Brain Trainin: Faster Thinking, Better Memory & Focus - Brain Training For More Focus & Memory

1. Course introduction: Do you want to learn how to improve memory and boost brain capacity or how to prevent the most common mental diseases and keep your mind sharp until old age? Then this course is bright for you. Hi, I'm feelings harder health and fitness coach. And today I want to show you how you could become brain fit with the right mental exercises , foods and lifestyle changes. I will teach you how to learn faster by taking advantage of your individual learning. Still how to process information faster and more efficiently. How to increase memory and focus and held the right diet and physical exercise will protect your brain from harmful environment. Break fitness is all about making the most of your brain while keeping it clear and healthy . Mind learning how to do this means engaging your brain with the right mental exercises while also improving your mindset and focus. In my course, I will teach you everything we know from research to be scientifically proven toe work. This knowledge will help use your brain to its full potential while also minimizing the risk of mental diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia. Also included are six of my best memory building techniques that will turn your brain into a memory powerhouse. All in all, the program is packed with everything you need to know about brain fitness and mental health. So if you want to boost your brain today, this is the right course for you. I want to thank you for checking on my course, and if you liked it so far, be sure to read the description for details and watch the preview clips. 2. Join the discussion: Hey, to get the most out of this course and help you with any questions you might have, I created a private Facebook group for all my students. There. You composed your questions, interact with other students and share your success stories. All you have to do to join a search for nutrition and Fitness Academy on Facebook and click joined. Now see you inside. 3. What you will learn in the course: hi and welcome to the course. In this introduction, I want to give you a short overview off what you will learn throughout the program. This course is divided into five main parts. Each segment will help you improve your brain fitness in a different way, and together they will insure optimal mental health and cognitive capacity. So what are those five parts? First, you will learn the basic anatomy off the brain and how it functions. We will go over the different types of intelligences and the different learning styles to find out which of them is your strong suit so you can boost learning and information processing in this segment. We will also talk about how to build up your vocabulary and which mental stimulations our best to keep your mind and shape. Next is memory. Memory can and should be trained, but you have to know how to do it correctly. So in this section we will go over the scientifically proven memory building techniques, along with a few foods and supplements that will make your memory work on 100% capacity. Part three is all about mental focus and organisation. In today's world, we're constantly bombarded with the new information, and if you don't actively do something, you will quickly become overwhelmed by all this information overload. So in this segment, I will teach you how to organize your mind and structure your thoughts. It is extremely important that you be proactive about this to avoid fatigue and burnout in the future. The last two sections go over lifestyle changes that will affect your overall health and, of course, brain fitness both in regards to diet and exercise In them, you will learn how to structure your diet for optimal health and which kind of workouts are best to not only train the body, but also the mind. As you can see, we have a lot to cover, so let's get started. 4. Your brain explained: If we want to train our brain fitness and improve cognitive function, we first have to understand how this amazing organ works. So here's a quick overview of the brain's anatomy and its most important roles. Together with the spinal cord, our brain makes up the so called nervous system, which is our brains decision and Communication center. The nervous system controls every part of your daily life, from breathing on autopilot to moving your hands or memorizing facts for an exam. Your brain communicates with the rest of your body through nerves, which reached to your face, ears, eyes, nose and spinal cord and from there to the rest of your body. Basically, nerves can receive and collect information from the environment and then send this information via the spinal cord through the brain. Only once the information has reached the brain will it be interpreted, and if necessary. The brain then fires off a response, for example, a reflex telling you to take of your hand from the hot stove. These instructions are delivered by motor neurons from the brain to the rest of your body again via the spinal court. Off course. All this happens extremely fast and thousands of times every second. Let's now take a closer look at the brain. I will now cover the most important and well known parts of the brain so you can get an understanding of what each brain segment does. First, the cerebrum, the cerebrum or cortex, is the largest part of our brain, and it is associate it with what is usually called higher brain function. There's gonna who things like thought or action. Have you ever wondered why the brain is so Brinkley? That's because this shape allows more surface area within the human school there for allowing the brain to be more efficient. Mother Nature pretty much figured out a way to increase the amount of neurons in our brain without needing to increase the size of our heads. Also, the cerebrum is divided into two halfs, which are known as the left and right hemispheres. They usually look pretty symmetrical, but they function slightly different from each other. Oftentimes, the Left Hemisphere is associated with logic reasoning, while the right hemisphere is associate it with creativity. If we look at the great surface of the cortex, we can see that it is made up of nerve cells, which reached down to about the thickness of your thumb. Underneath this first layer, our nerve fibres, which Harry signals between the nerve cells and other parts of the brain and body beneath the cerebrum, is the limbic system, which supports a variety of functions, including emotion, behavior, motivation and long term memory. Emotional life is largely house in the limbic system, and it has a great deal to do with the formation of memories. Next, the cerebellum, the cerebellum, or little brain is smaller than the syrup room, but also divided into two hemispheres. This part of the brain is associated with the coordination and regulation of movement, posture and balance. As you can probably imagine, the cerebellum is a lot older than the cerebral in terms of human evolution. This makes sense because even our earliest ancestors needed to move and balance their bodies even though they couldn't talk or reason on any sophisticated level. And lastly, we have the brain stem, which lies underneath the limbic system. This part of the brain is responsible for most basic life functions, like your breathing heartbeat and blood pressure. It is often regarded as the simplest part of the human brain, because animals entire brains represent our brain stem 5. The different types of intelligences: intelligence is usually summed up in a single number. The standard I Q, which can be measured through a number of ways trying to represent a person's mental capacity in one digit, has some advantages but also comes with quite a lot of problems. That's why many social scientists and neuroscientists have tried to define different kinds of intelligence that play a significant role in the day to day lives of adults. And that maybe even strengthened or improved. About the most famous model of different intelligences is that of Howard Gardner, a Harvard professor, which he mentions in his book Frames of Mind. There he identifies seven types of intelligences, or frames, as he calls them. Each of these seven frames has a neurological root, which is linked to a discreet region of the brain that directs it. He believes that each of these intelligence is is fairly independent and can be adapted or combined with others and according to the needs of a person's life or culture. What this means is that everyone has a different intellectual profile with different talents and cognitive abilities. I will now present you these seven frames. Just keep in mind that this is one model out of many possible out there, and most likely, scientists will never come up with a single lists off. All human intelligence is first linguistic intelligence. Linguistic intelligence refers to language, ability and both speaking and writing. This includes things like grammar, syntax and vocabulary or unease with foreign languages. If your linguistic intelligence is high, you're prone to be a good writer, poet, public speaker, lawyer or scholar. Well, usually also have good verbal memory and a good memory for personal experiences. Next is musical intelligence. Here the person will have an outstanding ability to recognize and use pitch, tone and rhythm. Obviously, people with this kind of intelligence will learn music more easily and excel at playing instruments, singing or composing. Or they may be devoted listeners to music and sharp at picking out rhythms and total patterns. Another frame of mind is logical mathematical. This is what most people would regard as traditional intelligence, which is the ability to handle long strings of reasoning or to solve difficult mental calculations. A high level of abstractions is also sign of logical mathematical intelligence. Therefore, these people usually prefer solving sophisticated problems and might be mathematicians or physicists. The fourth type of intelligence is spatial. Your people possess the ability to imagine and manipulate shapes or move objects in their mind. This helps them create mental images and toe accurately perceived the visual world. They're different applications for this skill, and people with high spatial intelligence might become artists or sculptors, architects, inventors or even chess players. Bodily kinesthetic, on the other hand, is an intelligence rooted and body movements and involves physical coordination, quick reflexes and skill. With moving objects, these people will excel at sports like dancing, swimming or working with tools. Well, it might seem to stem from motor sensory system body leak anaesthetics. Intelligence depends on perception and the nervous system, according to Gardner. Next, interpersonal intelligence is what nowadays many refer to as emotional intelligence. It is the ability to read other people well, since moves and temperament and generally motivate oneself and others. Such people have very high levels of empathy and can be nurses, therapists or different types of leaders like political or religious leaders. And lastly, we have personal intelligence. This intelligence represents deep self knowledge, and if you believe you're high in it, you should be able to read and understand your emotions and behavior and, if necessary, adapt either or both. People with this intelligence may be good writers, psychologists or actors. 6. The different types of learning: in this lesson, we will talk about how people process information differently. Even though our brains all look pretty similar, they don't all operate the same. Understanding how you cross information and learn new things is vital to improving your mental capacity. Basically, the goal is to identify your style of learning to find your style of learning. You should start by thinking about your time in school. Are there any classes that you excelled in or phone particularly easy? This is not so much a question about greats. As you know, it is possible to do well in a subject while still finding it difficult. Hard work goes a long way, of course, but it's not the topic of this lesson. Instead, try to remember subjects that you were naturally drawn to, and then you simply liked a lot. Once you have identified one such subject, ask yourself the following questions. Did you like this subject because the material was easy to understand or because you like doing the required reading and literature? Or maybe because the teacher explained everything very well in this case, trying to think of how the teacher presented the subject that he or she used a lot of visual or auditory props. Or maybe you like the subject because the class included a lot of practical hands on work or because you enjoy debating the subject with other students, or maybe because you were very motivated to do well and work extra diligently. The point of these questions is to find out which style of learning predominates in your mind, therefore, general styles of learning. And even though we sometimes combined them, people usually prefer one over the others. Figure out which one is your favorite is crucial to understanding how you absorb new information. Here they are first auditory learning. Someone who is an auditory learner learns by listening to other people talk. This could be during a lecture speech for presentation, even TV or radio counts. People who prefer this style of learning seem to retain information that comes through their ears without effort, even when it's only conversation they overheard at the other end of the room. If you're this kind of learner, keep in mind, though, that you will have a hard time taking in new information with the television or radio going on in the background. There is simply too much distraction. Next is hands on learning. These people learn by doing and prefer actual experiences over elaborate explanations. They need to duplicate the physical motions that are required in whatever they're trying to learn, whether this means going through the calculations themselves or doing a certain motion involved in the sport they're trying to learn. If this seems like you, you probably want to understand the why behind things. Sometimes another term of this kind of learning is procedural, meaning that you want to know the process or inner working off whatever you're about to learn. Verbal learning is the third type of learning verbal learners taken information primarily by reading. They tend to think in sentences and retain information better if it's restated, explained allowed, were written down. Berber Learning is also called the clarity because it involves absorbing many facts, and lastly, we have visual learning. Visual learners like to see information presented before them similar toe auditory learners . This could be from presentations or demonstration, but the primary sense involved are not the years but the eyes. If you are a visual learner, you're learning. Experience can usually be enhanced if it is delivered in color and with another central association, such as a distinctive smell or with an emotional connection. But keep in mind that what is retained in this type of learning is usually the big picture impression instead of small details. Now, before I end this lesson, we have to take one quick look at memory. Obviously, the learning styles are closely connected to your memory. Interestingly, your memory, like you're learning, has long suits and short suits. We all tend to favor a particular type of memory, with the main categories being numbers and data. Words now, such as names and places, were general information and ideas. If you want to find out what your strongest type of memory is, try to think about how you remember situations or concepts. Do you tend to remember the date on which something happened, or maybe who you were with during that situation? Maybe neither. And instead you remember what you talked about or what happened afterwards. We all remember our past experiences differently and understand your type of memory will help you tremendously. 