Habits and Hustle - Episode 326: Health Hacks You Can Start Today

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Finding it hard to take care of your health when you’re constantly grinding? In this solo episode of Habits and Hustle, I share with you 7 easy health hacks you can start today and almost immediately reap the benefits from.  Oftentimes, we think it will cost us a lot of time, energy, and money to get healthy - but all you need is a few seconds of planning and things you already have at home! What we discuss: 01:19: How hard is it to adopt healthy habits? 01:58: Hack #1: Drink lukewarm lemon water in the morning 05:35: Hack #2: Workout in the morning 06:07: Hack #3: Use cold and hot therapy 07:10: Hack #4: Meditate daily 07:27: Hack #5: Weight-train at least 4x per week 08:41: Hack #6: Prepare healthy-food options 09:21: Hack #7: Get in a good laugh daily Thank you to our sponsor: Therasage: go to therasage.com and use code B-BOLD for 15% off Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements

Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor Therisage. Their tri-light panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go. And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places in my body where honestly I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps,

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head over to Therasage.com and use code BEBOLD for 15% off any of their products. Hello everybody. Welcome to another solo episode of Habits and Hustle. And I want to just give a quick shout out. I just got Jesse Itzler's The Running, what's it called? The Running Club, All Day Running Hat in the mail. He has a company called All day running and I, it's, I love the concept. He's amazing. I finally got my hat. I've been asking for this hat for, I don't know, over a year probably, but I

finally got it in the mail. So thanks, Jessie. I love it. And I'm going to be wearing it all the time. Just FYI. The colors, the colors look great on you by the way. Thank you. It's this and the Playboy sweatshirt.

I think I moved away from the Playboy sweatshirt for maybe a couple of weeks, but now it's about this hat. So thank you. I know it's super rich. I love like the aesthetic of the entire branding of All Day Running. It's amazing. Have you seen all the other stuff? Yeah, but it reminds me of that jacket you wear, which also matches the blanket that's

downstairs. You know that one? Yes. And the one that matches the jacket.'s downstairs. You know that one? Yes. And the one that matches the jacket. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. And it matches that exact color scheme. Yeah, I think that was done on purpose. I love it.

Yeah, smart, very smart. Yeah, I love it. Okay, so anyway, so thanks, Jessie. Next up, I wanna talk about healthy habits to kinda go in theme with my all-day running hat. I think that there are some habits that we can adopt that really don't take that much effort at all and doesn't really require really that much

that can really optimize your life like 10 fold. And I wanna go over them super quickly cause they're easy and they're important. So let's do it, okay? Amazing. Okay, this is it. Okay. Amazing. Okay. This is super simple, super, super quick. The first thing that I do every morning is I drink basically a 32 ounce glass of room

temperature water and I squeeze a lemon in it. Number one, I feel like it totally detoxes my body and it starts my day off right because I'm hydrating. I'm not someone who loves water. I actually hate water. So I have to be a little bit more premeditated of drinking it during the day so I actually drink enough. And so that way I'm then getting in a huge amount, like two or three glasses at a time right in the morning. So I'm starting off my day right with that lemon. And that's how I take my supplements. So I take all of my supplements with that big glass of water that is, like I said, 32 ounces, I think.

I'm gonna show you the size. Oh, nice. This is it. This is the size of the glass. And so this is probably, like I said, was this 32 ounces? No. Oh, it could be. I don't know. Yeah, cause eight ounces is probably like where said, was this 32 ounces? No. Oh, it could be.

I don't know. Yeah, cause eight ounces is probably like where your lower thumb is right now. Yeah, I would say it. Definitely more than 16. Okay. Maybe 20. It's about 20, whatever.

It's a big glass. It's a big glass. It's a big glass of water, okay? And I take my supplements. I take Omega-3s, I've been taking that forever. I take True Niagen, which is the NAD precursor. You take it and it basically helps your body produce NAD. I've been taking Trunijagen for, again, like six years also.

