Best Morning Routine For Weight Loss

How important is it to establish the best morning routine for weight loss?

You’re not gonna win your entire day by getting your morning habits right. But you can definitely lose it if you don’t start your day out properly.

Today, I’m going to give you the best morning routine for weight loss. 

Because the first 30 minutes of the morning sets the tone whether you’re moving towards your weight loss goals or away from it for the rest of the day.

The BEST Morning Routine For Weight Loss

Start Your Day With THIS.

Let’s start with the pre-requisite for the best morning routine for weight loss to work.

You need to do everything in your power, and I don’t care if you have to switch jobs, to get adequate and quality sleep every night.

This should be one of your top priorities. Sleep is more important than exercise and diet combined. 

Because not getting adequate and quality sleep moves every health metric in the wrong direction. 

Wake up, and go to bed for that matter, at the same time every day. 

It doesn’t matter if it’s the weekend. You wanna go to bed and wake up at the same time consistently to optimize your circadian clock. It’s one of the best things you can do for your body. Your twenty-something thousand genes depends on this natural circadian rhythm.

If you go to bed and sleep in on weekends, you’re basically giving your body something called social jet lag. It’s no different than flying from LA to New York where there’s a 3 hour time difference and your body has to adjust to 3 time zones.

Come Monday morning, you’re wondering why your body feels like hot garbage. 

What NOT to do first thing in the morning. 

70% of people check their phone within the first 5 minutes of waking up. You can be that the majority are most likely going on social media. Don’t be part of that statistic. I can’t think of a worse way of starting your day.

If you turn on the TV to watch the news? Same thing. You’re basically giving up control over your morning if you let social media or the news start bombarding you with mental junk food. 

Your first task is to drink a glass of water. 

I know that sounds obvious. But it’s important that you start your day off by drinking a glass of water because you just went all night without it.

Up to 60% of the the human body is made up of water. More importantly, the organs in charge of your entire fat metabolism is mostly made up of water. A lot of people operate their entire day on a mildly dehydrated state. 

Bonus points if you can do this. And it’s gonna be a little different for everyone depending on your dietary sodium intake. It also depends where you live, your activity level, and how much you sweat. 

You might benefit from putting some Himalayan pink salt to your water to replenish your electrolytes.

You can also add a tiny pinch of salt to your morning coffee instead of adding it to your water. 

A pinch of salt will actually help to enhance the flavour, but anything more than that might make the coffee undrinkable. Just be mindful.

Adding salt can be a great remedy if you do intermittent fasting which I talk a lot about on my channel. If you ever get headaches, that usually means you’re salt deficient or you’re over fasting. 

Because just like water, salt is essential to life. If you go back a little bit in time, the roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt. That’s where the word salary came from.

You would die if you didn’t have enough sodium in your body. Anybody who tells you that salt is bad for you is following some severely outdated and misguided information. You should give them a hug.

In fact, there’s a recent study that showed that the lower your sodium intake, the higher the risk for heart disease. 

The general rule is whatever mainstream media is pushing, do the opposite.

Side note. Don’t use cheap table salt or iodized salt. They’re highly processed and are very inflammatory. There’s a reason why they’re cheap.

Next, this is kind of optional but I highly recommend that you try it at the very least because the benefits could be life changing. 

Practice mindfulness.

Let’s talk about the woo. If I could turn back time, practicing mindfulness through meditation is right near the top as one of the things I wish I would’ve started a lot sooner. 

Listening to audiobooks is right up there as well. It’s had that big of an effect in my life.

If you’ve never meditated for a single minute in your life, it might take a little bit of getting used to. Which is fine. That’s why I used the word practice. It’s something you practice every day. 

I recommend using a guided meditation app like Insight Timer when you’re just starting out. Just do it for 3 or 5 minutes and go from there. I personally meditate for 10 minutes every morning without fail.

Now, you’re probably wondering. What’s the point of this? What does this have to do with weight loss? The answer is, everything. Weight loss is all in your head. Let me just share with you this awesome quote. 

Someone asked Buddha skeptically, “What have you gained through meditation?” The Buddha replied, nothing at all. However, let me tell you what I lost: Anger, Anxiety,  Depression, Insecurity, fear of old age, and death.

Imagine being able to operate your day-to-day life without the latter. Your life would change. Nothing would faze you.