7. Capturing new information more efficiently: a big part of a healthy and well functioning brain is its ability to capture information quickly to solve problems or simply help you make a decision. Understanding information and learning how to use it correctly is vital to boosting your mental capacity and sharpening your thinking. There are several ways in which you can train your information processing, some of which I want to present you. Now let's start with reading speed. Reading is an art of itself, but not what I want to talk about right now. Instead, you should learn how to skim through and document and extract the most important information without having to read every single word. Doing this is a lot easier than it may seem. What you have to keep in mind is that no matter what book or document read, most of it will be fluff. I don't mean this in a negative way. Fluff is important because it helps create a storyline and generally makes texts more interesting. But it can and should be ignored. When you only care about the information in a text. When you're reading for information not for enjoyment, you need to cherry pick during this means identifying key words that carry the most meaning and finding them within the text you're reading. I can't tell you exactly what those words are because they differ from text to text. But if you go by sentence or even paragraph, you will quickly see what's important. And what is another effective way of identifying your keywords is by skipping over the other less important walks. They're pretty much the same for all texts, praises like, for instance, namely in order to are all just fillers that can be skipped. Same with most examples or sources that are being used and do not read aloud or even say the words in your mind. Instead of getting bogged down by individual words, think of chunks or effects or ideas and read words and blocks. After having identified your keywords, you want to use them to extract information from the text. Most texts are organized in one of three ways as a pyramid, with facts and arguments leading to a main point as an inverted pyramid with the main point followed by supporting facts and arguments or as a Siris of ideas or facts connected by a single string or theme use these framers when reading through the text and try to figure out the central point. It is almost always either stated in the first for the last sentence of a paragraph, and if the other knows his craft, it will be short and precise. Same with headings, which per definition have to be short. If you're a college student and have to read a lot of scientific papers always focus on the introduction of the conclusion. This is where the most important information will be summarised and where you should focus your attention. But don't worry. You can practice your reading skills with any type of literature. Simply take a book or magazine and read each article or piece of writing just once. Don't focus on understanding the text 100% but try to grasp the main concept of it. Using a pen, you should underline or circle the key ideas or topic sentences, and this will help you identify keywords a lot quicker when you're done, re kept the essence of the text, either verbally out loud or by summarizing it yourself in 2 to 3 sentences. Do this with 3 to 5 articles, depending on their length and spend no more than half a now on this, then put everything aside and wait a few days before you read the text again. But this time you do it in the normal way of reading by reading every single word. You should then compare both impressions of the main concept of the text and will probably see that they're very close, even though you only skimmed the text for the first time. Now that you've learned how to extract information, the next step is to categorize it. This means not only understand the text, but also the authors intentions as well as the broader picture for this. Keep in mind that everyone and I mean everyone has an agenda. It doesn't have to be a bad one, but no one is completely objective. And we all have different experiences that shape the way we see the world. Therefore, when you read something, make sure you also ask questions about the author. What is the Alphas background? What information is the author trying to convey? Is the other trying to convince you of something? The more you read, the more you will be able to identify the authors agenda This is important because it protects him not only against bad arguments but also against Paul's information. Ask yourself again, Is he or she putting forth a balanced for one sided view of things? If it is one sided, why might this be sometimes, especially when it's an opinionated piece? There's nothing wrong with this, of course. Does the author appeal to emotion rather than reason? And lastly, why did the author write the text in the first place? 8. How to build up your vocabulary: words are what make up a language, and the large vocabulary is one of the key predictors of someone's education level profession and social status. But even if you already have a large vocabulary, you should still make it a habit to increase it further. No one is so smart that they don't need to constantly after their personal dictionary of words. While some people haven't easier time to learn the words, they're proven tactics that will help you to, even if you aren't among the lucky few and always seem to forget new words, the first and probably the one you're already familiar with his repetition. Any memory will begin to fade shortly after its formed, unless you are exposed to the information again. The good thing is that with each exposure, the time it takes until you forget something again will become longer and longer until it's so long that you would diet before you would forget it again. This is why we're reviewing what you've learned regularly is so important to effective learning. There's actual research on how long the average person retains new information and how often they should review the information to not forget it the strategy behind this is called space repetition, and it basically allows you to only re use something when you really need to. So if you apply this concept to flash cards instead of reviewing the whole pile, space repetition algorithms can help you predict the point when the memory is about to fate based on your past performance. It would then remind you at this optimal moment. So instead of reviewing the entire pile, you would Onley review those carts. If this is something that interests you, be sure to dive deeper into space for a petition to learn more. Next. Our connections. Memories are connections, so when you're learning a new word, you want to make sure it's connected to those who already know what does. The word Tarrant is, um, remind you off. Durant. Chula Tarantino, your friend. Terror. The link really doesn't matter. It's only important that there is one. Such connections can also be emotional. Instead of learning words from isolated lists of unrelated vocabulary, think of situations where have used them before and that he vote a strong feeling. You want to introduce context into your vocabulary, learning if you can't think of an emotional response for a connection at the top of your head. The simplest context is putting a word into a sentence. This will also help you clarify the meaning of the word. Once you've come up with this sentence and want to learn another word, you can build up a story line that connects different sentences to everyday situations. For example, red than learning weather related words on their own. Look up a weather forecast online and try to imagine a conversation about whether for the next week, another important factor in your vocabulary is reading off course. The more you read, the larger your vocabulary will become given. Of course, you look at words you don't know, but reading also helps check on words you've already learned when you come across the word you've recently studied and you understand it, that proofs that you've learned its meaning. But what should you read? Basically, whatever you're most drawn to, naturally, there's no point in trying to read something you aren't interested in or don't like. If reading feels like a chore, go with magazines instead of books. The important idea is to find things to read you can enjoy and to read as often and as much as possible with the idea of learning new words always in mind. If you want to go even one step further, you want to start riding, too. Writing often helps you organize your thoughts while also praising them in a way that makes sense to the reader like reading. Writing should be fun, and you don't want to force it. Start with a diary or block and see where it takes you. Lastly, all the things I just mentioned in small chance brief bursts are better than long blasts. Blasting your brain with new information will just make you feel overwhelmed. Instead, stick to routine that assured but repeated daily. This could be a short as five minutes of studying new words on the bus to work every morning. Smart for naps or flash cards will go a long way here, so make sure you use them to your advantage 9. How to do quick calculations: part of having a fit brain is being able to handle numbers Now. That doesn't mean that you have to be a math genius to be considered intelligent, but you should not be afraid of numbers, either. Unfortunately, number phobia is very common these days, and many people are lost when having to do calculations without a calculator. If this is you, don't worry. There are a few shortcuts you can take advantage off that will save you time and work out your brain first. Always try to round numbers to the unit of 10. This comes in handy, especially when you're multiplying. That's because tens air super easy to handle. If you think about 14 times 19 it may look difficult, but if you calculate four teams times 20 and then subtract 10 it's a lot easier. The answer is 266 by the way, if you're working with more difficult calculations, you can still round two units of 10 and might not get the exact total. But a close estimation. This could be important if you're counting money, for example, another tip is to think in terms of percentages, especially when dividing if you convert fractions into the nearest simple percentage. They tend to be easier to understand. For example, think about 3 16 This could be either rounded down to 2 16 which would give you an eighth or 12.5% or round it up to 4 16 which would give you 1/4 or 25%. Now you simply find the middle of the two, which is 18.75% were simply 18% off course. These are just a few ideas, and everyone will handle numbers differently. Your goal is to get comfortable with them and to do calculations in your head when it doesn't matter, so you're better prepared when it does. For instance, at a store register, you can keep a running total in your head as the clerk of the items, or is your pumping gas only watch the gallon number and try to total up the dollar amount. Such small exercises will help you get better while being painless and sometimes even fun 10. Mental stimulation: stimulating your mind is important not only for your brain fitness but also for your overall well being. We already don't hold on to most of the information we're exposed to. So it's important to work your brain in a number of ways to make sure you improve your functional intelligence or at least make sure it doesn't deteriorate. Over the years when most people hear brain exercise, they automatically think about brain teasers or mind puzzles. While these can be a good addition to your mental workout, they alone won't make much of a difference. That's because research suggests that even though you will get better at solving these puzzles over time, the skill rarely translates to other areas of your life, which should be the case if they actually improved. I Q. So instead of focusing on Onley these mind games, make sure to give your brain a variety of stimulus while also using real life examples that matter to you personal. That's because studies have also shown that people learn better when they have strong feelings about a subject. It might have to do with effect that declared of learning, which is the knowledge about people, events and things originates in the brain's hippocampus, which is also important player in a person's emotional wiring. In either case, we want to create more connections between different parts of the brain and cultivate neural connections and receptors that are under used. This can be done by doing unfamiliar tasks and using new ways of thinking. You're some suggestions on how you conduce that. As you will see, these activities become easier over time and should also translate toe other areas of your life. As a result, when you're presented with a problem or situation you have not encountered before, you will have more mental muscle to put behind it. First, you can simply modify normal habits. This could include wearing your watch upside down or on the other arm. Similarly, developing other handedness also works great. For example, use your other hand to brush your teeth. What to do? Simple Right? Next, you should try alternative sources of learning. If you gather most information by reading, explore books on tape. If the television is where you get most of your news from, think about checking online news. Similarly, always tried to read more. Most people don't read at all or very little. And not only that. They also tend to stay with certain types of books or certain authors. If you regularly read novels, for example, maybe try something more challenging, like a science book. It doesn't have to be a textbook, but just something you're not familiar with. Also, practice your spatial skills by a Rubik's Cube and work on it. Or instead of doing, try sketching real life three dimensional objects. If you want to go even one step further, learning new instrument or if this is true time consuming for you, simply listen to an instrument you know very little about. Try to get familiar with it so you can easily identify it. Sound If you want some quick and fund mental games, try word games like crossword puzzles or number games like Sudoku games. We have to get certain words are also great. Turning the TV on mute and trying to figure out what's going on is also fun way to train your emotional intelligence. That way, you practice reading body language and maybe even liberating. And lastly, if you regularly have to use lists to keep track of things like groceries, you can also try looking at them less, or even forcing yourself to remember them in your head. Just make sure you don't forget something every time you go to the store. 11. Memory explained: a well functioning memory is extremely important to us. After all, a faulty one can make daily life frustrating and unpleasant. Not only will you forget names and important numbers, but in the worst case you could forget how to do something which would turn everyday activities into huge drawers. Now, of course, there is good news, too. There are ways you can improve your memory today and prepare for the future. Memory research has exploded in recent years into many promising methods for enhancing memory. Different foods, supplements, training and exercises. Here's some of the most recent findings. First, the most important one. Your brain and its ability to retain information can be improved at any age. While genetics always play a role, there are many factors which you can control, like your education, diet and physical activity. If you keep physically and mentally fit, you will increase your chances off keeping most of your full mental capacity even toe old age Regularly. Using information creates stronger connections between brain cells and permanently improves neural communication. Regular physical exercise, on the other hand, strengthens your mind muscle connections and improves your reaction time. Next, we know that women usually have the edge. They often outscore men on all kinds of memory tests. It is not entirely clear why, but lower overall stress and more balanced lifestyles might be one reason. And lastly, certain kinds of foods and supplements can have protective effects on your brain and memory . At the top of that list of Berries, especially blueberries, we will talk in more detail about these foods later in the course. 