For your convenience, here are parts 1–3 of this series on fighting the “ancestral mismatch” and the uphill battle against living in a toxic, modern, industrialized world:
- Are We Just Modern Zoo Animals? The Ancestral Mismatch (Part 1)
- Are We Just Modern Zoo Animals? The Ancestral Mismatch (Part 2)
- Are We Just Modern Zoo Animals? The Ancestral Mismatch (Part 3)
I’ll finish by giving you a sample of what an affordable, practical day would look like if you were to apply most of the principles you’ve discovered in this series.
The equipment and investment needs are minimal: all you need is a hardshell hyperbaric chamber, a full-body red light bed, and a stainless steel bucket for your morning organic coffee enemas.
Just kidding.
Here we go:
You wake, throw open the curtains for natural light exposure, and journal and/or pray for five to ten minutes. You drink a big glass of filtered water and use the bathroom. You do twenty minutes of stretching, breathing, and light calisthenics in the sunshine on your back patio or backyard (bonus points if you, like me, listen to something spiritually uplifting like the Daily Audio Bible during this time), then take a quick, cold shower. Breakfast is pastured eggs with bacon, sausage, or avocado; oatmeal with honey and walnuts; or a smoothie with bananas and peanut butter, preferably at least twelve hours after you’ve had dinner the evening before.
At work or school that day, you stay active. You walk everywhere you can, and for every 45 minutes of work or study, you stop for a handful of jumping jacks, push-ups, air squats, or some other light movement snack, often stepping outside in the fresh air to do so. You continue to drink plenty of pure, clean water, and your phone is in airplane mode unless you need it on.
Lunch is a whole heap of fresh greens or cooked vegetables, topped with extra virgin olive oil and leftover meat from dinner the night before (or a tin of sardines or anchovies if you have breath mints handy).
After work or afternoon school, you do a quick thirty-minute workout that hits your major muscle groups: pressing, pulling, squatting, hinging, lunging, and twisting and/or you hit the sauna and take another cold shower.
For dinner, you slide a tray of seasoned carrots and cauliflower into the oven, along with a herb-rubbed whole chicken that took five minutes to piece apart (yes, piecing apart a bird is a critical life skill, and here’s an easy roast chicken recipe from my wife) and if you’re feeling super adventurous, you throw in a yam or sweet potato with a few fork punctures in it.
You bake dinner for 45 minutes and voila—you’ve got a roast chicken dinner that would cost you thirty-five dollars at a restaurant. For dessert, you have a cup of yogurt, sprinkled with chunks of dark chocolate and frozen blueberries.
After dinner, you go for a ten to fifteen-minute walk and listen to an audiobook or podcast. In bed that night, you forgo the bright overhead fluorescent lighting and instead don an inexpensive Amazon-bought red light headlamp to read or study.
Your circadian rhythm is in sync, your belly is full, and your muscles are spent. You say your prayers and fall easily into deep sleep, prepared to start the next day afresh, no umbilical cord stem cell infusions required.
Yes, I know that was ultra-simple, and there’s plenty more a dedicated “biohacker” might do, but the sample I just gave you certainly wasn’t expensive. It included spiritual habits, movement, thermal stress, time in nature, awareness of air, light, water, and electricity, wholesome nutrition, and a few hormetic stressors like cold exposure, fasting, and herbs.
See, it’s not expensive or complicated to be healthy.
You can live just a bit more naturally, even in a modern era.
Leave your questions, comments, and feedback here. I read it all. And stay tuned in the next article for a bit of a switch-up, namely, how you can discover happiness and fulfillment in the pursuit of health.
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2 Responses
I like how the routine you described focuses on practical and affordable habits rather than expensive biohacking gadgets.
Just love your simple practical tips to keep healthy on the days you don’t have time money or energy to go full blown bio hacker . Appreciate you so much bengreenfield. I still use the tips you gave for exercises in a small hotel room when travelling with little time to spare for workouts!