Basically, meditation is one of the best ways to manage stress and take care of your mental health. And that’s crucial if you want to lose weight and live a healthy and happy life. 

It’s basically like free therapy. It gives you a chance to put yourself in a great mental space from which to start your day. Think of it as intermittent fasting for the brain.

It’s been practiced for centuries by different cultures all over the planet. If something has withstood the test of time, you know it’s good for you.

If you were to take just one thing away from this, this is probably it. But if you want more awesome stuff, keep watching.*

Start your digestive clock with a cup of coffee or tea.

If you’ve been following my YouTube channel, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of coffee. Talk about the simple joys of life. 

Drinking this xenobiotic substance also officially turns on your digestive clock which gives your body extra energy to function in the morning.

If you can’t drink your coffee black, you can put a tiny splash of heavy cream and it’s not the end of the world. You can also drink any herbal tea like green tea. 

Why is this beneficial? The amount of caffeine in two cups of coffee doubles ketone production. 

Ketones are a clean burning fuel produced by your liver by breaking down fat.

Why is that important? Well, when ketones go up, Ghrelin which is your hunger hormone, goes down. And CCK, a satiety hormone, goes up. 

Who doesn’t wanna feel less hungry? Being hungry sucks.

Plus, it’s delicious. It’s the exact same thing with drinking green tea. Green tea is actually full of something called Catechins which is a very powerful antioxidant. 

This is another thing that’s withstood the test of time. We’ve been drinking this stuff for centuries. It’s probably good for you.

The other thing that plays into this is drinking coffee and tea increase adherence when you’re doing intermittent fasting. 

Your success when it comes to achieving a weight loss transformation hinges on adherence. Can you stick to whatever you’re doing forever? 

Go for a quick walk and getting some morning sun exposure.

This is a two for one deal and they both promote optimal gene expression.

It kinda depends where you live but you want to set a goal to get around 20-30 minutes of sun exposure every day. The more skin you can expose, the better.

If you personally know me, this is why I walk around shirtless a lot.

20-30 minutes is the amount of daily sunlight that you’d need to get your daily dose of vitamin D. Assuming that you live in a relatively sunny city. 

If you get a little more, your body just banks it in the form of a nice tan. And you need sufficient vitamin D to keep your body functioning well.

Vitamin D helps keep your bones strong and could even help prevent some cancers. 

What is the best source of Vitamin D? The sun. That’s why you need to expose as much skin as possible. 

No, for the love of golden retriever puppies, the sun does not cause cancer. I mean obviously don’t bathe in the sun all day. 

Our circadian clock evolved with the sun. It’s been around for millions of years. There would be no life without the sun. It’s not bad for you.

I’ll do you one better. Vitamin D is actually made from cholesterol in the skin. 

That’s another outdated myth still floating around. A lot of people still think that cholesterol is bad for you. No. Cholesterol is essential to every cellular function in your body. You’d die without it. 

If it’s so bad for you, why does your body make its own cholesterol?

Did you know that over 50 million people are on cholesterol lowering medication? It also comes with a boat load of negative side effects. 

The crazy part is that a majority of people who suffer heart attacks have “low” cholesterol levels. Imagine that. If you’re really concerned about your metabolic health, you actually wanna focus on your fasting insulin.

The other issue with the fearing the sun is people lather sunscreen to protect themselves. 

Well, there’s been a recent recall from companies because their sunscreen products contained benzene which is carcinogenic. Cancer in a bottle.

If you really have to use sunscreen, use one that’s mineral based.

Morning sun exposure to your eyes also helps you regulate your circadian rhythm which is really important when it comes to regulating your sleep. Even if it’s overcast, it’s still enough to regulate your circadian rhythm.

Deficiency in vitamin D, which is really more of a hormone, can cause all sorts of problems. Including muscle weakness, pain, fatigue, and depression. 

This is why seasonal depression is real especially if you live far away from the equator. Like if you live in Canada. Like me. Fortunately, I live in Calgary, Alberta which is the sunniest city in Canada.

If where you live is lacking in the sun department, you can supplement with vitamin D3 pills. They’re relatively cheap. According to experts like Dr. Rhonda Patrick, you should take as much as 5000 IU per day.

Personally, going for a walk to get some morning sun while drinking coffee has now become one of my favourite activities. 

It’s also when I listen to audiobooks. 