12. Memory building techniques: I believe it is vital toe also include small memory building techniques in your everyday life to make sure you constantly use and stimulate your store of knowledge. Such memory builders don't have to be fancy or expensive. In fact, the simpler the better, and I know one to present you if you to give you some ideas on how to train your memory quickly and effectively. First, of course, you want to do activities that stimulate your language and problem solving skills, activities that help our trivia games, card games, crossword puzzles, learning computer programs and even Children's word games like BOTTICELLI. The one way you say I'm thinking about a famous person who's last name begins with our asked me yes or no questions to find out who, like I said before thes themselves usually don't translate to huge improvements, but they're good place to start, and we'll get you on the right track. Next to sharpen your short term memory, use everyday situations and turned them into challenges. For example, the next time you enter a place you've never been before, such as a new store note, the placement of 10 items leave and then returned 15 minutes later and see what you recall . You will find that the more you play this game with yourself, the more you remember. Unlike the brain games, these challenges are directly taken out of your everyday life and therefore will directly improve your ability to remember things in your everyday life. Another great way to build memory or reinforce existing memory is to remind yourself allowed of a task that you are about to do or finish. So as you're locking the front door or turning off the coffee pot, tell yourself what you're doing and maybe even why, given your actions, a reason is especially powerful if you're pursuing a certain goal and have to do certain tasks in order to get there. Third, writing in list is also a great way to remember things. Nothing list itself, but the process of writing things down. It's, um, it's the content in our memory, so you don't have to worry about losing a grocery list. But just make sure to make one. No. What about names, faces or numbers? Remembering those is what many people strive for when wanting to build up their memory. Keep in mind that this is all a game off associations. When meeting someone for the first time, pick out a facial feature that you can use as a que in the future. When you hear name, give it a connection, which might be an alliteration. So, for example, Brian with the blue eyes, were given a context, for example, being introduced to Jenna by the bookcase. If you want to remember a combination or 80 m number, link the numbers to a birthday, an important date in history or an anniversary. Visualisation also helps in creating associations. For instance, if you want to remember that you parked your car and I'll Fife at the airport, think of five airplanes. Lastly, I want to talk to you about tip of the tongue experiences. As you know, they're super frustrating because you can literally feel the piece of information lingering in the back of your head. Unfortunately, we still don't know exactly why this happens, but research suggests that it's best to relax and forget about it when it does. I know this sounds super counterintuitive, but dwelling on the laps usually does not produce what you want to know and will only stress you out 13. Memory killers: unfortunately practicing and stimulating your memory, is it not enough? You also have to guard it against the text from harmful environment. Every day, people are exposed to things that will hurt their memory by guarding against the following killers, you can slow or even prevent some memory loss. First on the list is stress, which will not only hurt your physical health is also bad for memory. What you have to understand, though, is that there is a difference between short and long term stress. While short term stress can actually be helpful and increasing mental capacity and therefore deliver results won't quickly, a constant high level of stress hormones will hurt your brain cells, especially a long term elevated cortisol, can become problematic, as I will discuss in a different lesson. So it is no wonder that people who live and work with constant stress often say they have trouble learning and remembering. While we will talk about methods to reduce dress later in the course, make sure you always take time to reflect on your day and to do some kind of relaxing reading or maybe just take a bath. Whatever it is, it should not involve any stress and get you in the routine of actively calming down at the end of the day. Such a habit can literally be life changing, and your mental and physical health will thank you for it. Next in line are pain killers In high doses, painkillers not only killed pain but also memory. Scientists have found that anti inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen will hurt your memory when taking and doses off more than 1800 milligrams a day off course. Very few people take such high doses for a long period of time, but I wanted to mention it anyways. While anti inflammatory drugs are most strongly connected to possible memory problems, other men's can also cost them. So make sure to always talk to your doctor and review your current medication if you feel your mental performance is declining and lastly alcohol, moderate amounts of alcohol, I usually okay, but regular high consumption will impair memory and thinking alcohol directly effects bearing chemistry by altering levels of neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers that transmit the signal throughout the body that control thought processes. What this means for you is that your thought speech and movements are slow down. And the more you drink, the more of these effects you will feel. Therefore, the stumbling around, falling over chairs and other clumsy things. Drunk people do off course. These air Onley short term effects. Long term alcohol consumption kills brain cells and will affect your memory and many more unpleasant ways. 14. Supplements for better memory: research shows that taking the right supplements cannot only help your normal health, but also your brain fitness and protect against mental decline in the future. You wrote the best options to choose from blueberries. Blueberries contain certain molecules which protect the brain and positively influenced its activity. They also support the growth of neurons and their interaction. Even better, blueberries are safe and do not interact negatively with other mass, which makes him the ideal supplement for more Mary and focus. To supplement correctly, take around 500 to 1000 milligrams of a blueberry supplement or eat around 100 grams for the real thing per day. Another great supplement is back open Mainieri, which is a swamp lands used, traditionally an Indian medicine. It is usually recommended for elderly people, but people from other age groups will benefit from supplementation as well. Basically, what it does is it improves working memory, which describes the ability to focus on a certain topic while also retaining it for later. You should take around 750 to 1500 milligrams of lycopene. When you Harry along with food once a day, it has to be supplemented for at least one month to see results, so make sure you don't expect results too soon. And lastly, you could also take a supplement mix that you will find it most. Pre workout supplements for more memory and focus. These are healthy meaning with caffeine. Together, they not only raise your energy levels but also improved focus and attention span. If you aren't used to either, start by taking 100 milligrams off the inning and 50 milligrams of caffeine. Once you get used to it, you can gradually increase the dose of both, but don't exceed 200 milligrams of either, for optimal results should take this mix 30 minutes before you need to increase your intention and focus. 15. Understand and reduce stress: stress is part of life were all stressed at one point or another. But that's not necessarily a bad thing because stress is also necessary part of life. What you have to understand is that stress can fall into one of these two categories. First, use tress or good stress, which occurs from positive events such as moving into a new house or having a child. Second distress, which is stress resulting from negative events like getting sick or losing your job. From an evolutionary standpoint, we experience stress because it can be life saving in stress that gets you to act when you see a car speeding towards you or a dog attacking you. So what's problematic is not the stress per se, but a chronic level of high stress. Here, your stress hormones, heart rate and blood pressure remain elevated, and don't level off. This does take a toll on your body and will negatively affect your health before we show you how to counter act this problem. Let's look at how chronic stress affects your body. This will help you understand and manage it better. We know that every time you experience dress for a prolonged time, the same biological reaction will take place in your body. There are three stages to it, and here's how everything unfolds. Stage one is the alarm stage. This is what many people know is the fight or flight response. Your nervous system will release adrenaline, which raises your heart rate and blood flow to your muscles and brain. This, along with the spike in blood sugar levels and your pupils dilating, will give you a quick energy burst and is the best possible condition to take action. If the cause of the stress is removed, your body would return to its normal state and everything would be fine. But when the cause of the stress isn't removed, you will move on to the second stage, which is called adaption. Here, your body reacts by adapting to the constant high stress level. Less adrenaline will be released at a slower rate and the effects of stage one lesson. However, your body will have to produce cortisol for this resistance reaction. Short increases in cortisol aren't a problem, and if this dresser resolves, stage tool will be short and your nervous system will go back to normal. But things become problematic when you experience stress constantly and on a high level. If your body stays and stage true for too long, without periods of rest, you will get tired, irritable and your concentration suffers. Finally, you reach Stage three the exhaustion stage. At this point, your body has run out of its reserves of energy as your adrenal glance will no longer be able to produce adrenaline. Blood sugar levels decrease, which leads to even less stress. Tolerance, as you are now under chronic stress, you are more prone to sickness, both mental and physical. Of course, aging will also take place at a faster rate, and your overall health suffers tremendously. Okay, now that I took you through this horror scenario, don't worry. There are many ways in which you can combat stress and effectively reduce learning. How to reduce your stress load will not only improve the quality of your life, but also improves your chances of living a longer one. Well. There are lots of techniques and strategies that we can use to reduce dress. First and foremost, you have to recognize the sources of stress during this will help you because you're not concentrating on what can be improved rather than letting stress continue to grow until it's out of control. This will save time, money and energy in the long run, as professional help is usually only needed when someone has led unrecognized stressed buildup for too long. Okay, I will now present you with a few very effective methods of self relaxation that you can use to limit the stress in your life. The 1st 1 is proper breathing. Deep. Slow breathing is one of the easiest and most effective instant stress relievers. What you want to do is breathe all the way into your gut while moving your abdominal and not your chest. I know this sounds very simple, but deep breathing will bring more oxygen into your blood, which has all types of benefits, like relaxing your muscles and bring you more energy to the brain. You're also forced to focus on the moment and not some distant worry. Therefore, deep breathing is great, and you can do it anywhere any time. Meditation goes one step further and not only includes deep breathing but also confronts you with your thoughts. Practice meditation regularly and you'll be able to enter a state that similar to sleep with similar benefits like hormonal, menacing and stress reduction. During meditation. Make sure you clear your mind of any distractions. The cluttering your mind will enable you to detach from stressors while calming your body and muscles. Your heart rate slows down along with your blood pressure and anxiety levels. Another great way to relax your body is through progressive muscle relaxation. Here you tense and relax all the muscles in your body. This will lead you to relieve tension and feel much more relaxed within minutes without the need of any special equipment. Here's one possible progressive muscle relaxation routine. First, you start by tensing the muscles in your face. For this, try to hold on tight. Grimace for 5 to 10 seconds. Next, you relax the muscles again for 5 to 10 seconds. Repeat this process with all the major muscles in your body, from the top to the bottom, so your neck shoulders and so on. One last possibility is music therapy. We still don't completely understand how it works, but music therapy has been shown as an effective way of battling stress, and music therapy doesn't have to involve only listen to music people who play an instrument also reported lower stress levels while doing so along with people who wrote music. They all show signs of lower broad pressure and stress levels and a more productive afterwards. So if you're a music lover, make sure to take advantage of its healing effects. 16. Foods Against Stress & Depression: When you're stressed, life becomes more difficult. But reducing stress can also be difficult in our busy everyday lives. Nonetheless, when it comes to your diet, there quite a few things you can do to lower stress levels and calm down. Now some people might think that all foods are calming foods, and just eating will make them feel better. The problem with most comfort foods, though, is that there are also high in calories and do not promote health. So there is a huge difference between using a foods inherently calming properties and eating any kind of food to feel better. The latter. It might give you a temporary sense of calm, but it's a quick fix that wears off way too fast. So what are some foods that will boost your mood and promote health? Here's a quick list that will help you get started first. Anything with omega three fatty acids. So fish, fish, oil, walnuts or flax seed oil. Omega three assets provide building blocks for healthy brain development and function, and might even help prevent mental diseases like 80 80 or Alzheimer's. Since many people get too little omega three assets, he should definitely be included in a well rounded, stress reducing diet. Some studies even suggest that they held fighting oppression. However, the findings aren't definitive, so we can't be sure next anything with B vitamins, especially B 12 so meat, seafood, eggs, green leafy vegetables or legumes. Vitamin B 12 deficiencies are fairly common among vegans and have been linked to increased stress levels and a reduction in overall health. The problem is that animal proteins like meat and eggs are the best sources of vitamin B 12 so answer vegan. You would probably want to consider supplementing, even though you could theoretically get it through plant based sources. This would be impractical as the required amount is simply too high. If you're not a vegan, make sure to get your vitamin B 12 from quality beef like rescue. Brazil Nous Brasiliense are the world's best source of selenium, which is an essential mineral, so our body cannot produce it from other minerals and we have to get it from food. Selenium is not only vital to hormone production, but it also works with other nutrients to balance antioxidants in our body cells. Several studies have shown a relationship between lower than normal selenium levels and depression. So if you feel down or even suffer from depression, check for selenium deficiencies and get some Brazil nuts. One or two a day will be enough to bring a selenium, Vectra Normal and Leslie blueberries. Blueberries are not just a delicious fruit. They're higher moment. Vitamins, plant nutrients and antioxidants are extremely beneficial when wanting to reduce stress. In fact, anthocyanins, which are the pigments that give them their deep color also, and your brain in the production of dopamine dopamine is critical for your memory function and your mood, so make sure to stock up on blueberries. 