The Living Experiment: Rethink Your Choices. Reclaim Your Life.

On today’s episode of The Living Experiment, we’re talking about seasons: the natural fluctuations your body goes through during the cycles of winter, spring, summer, and fall, and the nutrition, fitness and life-rhythm strategies you can use to stay healthier through all of them. Dallas shares his simple but powerful, science-based model for eating, moving and sleeping in accordance with the seasons.I offer up some insights about the value of observing nature’s ebb-and-flow patterns—rather than being driven by the non-stop madness of modern-day mass culture. Together we explore the ancient wisdom our human bodies still carry about patterns of dark and light, warm and cold, exertion and recovery. And of course, we wrap up with some seasonally appropriate experiments you can run in your own life.  

Episode Highlights:

• How our human rhythms got out of sync with nature: the disorienting influence of electric lights, artificial temperature controls, jet travel, standardized daily schedules, and more (2:45)
• How the agricultural and industrial revolutions radically de-seasonalized our diet, activity, sleep and other lifestyle patterns (5:00)
• The value of embracing a nature-designed, seasonal model of health rather than a standardized, modern-era prescription (8:00)
• The biological (hormonal, neurological, metabolic, immune) effects of circadian and seasonal rhythm disruption (12:00)
• Strategies for getting back in touch with more seasonally appropriate rhythms (15:15)
• Why eating locally and seasonally is a great place to start, and why seasonal oscillations (between lighter, plant-based, higher-carb diets and heavier, meat-and-fat rich diets) can make sense (16:45)
• Why all this applies to you (at least somewhat) even if you live in a very consistent climate (21:00)
• The difference between short-term "corrective" phased eating interventions and a more sustainably healthy seasonal approach, especially for the microbiome (24:00)
• Following our intuitive appetites (rather than diet dogma) toward more seasonally appealing eating choices, and why summer is a fine time to eat fruit (27:20)
• Beyond diet, changing your exercise approach (power, strength, speed, endurance, etc.) and sleep cycles with the seasons (29:40)
• Moving beyond cultural programming and habitual repetition toward natural body wisdom (31:30)
• Observing the yin and yang energies of winter and summer, and the transitional subtleties of spring and fall (33:00)
• Dallas walks us through how he approaches seasonal eating, and why it's actually pretty easy (36:30)
• The importance of giving yourself permission to listen to and trust your own body (38:50)
• Timing your fruit intake — and why permanently cutting out entire food groups is rarely necessary (40:15)
• A recap of the logic of the Seasonal Model (45:35)
• Recommended experiments for the week (47:25)

Weekly Experiments 

Dallas suggests: Take a look at how well your current food/activity/sleep programs are coordinated.  Seek to correct any observed imbalances.

• Assess your diet, exercise routine, and sleep schedule. Do they complement each other and the current season?
• Brainstorm how you can better align these different factors for better results.

Pilar suggests: Look at the season that's coming into view and consider: What is one single, relatively simple thing I could do to accommodate this shift of season?

• Trust your first instinct in deciding which specific change (an adjustment in food, activity or sleep) would be most impactful, appealing and doable for you.
• Don’t stress about integrating a bunch of seasonal changes all at once. Make it gradual. Keep it easy.

Share the Love! 

Each week we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.

Resources

• Check out Dallas's Whole9 Seasonal Model of Health(infographic).
• Get a year's worth of seasonally-appropriate nutrition, fitness and lifestyle suggestions in "The Fitness Almanac" (featured article from Experience Life magazine)
• Subscribe to our newsletter (so you can stay up to date with us and future episodes).
• Sponsor link: Check out Brian Johnson’s “Habits 101” Master Class for FREE.

In this episode of The Living Experiment, we talk about mornings - the challenges they present for many, and some smart strategies for redesigning them in ways that work better for you. Pilar shares the central elements of her flexible, minimalist morning practice, and Dallas shares his mindful coffee-making approach. We explain the underappreciated power of your first waking moments, and offer a fleet of suggestions for creating healthier, more rewarding mornings - without taking on a bunch of new, time-consuming commitments. Finally, we serve up some practical experiments to help you consciously reclaim your mornings so you can more successfully start each day on your own terms.