I take an antioxidant called NAC. That's really good. And what else do I take? And then I kind of, I sometimes take a probiotic. Do you do magnesium? Sometimes at night, but that's not one of my go-tos. I don't like to take so many supplements. I just take, you know, I have, I take a certain amount with the water and then I make sure that I walk multiple times a day

versus just taking one long walk. I think it's really important for you to move your body multiple times a day versus, you know, let's say moving for one big chunk of time and then being sedentary the rest of the time, it's good to kind of move around and like get your blood circulating multiple times. So I'd rather do three 10 minute walks than like one 30 minute walk. Can I say a game changer for me has been my Fitbit. I usually don't like to keep

these on because I'm so bad at keeping watches on my hand. I always end up taking them off and never put them on. But I've been pretty diligent about it the last few weeks. And it is it's been great because you gamify your steps and I love doing that. And I do like doing that. We're all split everything up. So I'll just make sure I'm walking. And it reminds me it's like stop being lazy. Get up. It's been an hour. 100% I use where I like my Apple watch. And I think that the one good thing about a lot of these track a lot of these trackers can be kind of like they overcompensate or overestimate what you're doing. Yeah. But what it does is it keeps you it

keeps you alert to the fact that oh, yeah, I should be getting up, right? I am walking. I think of all the trackers. The one thing that is pretty good on all of them is the steps. The steps, yeah. I never listen to the steps. The calories are, they overestimate calories so much. And there's no way you're burning that. But I do love the step counter.

Steps counting has been around for a long time. I trust those. I use it for the step counter. And so steps are really important. I try to get, like everybody, I know the number, by the way, 10,000 steps is very arbitrary. If you can get 8,000, that's great too. But I like to get, like everybody, I know that the number, by the way, 10,000 steps is very arbitrary. If you can get 8,000, that's great too. But I like to go for 10.

If I see myself getting to 12 or whatever else, I'm like so excited. I got 17 the other day. That's amazing. That is amazing. I want to work, I like to work out first thing after, like, so I drink my water, I tend to make my kids their breakfast and their lunch. And then I want to work out right after that. And the reason why is I want to start my day off on the right foot, I want to be able to sweat. I think the sweat activates my brain to work better for the rest for the rest of the day, it gives me way more productivity. And my cognitively, I'm way more on top of it. So

that's another big one. The other thing I wanted to say a couple other ones I do love the sauna. I love the sauna If you don't have a sauna, you can get a sauna blanket You can get all sorts of different ways you can you can well, you can you can go use a sauna There's tons of places now where you can use a sauna. What I love about it is Again, I love the whole idea of like sweating out your toxins. I think it's really good. I like doing the hot cold, you know, so I do have a cold plunge now, which I'm very happy about. For those of you

who don't have a cold plunge, you can take a three minute cold shower. It's just it's very effective. And it gives you that same type of thing, right? The cold and hot therapy is super, super good for recovery, inflammation, circulation. The cold is great for also, I think it's called like the brown fat that you have in your body. It's great. Some other ones, easy ones that you can do is I fall asleep to meditation music. I think I'm not a meditator, as most of you probably know, because I talk about that. But something that calms me and soothes me

is meditation music. And falling asleep in that way is really a big one. Meditation music, do you ever fall asleep to like spa music? Is that the same thing? Similar. Similar? Yeah, similar for sure. I love spa music.

I do too. I weight train at least four times a week. Super important, especially as you get older. The best way to increase muscle mass on your body, ladies, please listen to this, is to resistant train. Very, very, very important. And you are not going to get bulky. Trust me.

You're not going to get. I've been trying for five years. It's exactly- I'm nowhere near bulk, it's so annoying. It's very, very difficult. And also it's a great way to increase your testosterone in your body, right? Most natural, effective way to do it is to weight train.