17. Focus introduction: welcome to the digital age. What we take for granted much of the technology that surrounds us and the way it has changed the way we work and relax. It's actually very important to recognize just how much it has impacted our lives. Today we're constantly bombarded by information and stimulation, and it's taken its toll on our brains. Meanwhile, the expectations placed on us by our work have only increased as a result of greater productivity tools and enhanced connectivity. And it's not just technology that has changed our lives forever. The demands placed on us in other areas have also increased. The world is more populous, living costs are going up and our roles in society have changed more and more women on a working full time, which while a good thing, has created new challenges and trying to raise and take care of our Children. The roles of men have likewise become increasingly uncertain, and competition for employment is fiercer than ever. Don't get me wrong. None of this is bad in itself. Having greater access to entertainment, being able to communicate with anyone in the world and enjoying greater equality than ever before are all good things. The state of the economy is a little less rosy, but all in all times are good. The problem. We're having a hard time keeping up with all this change, and it's leading to burnout. For a great number of people, the demands placed on them are simply too great. Your shoulder, the constant stimulation and constant bombardment of information is leading to burnout and knowing how to get what we want from life. This seemingly impossible, our brains involved in entirely different environments, and they simply aren't designed to thrive under these conditions. The result is what we call overwhelmed. That means too much information, too much pressure, too much to do and too little time. We end up stress, exhausted and disorganized, and it's just not good for our health. 18. The modern dilemma: Maybe this sounds familiar. You wake up first thing in the morning to the sound of your alarm going off quickly, you brush your teeth and get ready for work while also checking your personal emails on your smartphone after you ate a small high sugar snack for breakfast. You already feel stressed because you can't find your keys, and you need to be in work in 30 minutes off course. Today, the subway is also extremely full, with tired fellow commuters and bad air. By the time you get into work, you sit down, boot up the computer and check all the 90 emails you got since yesterday after your morning coffee. You feel a little better but can't really get into working moat. So you make a list of the task you have to complete today, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by your to do list. Next, lunch comes and you feel like you've only computed a few tests. You decide to eat at your desk, knowing that the small send which you pack won't be enough to keep your full until the end of the day. But work is more important right now. By the end of the day, you've spent most of your time responding to emails and trying not to get district. You end up leaving an hour late, which is followed by another 30 minutes of commuting at 6 30 to 7 p.m. You get home and should prepare a healthy meal because you want it here to your diet. But because you're so tired you order something. Instead, crash on the couch and turn on the TV. The house is messy, though, so you feel stressed instead of getting any relaxation. There's also other things you need to get done, like calling your friend who you haven't spoken to an ages or paying your credit card bill . Problem is, you're not even sure you could find the bill anymore. Also, you haven't even looked at your bank account because you don't want to know how bad it is. Speaking about money. You always thought about starting a side business, but never seem to find the time to get started. Now you would have an hour, but you don't know where to start and what to do. At the end of the day, you go to bed later, them plant and having done barely any of the things you wanted to do. You still haven't read that new book you bought and we're excited about. Okay, enough. All of this isn't meant to make you feel even more stressed for anxious than perhaps you already are. Rather, it was intended to draw attention to some of the very real issues that many of us face on a daily basis. Most of us simply have too much to do. We're too wired, and we're to bombard it with information, decisions and more. Approximately 50% of people get depressed or burn out at least once in their lives because they're trying to do too much and are struggling just to keep afloat. The irony is that we end up actually achieving less of the more we try and squeeze in as much as possible. But there is an answer, and there are ways around these problems. The secret is focused on organization. It might sound like a small thing, but staying focussed and organized is actually everything in today's environment and enables your brain to stay organized and keep on top of all that information. Those huge to do lists and your calendar learning to focus prioritize and organized means your life will become much more manageable and that you have far more time for yourself, your family and your goals. What we will look at now are the most important aspects of focus, namely, how to prioritize the most important tasks. How to reduce the number of decisions you have to make in a day. How to reduce notifications while still staying connected, how to keep your home or organized and how to work more efficiently. By the end, you'll have reordered your thoughts and life such that you can once again feel on top of everything and can start making real progress. 19. Too many distractions: a great place to start is to remove those difficult decisions that are taken up your mental bend with. Many of us think that the big limits on our ability to get things done this time we all make the excuse that we don't exercise because we don't have time and that we don't do more with our family because we don't have the time. That's actually not true. If you think back to all those times in your life when you've been doing nothing, and you probably realize that you actually had plenty of time. Just this week, you probably spend at least a good couple hours on Facebook or YouTube or your favorite blawg, and there's a good chance you've also watched a fair amount of useless TV. That's all time it could have been using to exercise, to call friends or to clean the house. My point is that in 99% of the cases, you don't actually have a problem with time. The problem is with energy. The reason you're not using the available time more efficiently or even to have fun is that you're low on energy, and did you know that your willpower decreases to as you run out of energy. Not only do you have less physical energy to get up and clean when you're tired, you also have less mental will power in order to encourage yourself to do it many times, energy management is actually much more important than time management, and a big component of energy management is to understand the impact that decision making has on our energy levels every time you have to make a decision, this takes a toll on your energy levels and Lisi with less energy to spend on other tasks. For instance, when you wake up in the morning and decide what you're going to wear, that will not only take up time, but it will also take up energy like ways. When you decide what to have for lunch. You also be using up your mental energy to make that decision, and this then means that you have less energy when it comes to making other, more important decisions. When someone asks you what to do at work or when you're wandering, how to best save your money, you know, have less mental energy available to dedicate to that decision. By the end of the day, you burn out 20. How to reduce decisions: So what's the solution? There are a number of things you can do. But one of the most important steps is to simply reduce the number of decisions that you're forced to make in a day. This is actually something that Steve Jobs was famous for doing. Jobs apparently decided he wanted to reduce the number of trivial decisions he had to make in his life, and so he removed all variation from his clothing. He replaced all of his items of clothing with just black T shirts and jeans. That meant that every single morning he would put on his one outfit and never need to worry about what he was going to wear. Steve Jobs, as you know, would go on to help invent the iPod, iPhone and iPad. So it seems something was working for him. That's quite extreme, of course. Not everyone is going to want to surrender all variation in their clothing. Thus, let's take a look at some more gentle and moderate solutions. You can apply to your own life. The first is clothing. While you might not want to goes for a Steve Jobs with it, there are still effective ways you can reduce the decision making surrounding your choice of outfits. One of the easiest ways to do this is just to plan your outfits in advance so that you have all of those items ready to go. You can even write this out on Sunday evening so you can refer to that plan. Now. I understand that this is one of those ideas that sounds perfect in theory but sometimes falls down in practice. What happens, for example, if you put on that outfit and you don't like it or you're not in the mood for it? Another solution, then, is to simply have, let's say, 20 outfits for work that you know you like and you know, are suitable. Now you can simply refer to any of those 20 in the morning without too much thought. 20 is enough that your colleagues will only see on the same outfit once every two months. But you will still never be stressed about whether your outfit works or because you have nothing to wear. And now the tip is to ensure that you choose your clothes in such a way that they can be combined into multiple different outfits. In other words, make sure that most of your pants go with most of your T shirts or tops. This way you'll be able to throw multiple combinations together with less thought. The second is food. While you might not want to keep your outfits the same every day, you might well be more inclined to keep your food consistent for breakfast and lunch. These meals aren't exactly a sighting in the first place, so why don't have the same cereal and toast for breakfast each day and the same salad or lunch books for lunch? This reduces waste to make shopping much easier and also makes it considerably easier to monitor your calorie intake if you're dieting. As for dinner, this is something else you can plan at the start of the week, and it works even better if you can also prepare some meals. Cook something big on Sunday, and you can put some top of where boxes in the fridge for lazy evenings. Now you can simply heat those meals up in the evening instead of throwing a pizza and yob, and while you're ended, come up with some backup meals, too. A good example is to keep a kind of beans, some rice and a can of tuna in the cup board. Throw everything together and you have a complete meal, not the most delicious in the world, but it'll do the job. The third is shopping. If you automate a lot of what you eat, then this creates the opportunity to make your shopping considerably easier. You either use the same grocery list every week, or, even better, is set up a delivery with your local supermarket. Most stores now offer the service, and it means that you can avoid that stressful weekly shop and instead just pick up a few supplementary ingredients to make each of your meals. The fourth is planning your nights in advance. You can also schedule some of your daily activities in order to further reduce decision fatigue. Do this by making each night of the week something night. For example, Monday can become rest night, where you allow toe watch trashy TV without the guilt. Tuesday can become date night, where you commit yourself to spend some quality time with your other Half Wednesday can become Chores night, where you clean the house by setting tests like this for each evening removed the stressful needs to make the right decision, and instead you carry out and execute your plan to stay on top of things. All this will help to simplify your life. There are more methods you can use to do this as well, so start putting them into action and just reduce the number of decisions you have to make . 21. Organizing your home: Okay, so now that you have some systems in place, you should find a little bit of time and energy freeing up in your day. Maybe you have a slight bit more energy in the evenings, and maybe you're a little less stressed on the way in tow work. The next thing to do is to clean your home. This is crucial because a clean home is a reflection of clean mind. More than that, though, it can also create a clean mind. And here the correlation becomes two way. Not only does a clean home make it easier to find things, thereby saving time and stress as you're no longer hunting for keys, but it can also make your space that much easier to relax in. Our brains actually crave order and organization. And this is why we find things like tilted picture frames so distressing. When your home is clean, you'll have a calming space you can use to relax. What's more, you'll have the confidence of knowing where everything is and being able to retrieve it s and when you need it, and fewer occasions when you need to hunt for lost items. So how do you start putting this interaction. Here's some tips that will really have get ruthless. One of the single most important things you can do to make your home cleaner and easier to get around is to get ruthless and to start throwing things out. This might sound a bit over the top, and at first you might object to the idea off parting with your possessions. Actually, though, reducing your items can make your home considerably less stressful and help you to stay on top of your chores a lot more easily. A good place to start is with your ornaments and knickknacks. Go through all the things you haven't display on your sides and throw out half of those items, or at least put them away somewhere. By doing this, you have now created a much more minimal space, which is immediately going to feel less stressful to spend time. At the same time, though, you've also created less work for yourself, you know has surfaces you can very easily clean by wiping up cloth around instead of needing to first, remove all your items individually, and on top of that, you have actually increased the average quality of the things on display. What's left behind will now be only a very favorite things. That means that those favorite items will get much more attention and focus versus all those other things that were distracted from them. Another great way to be more ruthless is to find all the