Episode Highlights

• The value of creating a morning practice in a way that develops self-efficacy and gets your day off to a positive start (3:00)
• How exposing yourself to your smartphone (or any mass media) first thing in the morning stresses you out, makes you vulnerable to unhealthy impulses, and robs you of your best ideas (5:25)
• Pilar's low-key morning routine, and the value of rightsizing your daily commitment (9:05)
• How Dallas uses a conscious coffee-making ritual to build some reflective centering time into his days (10:45)
• The importance of savoring and noticing your practice experience — vs. "just doing it." (12:00)
• How taking control of your morning sets up a successful day (19:10)
• Think you are too busy for a morning practice? (23:23)
• Dealing with barriers to establishing your morning ritual (26:15)
• Good reasons to make your bed every morning (29:50)
• Dallas's morning routine (33:40)
• Feeling resistance, and doing it anyway — plus, the value of noticing how you are NOT doing it (37:00)
• Claiming "you time" as a form of self-respect and self-preservation (38:45)
• The art of moving purposefully into a restful state (39:50)
• Permission to do it your way (44:30)
• This week's experiments (47:20)

Weekly Experiments

Dallas suggests: Take a minute in the morning to mindfully make your bed.

• Commit to making your bed every morning in a slow, patient, mindful way.
• Take three deep breaths as a pause before the rest of your day.

Pilar suggests: Try adopting a 1- to 3-minute practice every day for a week.

• Create a checklist to track your progress throughout the week.
• Record the barriers you face when trying to complete your practice.

Share the Love!

Each week, we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.

Resources

• Read more about Pilar's morning mini-practice.
• Subscribe to our newsletter (so you can stay up to date with us and future episodes).
• Sponsor link: Check out Brian Johnson's "Habits 101" Master Class for FREE.

In this episode of The Living Experiment, we talk about mornings - the challenges they present for many, and some smart strategies for redesigning them in ways that work better for you. Pilar shares the central elements of her flexible, minimalist morning practice, and Dallas shares his mindful coffee-making approach. We explain the underappreciated power of your first waking moments, and offer a fleet of suggestions for creating healthier, more rewarding mornings - without taking on a bunch of new, time-consuming commitments. Finally, we serve up some practical experiments to help you consciously reclaim your mornings so you can more successfully start each day on your own terms.

Episode Highlights

• The value of creating a morning practice in a way that develops self-efficacy and gets your day off to a positive start (3:00)
• How exposing yourself to your smartphone (or any mass media) first thing in the morning stresses you out, makes you vulnerable to unhealthy impulses, and robs you of your best ideas (5:25)
• Pilar's low-key morning routine, and the value of rightsizing your daily commitment (9:05)
• How Dallas uses a conscious coffee-making ritual to build some reflective centering time into his days (10:45)
• The importance of savoring and noticing your practice experience — vs. "just doing it." (12:00)
• How taking control of your morning sets up a successful day (19:10)
• Think you are too busy for a morning practice? (23:23)
• Dealing with barriers to establishing your morning ritual (26:15)
• Good reasons to make your bed every morning (29:50)
• Dallas's morning routine (33:40)
• Feeling resistance, and doing it anyway — plus, the value of noticing how you are NOT doing it (37:00)
• Claiming "you time" as a form of self-respect and self-preservation (38:45)
• The art of moving purposefully into a restful state (39:50)
• Permission to do it your way (44:30)
• This week's experiments (47:20)

Weekly Experiments

Dallas suggests: Take a minute in the morning to mindfully make your bed.

• Commit to making your bed every morning in a slow, patient, mindful way.
• Take three deep breaths as a pause before the rest of your day.

Pilar suggests: Try adopting a 1- to 3-minute practice every day for a week.

• Create a checklist to track your progress throughout the week.
• Record the barriers you face when trying to complete your practice.

Share the Love! 

Each week, we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment  on Facebook,  Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there. 

Resources

• Read more about Pilar's morning mini-practice.
• Subscribe to our newsletter (so you can stay up to date with us and future episodes).
• Sponsor link: Check out Brian Johnson’s “Habits 101” Master Class for FREE.

This week on The Living Experiment, we talk about Lonely — the experience and stigma of that feeling, and the negative impacts it has on our well-being. We explore some of the reasons more of us are feeling lonely these days, and how we can get out of the vicious cycles that keep us more isolated than we'd like. We also suggest some experiments that help you create more time, space and energy for social connections that support your own health and happiness.

Episode Highlights

• What is loneliness? Why do we get lonely? Dallas and Pilar share their thoughts (1:30)
• How loneliness affects our lives and overall health (6:35)
• Skin hunger (10:55)
• Using television as a social crutch (13:30)
• Recognizing loneliness and social withdrawal as a societal issue (15:00)
• Untangling the knot of loneliness (20:25)
• Social feeds as digital junk food — calories but no nutrients (24:30)
• Why face-to-face contact matters (35:50)
• Building the skills of assessing and alleviating your own loneliness (39:50)
• Experiments for the week (50:30)

Dallas suggests: Make your phone invisible in your living space.

• Keep phones out of sight and silenced in the communal areas of your living space (living room, dining room, kitchen).
• Try using an app that tracks your phone usage to become more aware of how often you're looking at the screen.