So especially after the age of 40, I cannot tell people how important this is to be weight training a minimum of three times a week for 20 minutes at a time. You don't have to be doing hardcore, hard, hard weights, but get into the practice of resistant training. There is no other fitness modality that will give you the same bang for your buck. I promise you. A couple other ones that are really important that kind of keep me on point is prepping and having healthy food options available to you. Or else that will be one of your biggest demise is because when you're hungry and you're

starving and there's nothing around, you'll you'll tend to grab whatever is available, chips, chocolate, whatever. So having having some healthy options with you or around you is a game changer. Some of these are pretty obvious, but sometimes the most obvious things need to be repeated. I'm super excited to share my latest health obsession with you guys. It's called metabolic daily by pendulum. Metabolic daily is a powerful multi-strain probiotic that really improves your metabolism,

reduces your sugar cravings, breaks down carbs more efficiently and sustains your energy. I've been taking metabolic daily for a few months and it's unbelievable the results I've seen. Not only do I never struggle with my cravings, but I'm seeing a huge improvement in my body composition from breaking down carbs more effectively. I love Penelon because they are really disrupting the probiotic market with clinically studied strains that aren't available anywhere else.

They were founded by PhD scientists and are backed by the Mayo Clinic and Halle Berry, who recently became their chief communications officer because of the results that she's seen. They're the only company with, I think I'm pronouncing this correctly, it's called acromansia, a next-generation strain that's called the keystone strain for gut health. You can get it as a single strain or in metabolic daily.

Plus you guys can take 20% off your first month of any Pendulum product membership with this code, GENCOIN. So go now to PendulumLife.com and use my code at checkout. Trust me, you will feel incredible. Another thing I love is, and I call this a healthy habit, is listening to comedy, like watching some stand-up. I love that because laughing is so important for your health and for your happiness.

And it like, it increases my serotonin, it like gets my endorphin. I love it. It like really makes me happy. That's a great dopamine hit that doesn't require you being on, you know, social media. I mean, you can, I guess, look at it on a social media, but the whole concept is like laughing it, like it automatically, who doesn't like to laugh?

It's so good for your overall health. So I try to listen to comedy daily. If the comedy is good enough to, it'll be an ab workout. If you're laughing that hard. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. And, and these are things that are like simple to a lot of these things are very

simple ways to kind of just be overall more healthy and have actually adopt some self care into that, right? Like just things like that. So walking multiple times a day, drinking a glass of water, first thing in the morning, and if you're not someone who is a water drinker, hydration is so important. So then plan it out. You know, like another trick I used to do until I had these, these other someone who is a water drinker, hydration is so important, so then plan it out. You know, like another trick I used to do

until I had these other ways I would drink my water was I'd put a bunch of elastic bands around my cup or my bottle, and at the end of the day, all those elastic bands had to be taken off. And if they weren't, that would tell me, like it would trigger my brain. OK, I take off the elastic band. I've got to drink another glass of water.

And so I wasn't allowed to go to sleep until all 10 elastic bands were off, because hydration is so important. People mistake hunger when they're actually thirsty, and they end up eating more because of that. It's also great for your skin, for your bones. It's great for everything. So that's another thing.

Would you put the elastic bands on in different spots so you'd have to drink to that level? Or they were just all on there and it would just remind you like you had to just keep taking like a big few sips. It would remind me that not just a few sips because I don't do it that way. I did it for like, OK, once I take off a band, I had to drink eight ounces of water.

Oh, got it. Because that way that's how I'm going to get my daily, my, my amount, my quantity in plus, plus more. So each band represented an eight ounce glass of water that I would just like drink up. That's very smart. I like that. And I just actually stopped doing that maybe a couple years ago, because I've put things in place. Like, of course I drink my water in the morning and then when I work out, I drink a 1.5 liter bottle. So I know I'm getting that in.