boxes under your bed and in your closet that you haven't been in for the last six months. Remove anything valuable or sentimental and throw the rest out. If you haven't used it in all this time, then you don't need it. What you'll find is that you're surprisingly, don't miss any of those items. And if you find that you suddenly need a mini torch for whatever else it waas, and you can simply buy a new one. Another thing to do is to try and create more separation between your rooms and to think about how they will affect you unconsciously. For instance, if you currently iron in your living room or your bedroom, we're actually making it harder to relax in that space. Why? Because now he associate those rooms with work. What's more is that you'll probably have piles of un iron clothes in those rooms, too better yet is to make one of the spare rooms in your home your chores room. That way, if that room gets messy than it won't spill out into the other rooms of your home. Alternatively, if you have Children and a dark and you find that keeping your home clean is an uphill struggle and try keeping just one room in your house sacred, let this be the room where you can come to unwind with a book and make some rules that will help to stay completely spotless. No food, no ironing, no chores, nothing. The tip that we all know very well when it comes to keeping the house clean is to wash up as you go rather than letting your dishes buildup. This is a good tip, but if it's something you've never managed to stick to, then there are a few things that you can do to make it easier. One tip is to reduce the amount of crockery you have. You only need enough to entertain the maximum number of guests you have above that, and you just give yourself an excuse to keep your using plates and dishes rather than washing them. If there's nothing to eat off of. Then you'll be forced to stay clean. If you're really struggling, Toe wash dirty dishes. And if you're a young professional than consider getting paper plates, you can get a large number of paper plates for very little, and if you eat off of these, you can just throw them out each time your death. Generally, one of the best tips for staying on top of your cleaning is to automate and outsource. If you have the money than hiring a part time cleaner will be one of the best investments you ever make. Otherwise, though, think about the technology that can help. Getting a dishwasher, for instance, will make it much easier to stay on top of washing up, as there will be only a few things that you can put in there. Likewise, you can look into a number of other devices to help you keep things clean. A small portable vacuum cleaner makes vacuum much easier than a heavy one you have to empty every time you get done. A robotic vacuum cleaner can make your life even easier than that. However, they're a little more expensive. This steamer can make iron, less of mature and a washing machine and a dryer are must, because you don't want to wash clothes by hand. Think about how easy it is to wash things up when you buy them. It's very convenient to say you're going to use that smoothie maker regularly until you've tried washing those blades. There are smoothie models, though, that are designed specifically to remove this challenge, so that might be a better choice. And finally, I want you to aim high. Make sure that you aim high when it comes to your property, when many of us imagine what we want our lives to be like once were highly successful, we will often picture ourselves living in beautiful homes. This should give you just some idea as to how important a good home is to our happiness and sands of accomplishment. The tips we discussed will help you make a home that's much cleaner and thus much nicer to spend time, and but there are other things you can do as well. To make your home was similar to the kind of place you dream of living in. For example, you'd be surprised at the things you can buy cheaply that will give your home a unique look or even more functionality. Did you know that you can make your home into a smart home for much less than you probably expect? Caliber bulbs with controllers, for example, are available from Amazon for his little as a few dollars, and a cheat fountain can make all the difference for your son room. There are also some very funky Bluetooth speakers You can get cheaply to create your own surround sound. Take real pride in your home and look at ways to make it a relaxing and comforting experience for less. If you have the money, you can go much further and do things like installing a home song. This might seem expensive, but the difference that a beautiful home could make to your mental state is huge. This is very much worth the extra expense. 22. Organizing your social life: Do you ever feel like life would be a whole lot less stressful if it weren't for all the other people? We all feel like this from time to time, and especially when life is getting on top of us and we don't have the time, energy or money to devote to our friends. So how do you go about organizing your social life and staying on top of all those things you need to do? The first thing you need to do is to prioritize. If you have a busy social calendar and it's often easy to feel overly stressed and put upon , you're constantly being asked out to events. And if you say no, then you feel as though you're letting people down. This gets harder and harder as we get older people move away, and meanwhile, we have more and more responsibilities. We feel like we can't say no to a friend who invites us out because it was so long since we last saw them. Here's the thing, though. There comes a time in life where you just can't do everything you want to do. As such, you need to prioritize, and a set is that sounds that can sometimes mean pruning your social network right at the top of your priorities. If you're not old, should be your partner, your Children and your immediate family. If you're having a hard time turning down invitations than simply remind yourself that you need to reserve the lion's share of your time and energy for your family, this doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you an adult with responsibilities. This doesn't mean that you're going to cut off contact with your friends or tell them you don't want to see them anymore. All it means is that you might, for example, Onley except one invitation to spend time with a friend a week or more realistically, to a month as you start to get older. That means that if you have two invitations from two sets of friends, you will have to decide which friend is one of your priorities. Dunbar's number is the number of friends that we can realistically maintain relationships with. He puts the number as somewhere between 102 150 with 150 being the most commonly quoted figure. This number is not exclusively referring to friends, though but rather all the context we can maintain, whether they be family, friends, colleagues or acquaintances. In reality, you can probably only maintain around 10 truly close relationships, so choose wisely who those 10 are going to be. One thing that makes this a lot easier is to think about all the friends you have that aren't really friends. These are the people who recount his friends. But really, we don't actually enjoy spending time around all that much. These air, the friends we constantly moan about to our other friends, and these are the friends who let us down as you get older and the stakes get higher. Unfortunately, don't have the time for friends who aren't really friends as such, it's time to put those people to one side and to focus on the ones who you really enjoy spending time with and who are there for you when you need them. Just is. Removing some of the unnecessary items from your house can help you put more emphasis on your favorite belongings. You can also enjoy closer relationships with the people who really matter to you by spending less time with the people who don't deserve your time and energy. Another important tip is to keep a social calendar. If you have lots of friends in the busy social life than this is likely to result in a lot of different things planned. One of the biggest dress factors that can come from this is being double booked for multiple activities, which means letting people down or rushing to try and accomplish both. Keeping a social diary is a great way to avoid this from happening, and especially if can use an app that will let you easily update and edit events on the fly . This way, you can also set up different reminders to ensure that you always know what's coming up. And don't forget something big you have on your agenda. What's even better about using an app like Google Calendar is that you can also let other people see your diary contribute to it. This is a great way to arrange meetups and get togethers because it lets people see when you're free. And now comes one of the biggest tips for organizing your life. Getting things in order. Make sure that you also had your other tests and to do list to your diary. Ask yourself what the things are that you absolutely cannot miss. For instance, you might decide that at all costs you're going to go to the gym three times a week. Or maybe you can absolutely not put off filling out your tax return any longer. So make sure it's all in your diary and treated just as you would any other activity as an immutable appointment with yourself. If someone suggests doing something on that day and you have fill out tax return already on that date, then you explain that you can't meet up or that you will have to get there a couple hours later. It seems extreme, but once you start taking your commitments seriously, you'll find you have much more time to actually do the things you want to do and that you don't feel stressed because those necessary tests are constantly being pushed back. Facebook Facebook is one of the biggest culprits for many of us when it comes to procrastination, stress and overwhelm. Not only does Facebook take up a huge amount of time by giving us something to randomly browse through, it can also lead to stress and even depression through something called social comparison theory, which means we essentially compare our lives to the highlights that everyone else shows off . Then there's the fact that Facebook keeps us in touch with all those people we no longer know no longer care about, no longer need to be in touch with. So what's the solution? You might expect me to say Delete Facebook at this point, but even I agree that that would be too radical. After all, Facebook is a very useful tool and can actually make organizing events a lot easier. So don't delete Facebook. Streamline it instead. First, you probably don't need the Facebook on your full. Not only does it take up a lot of juice, there were draining your battery and slowing down your device, but it can also constantly annoying with notifications and messages that really aren't all that pressing. They come through his emails anyway, so why not turn off the tap? Another advantage to using Facebook on your cell phone browser is that you will have to manually log in every time, even if this only takes a few seconds. It will keep you from going there on automotive when you're bored, even more important is deleting those contacts on Facebook that aren't really friends. People from elementary school people who you met at random parties and people who you don't like can all go. As for your news feed, why not just unfollowed Some of the people you really don't want to see doing all these things will allow you to make more use from Facebook without the stressful, distracting and time consuming elements. You also want to make sure to limit your own Facebook use. For example, how about limiting yourself to 10 minutes of Facebook a day? Did you know that their abs for both your computer and your smartphone that will monitor your time on a website and block it after a pre defined limit stay focused? Is a popular chrome extension that does this and leach blood works on Firefox. For your iPhone and Android device, you can use abs like off time and break free. If you really want to limit your social media addiction and this is the way to go, trust me 23. Organizing your time: In the last chapter, we looked at how to organize and optimize your social life. Some of this also relates more broadly, toe organizing your time. Scheduling important tasks and things you want or need to do as though they were social commitments is a good example of how you can organize your time. But there's so much more to it than that. Let's look at some of the things you can do toe organize your time a little more easily. The first and absolute most important point to consider when organizing your time is that you must recognize your own limitations. This is where a lot of us go room because we forget that our energy as well as our time, are finite. A perfect example of getting this wrong is if you right yourself a new training program in dieting program. Often we come up with plans to lose weight that essentially involved working out for an additional three hours on top of our regular training routines, while also dieting. So you now have less energy and you're expected to start training even harder for a total of three hours, as well as getting to and from the gym. This just doesn't work. If you find that you currently aren't doing all the things you would like to be doing, then once again you need to prioritize. Find that you're not as healthy as you'd like to be, then maybe it's time to stop going to the bar with your friends once a week, never able to get on top of house work, then maybe you need to quit that karate class. Likewise, you need to make sure that you always give yourself time to recover were actually much more productive overall, when we have been given some time to recover in to recharge our batteries. If you're just constantly doing one thing after another, and eventually you'll become tired and you'll stop working properly. There is actually an old saying that is particularly relevant to this discussion. Walk or sit, don't wobble basically means that you need to divide your time between resting and working . This prevents you from getting into those situations where you're half working. Half working is the worst thing because it means that you aren't getting much done. But you aren't really relaxing either. Just as bad is half relaxing. Have relating is what you do when you're too tired to do anything useful. But you feel like you can't justify putting on a film, reading a book or taking a bath. So instead you just sit there watching trash TV, and at the end of the day you've achieved nothing. But he also failed to enjoy the time off. This is why you need to allow yourself that recovery time, and they make full use of it. Better yet, schedule it in advance, and that way you'll be able to look forward to it while you're working. As you decide when to schedule those important tasks and went to schedule rest, it's useful to consider the natural abs and flows of your energy. All of us have times of day when we are more productive in times of day when we crash. Most of us, for instance, will find we crash when we get home after work and that were less productive at work after four PM Likewise, it takes us a little while to get around to being productive. Also important to take into account is the way our other activities impact on our energy levels. One of the easiest ways to make yourself exhausted and want to crash is to eat dinner. Once you've eaten, your body needs to digest, and that leaves us with little energy to do anything else. So instead of making dinner eating on the couch and then planning on cleaning, the cleaning should always come before the eating. Don't sit on the couch if you want to keep your energy levels up and don't eat until you've completed at least your most important tasks. You can always enjoy lights neck when you get home after work. If you're too hungry to do anything in the section on work, we're going to talk about