Pilar suggests: Examine your weekly schedule. Where are there windows of opportunities for real human interaction?

• Take a look at one week of your schedule and find the opportunities to have face-to-face connections with friends and family. Work events do not count for this experiment!
• Find 15 minutes a few times a week to make yourself available to connect with strangers, like by sitting in a coffee shop without a cell phone or computer.

Share the Love!

Each week, we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.

Resources

• Read about Dallas's cool new More Social Less Media program and his article on how to "Sit With Your Loneliness".
• Try using an app like Moment to track your cell phone usage throughout the day.
• Check out Dan Buettner's research on the Blue Zones, the places on earth where people live the longest.
• Subscribe to our newsletter (so you can stay up to date with us and future episodes).
• Sponsor link: Check out Brian Johnson's "Habits 101" Master Class for FREE.

This week on The Living Experiment, we talk about Lonely — the experience and stigma of that feeling, and the negative impacts it has on our well-being. We explore some of the reasons more of us are feeling lonely these days, and how we can get out of the vicious cycles that keep us more isolated than we’d like. We also suggest some experiments that help you create more time, space and energy for social connections that support your own health and happiness.

Episode Highlights

• What is loneliness? Why do we get lonely? Dallas and Pilar share their thoughts (1:30)
• How loneliness affects our lives and overall health (6:35)
• Skin hunger (10:55)
• Using television as a social crutch (13:30)
• Recognizing loneliness and social withdrawal as a societal issue (15:00)
• Untangling the knot of loneliness (20:25)
• Social feeds as digital junk food — calories but no nutrients (24:30)
• Why face-to-face contact matters (35:50)
• Building the skills of assessing and alleviating your own loneliness (39:50)
• Experiments for the week (50:30)

Dallas suggests: Make your phone invisible in your living space.

• Keep phones out of sight and silenced in the communal areas of your living space (living room, dining room, kitchen).
• Try using an app that tracks your phone usage to become more aware of how often you’re looking at the screen.

Pilar suggests: Examine your weekly schedule. Where are there windows of opportunities for real human interaction?

• Take a look at one week of your schedule and find the opportunities to have face-to-face connections with friends and family. Work events do not count for this experiment!
• Find 15 minutes a few times a week to make yourself available to connect with strangers, like by sitting in a coffee shop without a cell phone or computer.

Share the Love! 

Each week, we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment  on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and share your stories with us there. 

Resources 

• Read about Dallas’s cool new More Social Less Media program and his article on how to "Sit With Your Loneliness".
• Try using an app like Moment to track your cell phone usage throughout the day. 
• Check out Dan Buettner’s research on the Blue Zones, the places on earth where people live the longest. 
• Subscribe to our newsletter (so you can stay up to date with us and future episodes).
• Sponsor link: Check out Brian Johnson’s “Habits 101” Master Class for FREE.

What's the difference between "Healthy" and "Hot"? We share what those descriptors mean to us, and how our definitions have evolved over time. We address the problem of hyper-perfected ideals in the media, the downsides of chasing aesthetics and metrics that don't actually result in health, and we share some real-life experiments that can help you shift your own body-image ideals in a healthier, happier direction.

Episode Highlights

• Looking better vs. feeling better: Pursuing health (not just the appearance of it) for wise reasons (02:22)
• Redefining "health" both mentally and emotionally (09:45)
• What do we mean when we call someone "hot" and what's that all about? (12:45)
• Expressions of health as a signifier of potential-mate value, plus the evolutionary biology phenomenon of "faked fitness" (24:30)
• Choosing good role models for health (36:45)
• Reframing and refocusing your goals for health and fitness (40:00)
• Experiments for the week (47:00)

Share the Love!

Each week, we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.

Resources

• Read Pilar's related article, "Health: The New Sex Symbol" (from Experience Life magazine)
• Visit The Living Experiment site to watch our backgrounder video and subscribe to our newsletter (so you can stay up to date with us and future episodes).
• Sponsor link: Check out Brian Johnson's "Habits 101" Master Class for FREE at http://www.livingexperiment.com/habits.

What's the difference between “Healthy” and “Hot”? We share what those descriptors mean to us, and how our definitions have evolved over time. We address the problem of hyper-perfected ideals in the media, the downsides of chasing aesthetics and metrics that don’t actually result in health, and we share some real-life experiments that can help you shift your own body-image ideals in a healthier, happier direction. 

Episode Highlights

• Looking better vs. feeling better: Pursuing health (not just the appearance of it) for wise reasons (02:22)
• Redefining “health” both mentally and emotionally (09:45)
• What do we mean when we call someone “hot” and what’s that all about? (12:45)
• Expressions of health as a signifier of potential-mate value, plus the evolutionary biology phenomenon of “faked fitness” (24:30)
• Choosing good role models for health (36:45)
• Reframing and refocusing your goals for health and fitness (40:00)
• Experiments for the week (47:00)

Share the Love! 