And then afterwards, like, so I have all of these benchmarks and places in my life where then it eliminates my, it eliminates the ability for me to kind of fail. Yeah, really. And so basically that was basically the weight training, the lemon in the water, the elastic bands, if you're not hydrating enough, that's a great one. Falling asleep to meditation music, listening to comedy for 10 minutes a day to make you laugh,

walking multiple times a day, the weight training, super important, especially if you're over 40. Is there anything else that you wanna add? Oh, the sauna, sweating first thing in the morning to be really more productive during the day doing the hot cold therapy so you can go into a sauna and then use a cold shower or you can go to a gym and use their sauna or you can get a sauna blanket that also really is

effective but I love the hot cold therapies really good. I do as well. I would say my one for water is buying a reusable water bottle. It's been a game changer for me because there's so many times when you're out and you're thirsty and all you want is some water and that would have been a great opportunity for you to get some water in and hydrate yourself but you're out and you just don't really want to go buy a bottle or maybe it's just inconvenient for you. So I love having a water bottle always on hand. And I think a reusable one is just better. Once you get a reusable water bottle, you start tasting the plastic of plastic water bottles

and you're just like, ugh, disgusting. It starts hitting you in a way that, I mean, I really don't like drinking out of plastic water bottles anymore. I can really feel it. So yeah, buy a reusable one, always have it on you. It's the best. Oh, the one I just forgot also, by the way was having

healthy options around you. So you're not grabbing grab like junk around you. So, you know, take a few minutes and either meal prep a little bit. So you have like healthy proteins around you or you're taking them with you as a snack. It could be I'm not a big to be honest with you. I'm very conscientious of what kind of nuts I eat because people tend to overeat nuts. Almonds will make you break out, you know, only some people not most like you may have a problem with almonds.

No almonds in general are really big acne causer. It's just not discussed very much, but they can. Okay, I'm talking more, but maybe you're probably right. I don't know about that. But I would say that what I think what happens is people don't know what a real portion is of nuts. And they take a handful and a handful people say they'll take a handful of nuts when you're hungry is usually four or five portions which is in your whole daily intake of your fats and your calories

so what a real portion of nuts are is usually like six nuts which is not at all filling I mean who eats six nuts unless you're like so disciplined, which I mean, that's really hard to do. So I love eating an apple a day. That's what I do. I'm a big apple person because apples are super fiber filled and satiating. I'll eat like two apples a day, just because it's so it gives you so much fiber and there's a lot of water. The water content's really high. So I try to eat a lot of foods that have a high water content for the same reason. Two apples. You must never go to the doctor. Do you like carrots? I love carrots are one of my favorite goatee snacks. I'll just chop them up at

the beginning of the week. I don't like baby carrots. I think they have too much water in them. I don't like baby carrots either. But I like regular carrots and I will peel and slice them and have them in like a container for the whole week. I can finish like a bunch of carrots in one sitting. I love carrots. I love carrots too. I love jicama. Jicama is my favorite snack too. Oh, jicama is a really good one too. Jicama is amazing. I also love cucumbers, but jicama is like my favorite. Do you kohlrabi? You'd like kohlrabi. Kohlrabi is delicious. I've never had that. You slice it really thin. You put like a little olive oil and salt and pepper. It's like such a good snack. Oh, I never knew that one.

I also love fennel. Oh, yeah. I have a thing with fennel. I'm not crazy about it. I also like radishes. But my family loves fennel. Really? Yeah.

I also love radishes. But this is what I'm saying. These are ways you can save yourself a ton of calories and a ton of like heartache, right? Because you may not wanna, you may be like, you may like a ton of like heartache, right? Because you may not want to, you may be like, you may like just kind of like screw up your entire nutrition or your health by just like taking,

basically snacking on the wrong food, not even intentionally, just because there was nothing else around, right? So be prepared, be prepared. Yeah, that's it. That was great, thanks. Join the Facebook group. Follow Jen everywhere. Let me know guys also if there is a ha like a healthy hack,

healthy habit that's really helped, you know, be a game changer for you and help you optimize your overall health. Let me know. Thanks. Music