how multitasking can be a bad thing. However, in the right circumstances, multitasking can be highly useful. Multi tasking and work usually doesn't work, but in your private life it can be useful in any situation where one of the test doesn't require your full attention. For example, if you need to go shopping, then you can call a friend on your Bluetooth. While you're shopping this way, you're able to catch up with your friend while at the same time getting your food. Two birds killed with one stone in the same way you consort our bills while washing up. We can research activities on your tablet while cooking. This can help. You literally accomplished twice as much in the same time, so started looking for opportunities to take up more than one of your tests at once. One very important to helping you feel more on top of a life is to close all those smaller and fiddly tasks that you consider open loops. The next lesson, we'll see that it makes sense to work on the biggest and hardest task first so that you can ensure maximum productivity at home, though you should aim to do the reverse tasks of generally less pressing at home. So it makes sense to take off the smaller things you have to do so that you have less stress and fewer things weighing on your mind. This means things like paying that bill. Things like calling that friend things like ours, VP. Into that you end. We put up these jobs because we find them stressful. Don't want to use up energy thinking about them. As a result, though, we actually just end up wearing about the unconsciously and having less time and energy available to do anything else. If you have something that you can complete quickly that's playing on your mind than just tell yourself it needs to be done eventually, so it's better to get it out of the way now. Every day when you come home from work, give yourself have an hour to close off those open loops, so you have a smaller, unconscious to do list. 24. How to be more efficient at work: If you're taking all of the advice so far on board and started putting some of these systems in place, then you should start to notice life becoming a bit easier. You have more time. He had few decisions to make, and you're less stressed thanks to a quieter social calendar. But you're probably still overworked and overstressed, and this comes down a lot of times to your work. Where is what makes many of us so stressed? And it leaves us with little time to do anything else. Time to put a stop to that. The first thing you need to do is to start approaching. You work in a more productive and efficient manner. How do you make sure? Did you get through that to do list and that you aren't constantly treading water? The first thing you need to do is to remove multi tasking from the equation. While multitasking was useful in the last lesson, studies show that it simply doesn't work in a workplace environment. The simple reason for this is that activities that require our full mental capacity don't allow for multitasking. What you think is multi tasking is actually sequential tasking. You're quickly switching from one task to another and back. This takes up more mental energy, and less work gets actually done instead. Then you need to set out the task you need to do and then work through them in order until they're all complete. This means that you should start your day with the to do list, and there's a definite are to coming up with the to do list. Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Workweek, always talks about having one test that he absolutely must get completed that day and then completing that everything else he considers to be extra. This is generally the best attitude to take any list of objectives, complete the biggest and most important task first and then move on to smaller ones. The reason this is so important is that the biggest task is going to take the most time, the most focus and the most energy. It's also going to give you the biggest sense of satisfaction once ticked off. If you complete all the smaller test first, then you risk taking up a lot of time with switching between tasks, answering emails and setting things up. It's gonna end up taking longer than you think, and then not leave enough time to complete that one big task that you needed to finish. As a result, the day ends and you're left feeling stressed. Instead, work on that one massive test that will make a real difference first, then start on those smaller jobs and get as many as possible out of the way. You can do this after 4 p.m. At the point in day when you're starting to feel less productive. Now that you have just one big task to complete doing a work day, you should stand a much better chance of getting into a flow state. A flow state is an almost mythical state of mind that is described by many productivity gurus. The idea is that by focusing on one job that you need to complete, you can eventually get into a state of mind where you're able to shut out all outside distractions and work in a fast and focused manner. This results in the best work and also allows you to get through the task without procrastinating. The most important key to being able to get into a flow state is to make sure you remove distractions and things that can break your concentration. And the number one culprit email, email. Edwards is the one thing that is most responsible for causing us to become distracted and stressed. And as soon as we start responding to emails, we confined ourselves getting into a reactive mindset as opposed to a proactive one. No, we're working to someone else's agenda instead of our own, and that means we're less likely to complete the tasks we set for ourselves. One important tip, then, is to make sure that you complete at least a certain amount of work before you even look at your emails. In fact, you should name to set yourself a certain amount of work before you complete any other task . Now you might have previously started. A day is by going and making a cup of tea, having a check and then answering your emails. A couple of those emails might take some time and thought, and you can then end up quickly taking a look at Facebook for a small break. By the time started, completing any actual work, it's already 11 a.m. So instead start your day by sitting down and making a gentle start on that one big project. No, set yourself a goal if you have to write 6000 words today, for instance, and tell yourself you won't make that first cup of tea until you've completed 2000 words and you won't look at emails until you on 5000 words. Suddenly you've changed your regimen in order to put the pressing work first. The psychological impact of having this much work under your belt cannot be understated. Because you have made such a start, you find it much easier to just jump back and to work. By the time you've answered those emails, you'll now have completed a huge amount of work and be well on top of your daily tasks. Meanwhile, having a gold toe work on can actually act as a great motivation. The power door technique is another tool you can use to formalize this process. Simply use a timer and set yourself a specific amount of time that you're going to focus on your work. This could be 10 minutes, 20 minutes or 60 minutes. Work until that time is complete, and then the timer sounds. And once that happened, set the timer for five minutes to rest and relax, Then set the timer for another block of work, dividing her day into periods of work and rest like this. House it to maintain separation between your productivity and recovery. And this can prevent burnout while also helping you to finish more work. The only downside to this plan is that a lot of people will feel very unsure about ignoring the emails in case they're missing something very important. A way to avoid this nagging concern is to consider investing in a smartwatch. While you might think that having yet another device with notification is only going to make matters worse, in fact, this gives you a handy way to check what the email is about without having to actually load of Gmail and potentially get sucked in. Another option is to set up an auto responder on your email that tells your audience you will only answer emails at a certain time of day, but that they can contact you by phone only if it's an emergency. When you do this, you ensure that there's always a way you can be reached in a serious emergency. But at the same time, you also avoid getting overwhelmed with unnecessary calls. Communication overhead is a term used to describe the negative impact that lots of meetings , emails and phone calls can have on your productivity. When you're any meeting, you aren't working, and when you're on the phone, you're not working either. To get around this, try to keep unnecessary communication to an absolute minimum. You can reduce this in a number of different ways. For instance, if you find yourself in a lot of long phone calls, consider asking people to email instead of calling alternately pre phase your phone calls by telling the person you're speaking to that, you only have five minutes, so they'll need to get straight to business. They may offer to call back, but simply say, no, it's OK, but we'll have to make it quick. Asked for meetings, consider discussing with your manager whether you really need to be present for meetings. Try skipping one to begin with and explain that you have lots of work to finish that you feel your time could be put to better use in other ways. If you can arrange, flex a town with your work or even arrange working from home, and this can help you save a huge amount of time on commuting and getting started with work again. Try to discuss with your boss how you could be put to better use by doing other things with your time and how you can provide the same service from home. The only real legitimate reason a company might need you to stay at the office is if you're needed to answer the switchboard. Otherwise, it will just be a matter of convincing them to let you give it a try. And then you prove yourself by completing even more work than you would do in the office. Flexi time, meanwhile, could just mean asking if you can come into work an hour earlier and leave an hour later. This could make a huge difference if it helps you avoid the rush hour and mean you actually save at least half a Knauer of your day. My point is that you don't have to work in the same exact manner as everyone else, and it may be that there are other, more effective work styles that are better suited for your lifestyle. It just takes the confidence to push for the changes that suit you and to help you employ ERM organized a little bit 25. Limiting your sources of information: things are hopefully starting to become a lot more simplified, streamlined and organized for you at this point, and you should have a much better handle on all the tasks you need to complete. But there are still some sources of concern, which includes all those things that keep distracting you and trying to rob you of your focus and in particular, one of the biggest Corporates are all those screens. All the information and stimulation coming from the TV. The smartphone and laptop are constantly keeping us wired and stressed were on constant alert for messages. So much so that we feel phantom vibrations in our pockets sometimes, and we can hardly go more than five minutes without feeling the need to load up some form of technology. This isn't healthy, and it's certainly not conductive for productivity. So what do you do? Here's some ways to limit all that information that are coming in. Pick some new hobbies For many of us, every hobby that we have involves a screen of some sort, whether it's gaming, watching films or using the computer. There's nothing wrong with this per se, but it can't stress you out over time and lead to burnout. If it's all your doing to relax, to avoid the situation and make sure that you have some hobbies in your life that don't involve screens that requires sustained focus and attention. A good example of that would be reading. Reading a book not only offers a reprieve from the screen, but it also means that you need to stay focused on that one thing for a good amount of time . Instead of flitting from one information stream to the next, your mind is completely focused and relaxed. This is actually almost like meditation. Another good example is drawing. Growing is a very relaxing hobby, and you'd be surprised just how much pressure it can take off of you and how time flies when you're enjoying it. You don't even need to be good necessarily. Going to the gym or playing sports is also good, and so are things like do it yourself birdwatching, walking anything where your phone stays in your pocket again. If you're really worried about missing something important, then consider using a smartwatch, or perhaps just set your ringtones for priority collars. Perhaps the most meditative hobby you can take up is meditation meditation is simply the act of taking control of your inner monologue and using it to bring your mind to a calm. Different forms of meditation work differently. Mindfulness versus Transcendental, for instance. But they both offers similar benefits. Not only is meditation shown to be very good for us in the short term by helping us to encourage slower brainwaves, but it also provides tools for commenting stress and staying focused as a necessary Have quiet time. The point at which your phones and computers become most destructive is in the evening, not only to screen stresses out, but the light itself also causes the release of cortisol, which X against the release of Mala Tony. In other words, our brain treats of phone screen just like natural sunlight and prevents us from getting into a sleeping state of mind. There are many solutions to this, some of which get quite ridiculous and include things like wearing blue blocking shades to bed. Really, though, the most effective way to avoid light from screens before bed is to simply stop using computers and phones for at least an hour before you go to sleep. If this is too much for you, then Doma flex for your computer and twilight for your phones, both programs that automatically dimmed the brightness on your screen at night and also give it a reddish tone, which is much more gentle on your eyes. Read a book or magazine half an hour before you doze off, which will quiet your mind and help you get deeper sleep once you do actually hit the hay. And hopefully it should go without saying that when you get home at the end of the day and our of work, you do not answer any emails that are related to work. Don't even look at your work email. It will only prevent you from properly relaxing and enjoying your time off. 26. Value your time: successful entrepreneurs aren't yes, men or women. These are people who value their time and who want to invest that time wisely. Whether you're an entrepreneur or not, try to take the same approach. Your time is the most valuable asset you have, and eventually it will run out. Don't waste it. Working on projects that don't care about spending time with people you don't like or completing work for other people guarded fiercely and only use it in ways that are conducive to helping you get what you want out of your life. This is why it's so important for us to set our goals, and it's why it's so important to prune your social calendar and to learn to say no more. Every decision you make ultimately comes down to what the best way to utilize your time is . When you get a text from a friend at work, you have to decide whether it's worth answering now or trying to get that little bit more work done. Most of us trade our time for money in our careers. This essentially means that you're valuing your time at that amount when you think about this and when you think about how little time you actually have to do the things you love. Then hopefully this will motivate you to go out there and chase what you're actually worth . And hopefully it will make you realize that you should fight for all the free time you have