Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex

by Aubrey Marcus

Dedication Dedicated to your future self Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Introduction 1: Water. Light. Movement. 2: Deep Breath, Deep Freeze 3: More Fat, Less Sugar, or Don’t Eat 4: Essential Supplements 5: Drive Time, Alive Time 6: The Power Plants 7: Doin’ Work 8: Eat a Weird Lunch 9: The Binaural Power Nap 10: Training 11: Reset and Reconnect 12: Eat Dinner Like a King 13: More, Better Sex 14: Turn Off, Tune In 15: Sleep 16: Bring It Home Acknowledgments Notes: Here Comes the Science! Index About the Author Copyright About the Publisher Introduction Nothing is worth more than this day. —JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE Nutrition, mind-set, productivity, performance, fitness, sex, sleep—when we look through a keyhole at these areas of focus, we forget that they are interconnected and interdependent. They are spokes on the wheel of the day, every one of them necessary to ride the twenty-four-hour cycle into a life worth living. Because a day isn’t just about what you put into your body, how you look in the mirror, or how much production you can squeeze from eight hours of work. It’s about how you feel, whose lives you connect with, and how much fun you have along the way. We have to transcend the tendency to place all of our effort on one thing at a time, instead of one day at a time. Just look at the flood of transformational programs out there: twelve days to detox, twenty-eight days to skinny, forty days to enlightenment, ninety days to astronaut. What do they give ...

Avoid antinutrients that come from highly processed, refined, burned, fried, or artificial foods and colorings.

Doing the most is not always doing your best. When the natural post-lunch lull comes rolling in, the best thing you can do is listen to your body. Instead of fighting it, go with it. Recharge the battery with a thirty-minute power nap, aided by brain-wave entrainment, and return to owning your day with a clear sense of purpose and mental clarity.

Much of this book might seem like it’s about rewiring or overhauling your day, but a lot of what we’re doing is just tuning ourselves in to the messages our bodies and brains send us—that we’ve stopped listening to.

A full sleep cycle is usually around ninety minutes, and is ideal on a day that you have really lost out on a lot of sleep.

But thirty minutes is generally the upper limit of what most people have available, and so it is exactly the length of time that sleep expert Nick Littlehales recommends for a controlled recovery period (CRP). You won’t typically enter deep sleep in that time, but your body will prioritize REM sleep and leave you feeling mentally refreshed.

Data aside, of all the biohacks in the world, if I had to personally choose to keep only one, it would be my binaural beats.

Ditch whatever you have been told about naps being for lazy people. Naps have been scientifically proven to be one of the most effective ways to stay alert and perform at a high level. Binaural beats are a great way to get the benefits of napping without having to fully fall asleep. By entraining your brain waves to more restorative patterns, you activate that restorative parasympathetic response you are looking for.

SIGNATURE MOVE Kettlebell Swing

While stretching is part of the practice, the magic of yoga is the utilization of breath to push through self-imposed limitations.

The general rule with any intoxicating substance, particularly alcohol, is to use the least amount necessary to achieve the desired effect. This has a couple advantages: (1) it’s cost-effective, and (2) it limits any negative side effects like toxicity to the liver or lungs. In short, you want to be your own cheap date, and the best time for that is postworkout.

There are selfish reasons we love our pets, of course—they’re a ready-made solution to loneliness—but the positive research on pet ownership is truly compelling. Dr. Robert Sapolsky, for example, has shared findings that dogs and humans have coevolved to mutually produce the connection hormone oxytocin. Pet ownership has also been shown to reduce blood pressure and resting heart rate, and pets have helped kids with no brothers or sisters develop greater empathy, higher self-esteem, and increased participation in social and physical activities. Pets are the exercise of the animal kingdom—a miracle drug with ears.

1. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. This sentiment came from every single male patient she cared for. Every single one.

2. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Our connections bring the dance to our life, and yet we find ourselves with too little time to enjoy these moments. But I think another problem is that at a certain point we stop making really great new friends. In the absence of rituals like school and sports, we don’t take the time to forge deeper connections with people. Whether it is having an all-night bender in Vegas, or a ten-day journey in Peru, extreme experiences have the potential to form the deepest bonds. Go for it; leave your important adult self behind and have an adventure with people you might very well love.

3. I wish that I had let myself...

Goat milk exhibits similar if not even greater benefits than raw milk. The reason for this is that goat milk is a lot more like the milk that came out of our own momma’s mammaries. The biological resemblance to human breast milk goes all the way down to the DNA structure itself.

Sprouted or sourdough bread is the yeasty nectar of the gods. We have known this intuitively since ancient times. The Romans knew that there were two things they needed to provide to keep the populace happy: bread and circus.

