to nourish our bodies and thrive.

It just takes a little bit of focus and some new strategies

We can fix this.  

If blood sugar is super high, then it will drop super low.  Your body then craves sugar and simple carbs to bring it back up…which then spikes it again.  If you ever feel hungry mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and after meals – this is what is happening to you.

The fix is to have one of my breakfasts that follow my ‘Perfect Breakfast Formula’.

To keep this really simple, you need to focus your breakfast on:

• Healthy fats
• Protein
• Fibre
• Greens

These nutrients not only nourish those decision-making centres of the brain, particularly the healthy fats, but they also stabilise blood sugars, and nourish your digestion, provide the alkaline minerals to help keep cortisol balanced, and with the protein and fibre, you stay fuller for longer.

Here are some recipes you can try.  You’ll see we can either go with the cooked breakfast, or with a porridge or overnight oats-style breakfast with a green smoothie on the side.

“Perfect” Breakfasts to Try:

• Go-To Green Breakfast
• “Chocolate” Overnight Oats
• Coconut Creamy Chia Pots
• All-Day Energy Smoothie

All of these breakfasts take a maximum of 15 minutes to make, eat and clean up.  

They also give psychological benefits too.  When we start the day right, we are FAR less likely to stray off track in the rest of the day because we benefit from the phenomena of ‘not wanting to throw away the hard work we’ve already done’.

If you can stick to this little routine for just a couple of days you will INSTANTLY see the benefit, feel the benefit and want to keep going.

This is one of those 20% actions that will get you to 80% of your goal. 

You will find it easy, you will get results > confidence > motivation > momentum…

It will start to happen for you.

My students see this ALL of the time.

Again: Wake > hydrate > light > perfect brekkie – and the day is simple

If you do this, your blood sugar is stable, insulin is stable, cortisol curve is correct…and your other hormones will effortlessly stay in balance too…

And you’re making huge steps on your alkaline life…

Try these recipes, let me know how you go!

Let’s do this,
Ross