around. You work whether that means your commute or just trying to organize flexi time or the chance to work from home. It also means you should think differently about the way you're spending your money. If spending money means you can buy back more time than this will often be a very good use of your money. That might mean outsourcing work, such as cleaning to a cleaner, or it might mean getting a dishwasher. There are many other ways you can outsource your task to and get more time back. For example, consider hiring a virtual assistant thes air people who complete any task for you that could be completed remotely. In other words, the surface operates only by email and over the phone, which means that they can handle things for you, like making appointments, arranging meetings during research and answering emails. Traditionally, virtual assistants I used by entrepreneurs and small businesses. However, they can also be used for a range of personal tasks. Whether that means booking a table at a restaurant, researching your next car or suggesting holidays, the best bit about virtual assistance is that they tend to be incredibly affordable. Often they will charge as little as $3 for an hour of work. The limitation, other than the fact that they must work remotely, is that you will normally be outsourcing to in your or the Philippines. This means that they may not be native English speakers, so they might not be candidates to finish that report or essay for you. Off course. There are many other ways to outsource your work, and these are just some ideas. Just understand that this could be a great way to invest your money if you think of it as buying more time. There is another way to outsource jobs that you can complete on your own and to get help as well. And what is that simple? Ask your friends for help. A lot of us feel bad about asking for help because we don't want to be a burden or show weakness. The reality, though is that friends are there to help each other, and this cuts both ways. If you're struggling with the large number of tasks you have and you're feeling overwhelmed and stressed, chances are that your friends will want to help you. There are many examples of tasks that can be made a little easier with some help from your friends. Perhaps you're moving home, for example, and instead of spending all your time and energy moving your things yourself, consider asking a friend if they'll help you organize your possessions and transport them with you. Meanwhile, if you think you don't have the time to look for holiday ideas, why not just ask your friends if they have any good recommendations? And if you're really struggling and you don't have time to pick up your Children from school, then why not ask another parent if they can help? Often you can share The burden with your friends is a way to reduce your workload, too. Why not take it in turns to pick up your kids from work, for example, and that, well, you have to spend almost 50% less time driving to and from school? Likewise, you could even agree to do a similar system for the weekly shop Off course. You don't want to take advantage of your friends and keep getting them to do things for you . But when you really struggling, there's nothing wrong. Was just asking for a little help. You do the same for them when it's mutually beneficial, then there's really no downside. Being vocal doesn't just mean asking your friends for help, though Sometimes it can also mean doing the opposite. Sometimes you might find yourself doing too much for your friends and shouldering too much off the work and chores at home and either of these situations being vocal, my just means speaking up in telling your friends, family or partner that you're going to have to start doing a little less. This is even more important at work if you find that you keep getting more and more work piled on than this can be highly disheartening, especially if it feels like you're carrying other people. Don't be afraid to speak up and tell your employer that you have too much work and that you're struggling or even to outright refused to take anyone else's work unless it's reflected in your salary. This all comes back to what we talked about earlier value in your time 27. How your food affects your health: It's no secret that proper nutrition is an extremely important factor in your overall health and longevity in general. The better and more nutritious your food choices, the longer you will live. But to make the right choices, you have to understand what makes food good for you. This is what this section will focus on, helping you make the right food choices and improving your overall diet. Let's first take a look at how the right diet can help you age well. In its most basic form, our diet is meant to deliver the nutrients we need for our bodies to function the way we want it to. At best, we don't just provide these nutrients through the right foods, but also provide them at the right time. For example, protein and carbohydrates are especially helpful before and after you exercise. The quality of a diet is classified along the lines of macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients are those nutrients the body needs and relatively large amounts. They include protein for building and repairing tissue, dietary fed for hormone production, among other functions and carbohydrates as a quick source of energy. Micronutrients are those nutrients that the body also needs but in smaller quantities. These include vitamins and minerals, for example. In addition to these two main nutrient categories, some foods have additional properties that promote extra health benefits and will support your well being. These properties can include one or more of the following antioxidants. Antioxidants are important for fighting free radicals that result from oxidation, which can cost diseases and damage cells in your body. Oxidation, which is the loss of electrons and atoms, happens at a faster speed as we h. This also increases the risk associated with free radicals. Therefore, getting enough antioxidants is especially important. The older we get. While antioxidants can be found in many foods, those that are high in vitamin A, C E, or beta carotene, selenium and like hoping are especially rich in them. Bio flavonoids. Bio flavonoids are what makes some fruits and vegetables so brightly colored. These pigments are also found in red wine and are a special class off antioxidants necessary for vitamin C absorption. They have anti inflammatory properties and can also strengthen the blood vessels. Army get three and omega six fatty assets. Both are two types of essential fats, fatty fish, eggs, walnuts and some oils like flaxseed oils, are high in Omega three and Omega six. Several studies suggest that they can protect against heart disease by lowering trackless right blood levels while also improving brain function and mental health. Probiotics, you probably know probiotics as microorganisms that improve and benefit your G I tract, along with other benefits. Pre immune system. This is because probiotics eight and balancing the flora found in your digestive system, making it easier to absorb nutrients while also decreasing the number of bad bacteria and lastly probiotics similar to probiotics. Probiotics also help Palin's flora and the G I tract, while also increasing calcium absorption, their phone and whole grains, bananas, honey, onions and artichokes. 28. How the wrong food can hurt your diet: Now that we've talked so much about how the right nutrition can help improve your health, let's look at how bad nutrition can hurt your help. What you have to keep in mind is that the effects of a bad diet will creep up a new slowly . That means that while you can probably eat poorly for a few months, or sometimes a few years without feeling immediate consequences, besides, maybe some waking eventually you will see your healthy teary it much faster than normal. The following diseases are all directly linked to poor food choices. First, heart disease Heart disease is the nation's number one killer. For both men and women, most heart diseases are triggered by several factors working together, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity and in activity. All these factors can be improved by lifestyle changes, especially by improving your diet next diabetes. Although the genes you inherit may influence the likelihood of you getting Type two diabetes, the disease is also considered a lifestyle disease because it can be avoided or at least kept in check through monitoring your weight, nutrition and exercise. Vice versa at that diet will inevitably increase your chances of suffering from diabetes, even if you have been blessed with good genetics. One study found that just by losing 5 to 7% of body weight while also following a more balanced diet, people with pre diabetes were able to prevent or delay the onset off the disease. High blood pressure High blood pressure can lead to heart attacks, stroke, heart failure or kidney failure. It is often caused by buildup in your arteries that can enlarging and harden over time to form plaque. Plaques difference the arteries and narrows the passages through them. As a result, blood pressure rises more balance died with a focus on healthy fats. Vegetables and fruits can often reduce high blood pressure and the risk associated with it high cholesterol, While some cholesterol is needed for the formation of cell membranes, some hormones and vitamin D, a relative increase in L E L toe HDL cholesterol is often linked to health problems. Unfortunately, the traditional Western diet does exactly that and often leads to a less than optimal LDL to HDL cholesterol ratio and therefore can become problematic osteoporosis. The older we get, the weaker our bones become. In fact, about half of the women over 50 and 1/4 of men of the same age have osteoporosis. An important mineral in the fight against osteoporosis is calcium, which can be obtained from dairy products and leafy green vegetables. One problem is, though, that accounts and efficiency will creep up on you. And so it's very difficult to detect. Make sure to include these foods in your diet or to supplement calcium if you believe that your risk of a calcium deficiency and lastly cancer a healthy and balanced diet is extremely important in the prevention of cancer. Estimates go as far as to say that up to 30% of cancers in developed countries can be linked to poor nutrition, obesity and a lack of exercise. While we still cannot pinpoint one exact cause of the disease, it makes sense to stay fit and healthy to decrease all the risk factors 29. How to eat for longevity: eating correctly will definitely improve your chances of living a longer and better life. But the $1 million question is what does the right diet look like, especially in regards to longevity? In the following lessons, I want to give you a short overview of the two most important aspect of your ideal diet, calorie intake and food choices. Calorie intake is fairly straightforward. You want to consume enough calories to have plenty of energy for your daily tests and activities, while not consuming too many calories to gain excess body fat. Food choices are a little more difficult because the right from choices will depend on your individual health goals and preferences. After all, the best diet is still the one you stick to. Nevertheless, in the context of increasing your life expectancy and decreasing the risks of certain diseases, there are food choices better suited for this purpose than others. We will talk about them in quite some detail, so you understand how they work and how you can include them in your diet. Most important, here are the foods that will keep your heart healthy, your brain healthy while also benefitting your muscles and bones. Lastly, I will also talk about certain supplements that might help increase your life expectancy. Well, we have yet to find the magic pill that makes us live forever. Some supplements seem to have a positive effect on life expectancy. Let's get started. 30. Calories explained: like I said in the last lesson. The single most important variable and determining diet success is your calorie balance from scientific standpoint. Whether you gain weight or lose weight is determined by the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed from one type to another. Now, I don't want to turn this into a physics lesson. But when applied to dieting, the first law of thermodynamics states that your body weight is dependent on Lee on the difference between the amount of calories that you consume versus the amount of calories that you burn, which is known as your calorie balance. Before we go into the different forms of calorie balances, let's first talk about what a calorie actually is. A calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one leader of water by one degree Celsius, so that means a calorie is a form of energy measurement. When you eat your food, you're consuming the energy that is stored within the food. Your body then uses this energy to produce movement and keep your organism alive. Alternatively, if not all energy is used right away. It can also be stored for later use. Some energy can be stored in the muscles and liver as glycogen, but these stores Philip pretty quickly, so your body will then store any additional calories in the form of body fit back to calorie balance. There were three different states of calorie balances and you could only be in one state at a time. The first is a negative calorie balance. This, of course, when someone burns more calories than he or she consumes here, your body needs more calories to produce energy for your daily functions that it gets from your food. That means it makes up the difference by burning stored energy, meaning you will lose weight because the necessary energy will come from the breakdown of body tissue and negative calorie balance always results in weight loss. The second state is a neutral calorie balance. Here, a person's intake of calories is the same as the expenditure of activities and body processes. This means that all the calories you consume will be used for some form of body process, and your weight will remain stable now, of course, calorie intakes and activities on any given day are not going to be exactly 100% the same, but over the course of weeks and months and neutral calorie balance is quite possible. If your weight hasn't changed over the last few months, your calorie balance is almost always neutral. The third and last state is a positive calorie balance here, more energy is consumed through food and is being burned to produce body processes or movement. As I explained before in this case, the extra calories are stored. Is either glycogen and the muscle and liver or as fat. Okay, so now that you know the fundamentals behind calorie balances, let's see how all this dry theory can help us with actual real life dieting. What you need to understand is that your calorie balance will determine how much muscle you can gain and how much fed you can lose over any period of time. Why? Because calories are literally the building blocks of body tissue. If you want to build more muscles, you not only need to train, but you also need to provide your body with the necessary raw materials to form muscle cells. On the other hand, if you want to burn fat. You have to make sure that not enough calories are shuttled into fat cells to keep in the same size. I explained both processes in more detail in the muscle building and fat loss formula. 