The best timing for bread is dinner, after your glycogen stores have been depleted by exercise, and you’re about to head into the winter of your day . . . sleep. So if bread and butter is your thing, do it the right way, with grass-fed butter on sprouted or sourdough. Go for it!

Chocolate is a perfect example of a really good thing that we found a way to fuck up. Cocoa is a true superfood, packed with antioxidants shown to be more effective than blueberries or açaí, along with a few really cool psychoactive compounds like caffeine and theobromine that boost mood and cognition.

EAT SLOW, CHEW HARD

The other problem with eating fast is that your body doesn’t have time to send up the signal that you are full

No surprise then that overeating is a big problem with fast eaters.

One of the most common digestive mistakes people make is consuming cold beverages while they eat. Any beverage dilutes the HCL in your stomach, making the overall acid concentration acting on your food weaker, while the cold slows down your digestion like a snake in a snowstorm. Leave the cold drinks for well before and well after your meals.

If you can eliminate your mealtime cold beverage consumption, along with eliminating antacids, you should see a meaningful benefit to your digestion from a more optimal level of HCL in your stomach.

Here are some foods with high dietary nitrate levels that are easily converted into the biological signal of nitric oxide: beets, pumpkin seeds, Swiss chard, arugula, watermelon, red wine, dark chocolate. Eat as many of those as possible with dinner. Don’t worry, we’ve got some recipes

Universal Nutrition Principle #9: Cheat Like a Pro

body. Stevia and monk fruit are foremost among them.

For instance, instead of sprinkling more sugar on your ice cream, try sprinkling on some psyllium, or chia seeds. One study showed that adding soluble fiber, like what is found in chia and psyllium, dramatically reduced the impact on blood glucose of high-carbohydrate foods. Psyllium has been shown to have a host of benefits on its own,

Ceylon cinnamon and apple cider vinegar.

I call that concoction my “Cheater Shooter.” To make it, just mix one ounce of ACV and half a teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon into three ounces of room-temperature water and send it down the hatch.

L-theanine, which occurs naturally in green tea, is great at mimicking the effects of GABA. Matcha, as we described in chapter 6, is the best source.

Don’t believe everything you have heard about food. First, it was probably wrong. Second, if you believe the bad advice, you will make it feel correct. The mind communicates through the body via your emotions surrounding your choices. Learn to harness the power of belief to your benefit rather than your detriment.

Digestion is the foundation of nutrition. It is what delivers the food you eat from your stomach into your cells. To optimize digestion, eat slow, chew hard, and increase levels of HCL and digestive enzymes.

Eat fat. To synthesize hormones like testosterone, the body requires adequate production of saturated fat and cholesterol.

Get sleep. Sleep is the time when the testosterone factory is open for business.

Lift heavy. When training under anaerobic conditions such as lifting heavy weights or sprinting, you are signaling to the body that you are the type of animal that needs to produce testosterone to flourish.

The tongue is the most important sex organ on the body. Not because you lick with it, but because you communicate with it. Let down your ego. Talk to your partner about your likes, dislikes, and fantasies.

Outside nutrition, it’s the single most important ingredient to owning the day—and you need to pay attention to how to do it well.

Every single peak performer I work with visualizes his or her success.

The Hawaiian kahunas (shamans) have a practice for radical forgiveness they call Ho’oponopono, the purpose of which is to get you to a completely clean slate, a state of mind called the zero state (also the title of a book by Joe Vitale). It is a simple dialogue you have with yourself or a loved one, which requires you to say four things. We’re going to focus it on yourself for now, but keep this in your medicine bag when you need to resolve a conflict with anyone else. “I love you.” Love is the appropriate bond that can unify all aspects of yourself. To express this love sets the foundation for all the communication to follow. “I’m sorry.” This is to clear you of any guilt you may carry for the times you’ve done yourself wrong—from negative self-talk to forcing your body to cope with way too much cheap tequila. “Forgive me.” The humble act of asking for forgiveness, when sincere, is not often opposed. Grant yourself the forgiveness you seek. “Thank you.” This is an expression of gratitude to your body and your mind, not only for the forgiveness but for everything it has given you. It’s gotten you this far, after all, right?

I love you, I’m sorry, forgive me, thank you.

You need to give yourself every advantage when pushing up against resistance. The first and most important thing you can do is forgive yourself for any imperfections, any expectations you haven’t lived up to. All you can do is your best, determined moment by moment. Perfection is a myth. If you forgive yourself, you will begin to feel that you deserve to change for the better, and so you will. Creating an ethos is a shortcut to mastering mental override. It prevents you from the anguish of deliberation over your choices and starts to define the person you want to be. Create your ethos and support yourself with positive