Each week, we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment  on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and share your stories with us there. 

Resources 

• Read Pilar’s related article, “Health: The New Sex Symbol” (from Experience Life magazine) 
• Visit The Living Experiment site to watch our backgrounder video and subscribe to our newsletter (so you can stay up to date with us and future episodes). 
• Sponsor link: Check out Brian Johnson’s “Habits 101” Master Class for FREE at http://www.livingexperiment.com/habits. 

Can you live a healthy life in an unhealthy world? Yes, you can. But right now, more than 97 percent of U.S. adults aren't managing it. So if you are one of the few brave souls who are currently beating the statistics, or intent on beating them, that makes you a freak of sorts—in a good way. We explore what it means to live outside the prevailing, unhealthy norms, and what it takes. We also share a little of our own "freak" stories

Episode Highlights:

• What The Living Experiment is all about and what we hope you'll get out of it (3:00)
• Facts and Figures: Some disturbing statistics about the current state of U.S. health norms (7:15)
• Reclaiming the word "freak" and choosing empowered difference in a context of unhappy, unhealthy sameness (12:15)
• Getting to know Dallas and Pilar: Their childhood origin stories and how they got to where they are now (15:50)
• Setting yourself up for success (39:20)
• Experiments for the week (45:20)

This Week's Experiments:Dallas suggests: The more stressed we are, the more convinced we are that there's too much to do and never enough time. Can we disrupt the flow?

• Every time you go to the bathroom, take two deep breaths
• Inhale for four beats, hold for one beat, and then exhale. Repeat this twice
• Turn the notifications off on your phone. Put it away and silence it when in the company of other people.

Pilar suggests: Start seeing the madness. Notice the crazy, manipulative stuff you're bombarded with on a daily basis, and begin questioning it.

• Be on the lookout for how aggressively (or subtly) unhealthy products and mindsets are marketed to you everywhere you go.
• Take pictures of disturbing or undermining messages on signage and billboards, or tear bad/silly/absurd advertisements out of magazines as a way of raising your media awareness.

Share the Love!

Each week we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.

Resources:

• For statistical details on the sorry state of U.S. health habits, read the study Pilar referenced, as reported in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings
• Visit The Living Experiment to watch our background video and subscribe to our newsletter (so you can stay up to date with us and future episodes).
• Sponsor link: Check out Brian Johnson's " Habits 101" Master Class for FREE at http://livingexperiment.com/habits

Can you live a healthy life in an unhealthy world? Yes, you can. But right now, more than 97 percent of U.S. adults aren’t managing it. So if you are one of the few brave souls who are currently beating the statistics, or intent on beating them, that makes you a freak of sorts—in a good way.  We explore what it means to live outside the prevailing, unhealthy norms, and what it takes. We also share a little of our own “freak” stories

Episode Highlights:

• What The Living Experiment is all about and what we hope you’ll get out of it (3:00)
• Facts and Figures: Some disturbing statistics about the current state of U.S. health norms (7:15)
• Reclaiming the word “freak” and choosing empowered difference in a context of unhappy, unhealthy sameness (12:15)
• Getting to know Dallas and Pilar: Their childhood origin stories and how they got to where they are now (15:50)
• Setting yourself up for success (39:20)
• Experiments for the week (45:20)

This Week's Experiments:

Dallas suggests: The more stressed we are, the more convinced we are that there’s too much to do and never enough time. Can we disrupt the flow?

• Every time you go to the bathroom, take two deep breaths
• Inhale for four beats, hold for one beat, and then exhale. Repeat this twice
• Turn the notifications off on your phone. Put it away and silence it when in the company of other people.

Pilar suggests: Start seeing the madness. Notice the crazy, manipulative stuff you're bombarded with on a daily basis, and begin questioning it.

• Be on the lookout for how aggressively (or subtly) unhealthy products and mindsets are marketed to you everywhere you go.
• Take pictures of disturbing or undermining messages on signage and billboards, or tear bad/silly/absurd advertisements out of magazines as a way of raising your media awareness.

Share the Love!

Each week we offer you a few life-shifting experiments to try on your own. We'd love to hear how they turn out, and what insights they provoke! Connect with The Living Experiment on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and share your stories with us there.

Resources:

• For statistical details on the sorry state of U.S. health habits, read the study Pilar referenced, as reported in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings
• Visit The Living Experiment to watch our background video and subscribe to our newsletter (so you can stay up to date with us and future episodes).
• Sponsor link: Check out Brian Johnson’s “ Habits 101”  Master Class for FREE at http://livingexperiment.com/habits