31. Bodyweight and health: As you can imagine, calories, impact our body weight and our body weight impacts. Our health calories are literally the building blocks and energy needed to keep our body alive. One of the best documented findings throughout the history of nutrition research is that your calorie balance is the Onley determining factor off your long term body weight. This means if we exclude changes in water retention and other short term factors, how much you eat will determine what you wait. In fact, body weight and calorie intake have a new 1 to 1 relationship, which is why it's so important to watch them watching. Calories doesn't always mean that you have to track them, though, but it does mean that you should be able to estimate your daily calorie needs and know how to meet them. The truth is that you can eat on Lee healthy foods, time your meals perfectly and take the best supplements, but still gain weight if you don't control your calorie intake. So if you want to lose weight, you have to have a calorie deficit in place before anything else. Vice versa. If you want to gain weight, you have to have a calorie surplus in place before anything else. With this in mind, let's take a look at the relationship between body weight and health. Obviously, if over a long period of time you don't provide your body with sufficient calories and energy, you will see a decrease in overall health due to the close relationship between calories and body weight. You can estimate if you're getting enough energy simply by looking at your weight. If it falls within the range of healthy ways for your height and age, you're probably getting enough energy and calories for ideal health. If, however, you fall under or over the ideal range, chances are that your health is or will be compromised in the future in terms of proportion . Toe other aspect of your diet More than half of the total health effect of your dad will come down to body weight and therefore calories. Let's see what happens when you're under or overweight. So first, the relationship between low body weight and health. If you don't supply your body with sufficient calories, your weight will eventually decrease to a point where your health will begin to suffer Now , even though the logical endpoint of this would be starvation. Your health begins to suffer long before being underway for too long will deprive your body off the building blocks and energy needed to maintain your immune system, which is why underweight people are more prone to infections and diseases. He will get sick more often and recover more slowly. Another problem is that calories are needed to maintain bone and muscle mass, which will also suffer in a low calorie environment. This leads to fatigue and high risk of fractures. This is especially true for the elderly, which are already at high risk of bone conditions. Sports performance will also suffer as your body will not be able to activate as much muscle tissue as it potentially could put together. This means there is such a thing as being too skinny. Now, what about the other extreme high body weight and health? Unfortunately, in most developed countries, the number of overweight people is increasing, along with health risks associated with excess body weight. The reason for this is not always the weight per se, but the excess body fed, which impinges health. First of all, a large amount of body fat literally weighs down the body and wears down knees and other joints more quickly. Larger tissue masses also require more blood to be pumped through them, which leads to high blood pressure and higher risk of heart problems. Also, body Fed stores secrete hormones, which negatively affect your health. This usually happens because they raise bad LDL cholesterol levels and lower good HDL cholesterol levels. Now, at this point, I could tell you about the other health risks associated with obesity. But let's talk about some good news instead. Being outside the healthy weight range does not automatically lead to terrible health. Why? Because the affect your body weight has on your health will also be influenced by time. Generally, how long you have been overweight effects. How much long term health damage will occur if you've been overweight for a year or only a few months, and plan on going back to a healthy weight than long term effects will be minimal if not non existent. If, however, you've been overweight all your life and don't plan on changing anything, your health will definitely deteriorate much faster. The mama, also how much you fall outside the healthy range matters as well. A few pounds more than normal aren't as much of a problem than, let's say, 50 or maybe £100 more than the momma wait. 32. Food choices for a longer life: like I said before, Eating the right foods is the second important variable in your diet. Now, even though many fitness and die cores a quick to tell you to eat certain foods for optimal health or avoiding others because they will drastically hurt your health, individual food choices are generally not what will make your diet a healthy one. We always have to look at the complete picture and the diet as a whole to see if it's healthy or not. In fact, study after study has shown that you can eat foods that are regarded as less healthy, like chocolate bars or chips. If you don't do it in excess, and if the rest of you that consists of quality unprocessed fruits. That's why in this section I will give you a range of foods to choose from. That should make up most of your diet, so around 80 to 90% if you stick to these and keep your calories and check you can fill the rest of your diet with whatever you like. Sounds pretty awesome, right? The food's we're going to talk about are split according to their macronutrients, so protein carbs and fats most people should focus on these foods and make the changes. I'm about to tell you first before committing to a super complicated diet and also before spending hundreds of dollars on diet gimmicks or overpriced supplements. Okay, so for the average dietary situation in the modern world, most people will benefit from the following changes. Getting the majority of their protein from complete or complement terry protein sources born with these are later getting the majority of their carbs from mostly whole grains, fruits and vegetables, getting the majority of their feds from sources of unsaturated fats and consuming mostly foods high in vitamins and minerals. These air four simple rules that will improve your diet so much that will pretty much automatically become healthy. 33. Quality protein sources: after you have set up your meal structure, you will probably ask yourself what foods are the best sources of protein carbs and fats to include in your diet? I already gave some examples and previous lessons, but to give you some inspiration here, even more ideas. Let's start with protein. High protein foods and the Darien X category include Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, Swiss cheese, eggs, of course, milk and way protein. High protein needs include lead cut steak, ground beef, pork chops, chicken breast and turkey breasts. High protein seafood includes tuna, halibut, Salman and chill Appia. High protein can foods can include anchovies, corned beef, sardines and beans. And high quality is next To go can be jerky. Peanut butter. We're nuts. For example. Hi porting, vegetarian and vegan sources can be beans, chickpeas, nuts and nut butters. Tofel Chia seeds and Leaf agrees 34. Quality carb sources: As for quality carbohydrates, the best sources are unprocessed whole foods like fresh fruit, legumes, whole grains and many vegetables. These foods also contain fibre, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Foods made with refined grains have fewer of these nutrients and foods loaded with editors , usually at access calories. Hi carpe whole grain sources can be whole grain bread, whole grain pasta and whole grain cereal with no sugar. Of course, high carb fruits include bananas, mangoes, apples, oranges and pears. Hard card wounds include beings, peace and lentils. Other sources that I haven't mentioned but are also good include sweet potatoes and normal potatoes, brown rice and normal rice, Canoa old meal and two ts. 35. Quality fat sources: consuming quality fed can actually be pretty easy and delicious at the same time. You're a few high fat foods that are incredibly healthy and nutritious. Sources of unsaturated fats include avocados, salman olives and olive oil, nuts and nut butters when they're not highly processed flaxseeds, tuna, dark chocolate and son floor seats. Sources of saturated but healthy feds include whole eggs, high quality meat, full fat milk and chicken breast. Now, sources of transfats or feds that you want to limit and avoid include pizza, hot docks, hamburgers and basically any type of fried were fast food. 36. How much of each: now that I taught you which foods to eat as your protein cart and fed sources. You probably also want to know how much of each the ratio of these three macronutrients in your diet is called your macro split. A proper macro split is important because depending on your goal, you will need more of one macronutrients than you will of the other. So let's start with the most important macronutrients protein. How much protein do you need to ensure long term? We know that everyone needs some protein, but how much is enough? This question is tricky because it raises another one enough for what? And my fitness and muscle bleeding courses. I usually recommend fairly high protein diets to ensure optimal muscle growth. For them, a range of 0.821 gram per pound of body weight per day would be optimal. But this course is targeted more to the average person that might be active, but with a smaller focus on building muscle. So in this case, your protein needs are a lot lower here. A minimum of around 0.3 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day should be maintained. But since this value only translates to around 40 to 50 grams of protein a day for most people, it shouldn't be a problem for you to meet again. This is only the complete minimum amount, and going over it is not a problem. In fact, I recommend shooting for a slightly higher value, even if you aren't looking to build muscle because of the benefits of high protein diets in regards to weight loss and, say tidy, somewhere around 0.5 to 0.7 grams per pound of body weight per day would probably be a good value. This is especially true if you're a vegan or vegetarian, because plant based proteins are generally digested, less efficient, meaning your body will be able to absorb less protein from the same amount of food if it comes from plants instead of animal products. No, what about fits? In order to maintain your general health and fitness, you only need around 0.3 grams per pound of fat free mass per day. Here, fat free mass is everything in your body that isn't fat, so water, muscle or bone mass. This value translates to roughly 15 to 20% of your daily calories for most people and is a target value that you should not undercut. Can you go higher or even a lot higher with your fat intake? It depends. Trans fats are definitely a health risk in excess, and saturated fats should also be watched. However, if you follow a diet high in mono unsaturated fats, there is no reason for you to worry about it's health effects. In fact, the traditional Mediterranean diet illustrates the health benefits off Mona and saturated fats, even when they're consumed in large quantities. So these sources include olive oil or avocados, for example, and lastly, carps. In theory, carbs are not essential for our survival. This means there exists no minimum carp and take you need to consume every day. However, eating carps does come with quite a few benefits when done right. Like I said before, carbs are the most efficient source of energy and food and therefore great for physical exercise. This is why I recommend a fairly high carb died in my Maas Ability and fitness courses. Next, the fiber found in many forms of carbohydrates, like whole grains, fruits and vegetables, eats in the digestion of other foods and keeps your G I tract healthy off course. In addition, these fruits and vegetables also come loaded with vitamins and minerals. Therefore, as long as you stick to quality carbs, it does make sense to consume a minimum intake of around 0.3 grams of carbs per pound of body weight per day. Like quality fits going over. This value is also not a problem again, as long as you stick to quality complex carbs. Don't overeat on simple sugars and candy. Those will definitely hurt your health and can lead to weight gain because of the high amount of calories. 37. How the sedentary lifestyle hurts your brain: everyone knows that a completely sanitary lifestyle isn't healthy. Still, most Americans do little to no regular exercise and consume a mostly unhealthy diet than consists of high sugar and highly processed fruits. The problem is that this lifestyle will not only affect your physical health, but also your mental health. Research has shown that, like physical activity in activity, also effects brain cells, only this time in a negative way. When researchers examined rats who had exercised for three months versus those that didn't at all, they found that neurons of the Retz who hadn't exercise had actually changed shape and sprout it more branches than normal neurons. These new branches made the Normans easily overstimulated and oftentimes sent confusing messages to the nervous system. The's signals ultimately impacted blood pressure and left the reds more prone to heart disease. Now, while it is true that humans aren't reds and that our brains are far more sophisticated than those of reds, the parts of the Red Sprain that was examined in the study is similar to the area in our brains that controls the same systems. So even though we need more research on the topic, first evidence suggests that there is one more reason to switch to a more healthy lifestyle if you haven't already 38. The best type of training for your brain: until a few decades ago. The majority of exercise studies focus pretty much on all body parts except for the brain. So the heart Lund's for muscles. In general Off course, they found that regular exercise is a benefit to your health and well being. But now we're seeing a growing trend and research being done on the benefits of physical exercise from mental health. In fact, exercise might be one of the simplest ways for people to lower the risk for memory loss and Alzheimer's disease. And this includes those where genetically at risk for the disease to one study showed that of almost 100 O'doul's with one or more parents with Alzheimer's disease. Those who spend at least an hour a day doing moderate physical activity had better glucose metabolism, which is an important sign for a healthy brain when compared to those who didn't. But the mental benefits of exercise go further. Interestingly, those who exercise regularly actually have greater brain volume and areas of the brain associated with reasoning and executive function, and even other studies found a link between regular exercise and improved mood. Now you might be asking what form of exercise are they talking about? What form of exercise is best for brain House? Most of the time, these studies looked at the effects of aerobic exercise, like jogging, rolling or biking basically anything that makes the heart beat faster. The advantage of aerobic exercise is that the higher heartbeat increases blood flow to the brain. This blood delivers more oxygen, which is a good thing, since the brain is the biggest consumer of oxygen in the body. Not only that, but a robing exercise also reduces the risk of common lifestyle diseases that impact the brain, like high blood sugar and high blood pressure. To design your workout. And to end this lesson, I want to give you a few more tips that will help you train your brain along with your body , exercising in the morning before going to work, not only spikes brain activity and prepares you for mental stresses for the rest of the day , but also produces increased retention of new information and better reaction to complex situations. When looking to change up your workout, look for an activity that incorporates coordination along with cardiovascular exercise, such as a dance class. If you like crunching time at the gym alone up for circuit workouts, which both quickly spike your heart rate but also constantly redirect your attention.