Listening to audiobooks or even podcasts is optional to add to your routine. But I can’t emphasize enough how much it’s made a difference in my life. 

Let’s be real. Unless you’re an avid reader, the average person reads MAYBE a handful of books after college which is a scary thought. 

The most common excuse is for people is they don’t have time to read. I get it. It used to take me up to a month to finish reading a book. 

Since I switched to audiobooks, it takes me a week max to listen to a book. That’s a minimum of 52 books in a year. Imagine how much different your life would be if you even get to half of that number. It’s how I’m able to produce a new video every week.

Practice gratitude.

The combination of meditation and daily gratitude list is one of the best things you can do for your mental health. Again, it’s free. If you take care of your mental health, your physical health will follow. 

You don’t need to overcomplicate this practice if you’ve never done it before. 

Get yourself a little notebook and just write 5 things you’re grateful for. Pen to paper is the best way to go about this. 

Something magical happens to your brain if you physically write something instead of typing it on a screen. You can just freestyle this. There are no rules. 

You can be thankful for your morning cup of coffee. You can be thankful for waking up. If you have nothing to be thankful for, you can be thankful that you have nothing to be thankful for. 

Also, always write less than you feel like. That way, it doesn’t feel like a burden if you can’t come up with anything.

When you’re done, I want you to read and feel it. If you do that, it’s impossible not to feel good. That feeling sets you up for the rest of the day. You feel like you’re on top of the world already.

Let’s quickly address some do’s and don’ts starting with the most important meal of the day, breakfast.

Again, if you’ve been following my channel, you’ll most likely get the impression that I’m an anti-breakfast guy.

I’m not. I love breakfast food.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with eating breakfast. The problem is what’s been considered “normal” breakfast food by today’s standards.

A breakfast of bacon, eggs, and avocado for example is a great thing to have first thing in the morning. 

It’s got a nice blend of healthy fats and protein which is going to keep your blood sugar levels balanced. Which in turn will supply you with a steady state of energy until your next meal. 

Fats and protein also activate your satiety hormones helping you feel fuller longer.

The problem starts when people start eating cake for breakfast. What do I mean by that?

Pancakes for starters is just a flat cake. Same thing with waffles. Muffins are cupcakes minus the frosting. A donut is a cake with a hole in the middle. 

Breakfast cereal should really be called breakfast candy.

I’m also talking about any type of breakfast food made out of refined grains like oatmeal, bagels, croissant, toast, and the likes. It does’t matter if it’s white or whole wheat. Whole wheat goodness is a scam.

If those are your only options, then breakfast might be the most important meal of the day for you to skip. Just drink black coffee or herbal tea.

There is no science that shows that eating first thing in the morning is somehow beneficial to the human body. None. Especially if you start your day off with the garbage food I just mentioned.

Meal times are completely made up. If you don’t eat breakfast and just drink tea or black coffee, your body will simply tap into your stored energy aka fat stores to fuel itself. 

Next, do a fasted workout in the morning if it fits your schedule so you can take advantage or certain elevated hormones like cortisol and growth hormone. 

If you can’t workout in the morning, it’s not the end of the world. Your best athletic performance happens mid afternoon anyway.

Let’s talk about the water temperature when you take a shower.

Cold therapy has gained more popularity lately, thanks to Wim Hof, because it’s linked to a lot of health benefits and could even turbo charge your fat loss.

Wim Hof is nicknamed the ‘ice man’ and he holds 21 Guinness world records. He climbed Mt. Everest in shorts. 

What’s even more impressive is he led a group of 26 people to the summit of the world’s highest free standing mountain – Mount Kilimanjaro. Eleven of the team climbed the mountain dressed just in shorts and without tops – to arrive unhurt at the mountain’s peak, where the temperature is a brutal -20C or -4F.

He’s basically amassed a cult like following. He inspired me to do ice baths when I was in Mexico.

Scientists have found evidence that exposure to cold speeds up metabolism. It reduces inflammation, swelling, and sore muscles. 

It’s also linked to improved quality of sleep, more focus, and even to an improved immune response.

In terms of fat loss, cold therapy activates something called brown fat which is very dense in mitochondria. Mitochondria is where fat is combusted for energy. 

Babies actually have a lot of brown fat as a survival mechanism to keep themselves warm. It makes sense. They can’t really move much. They sleep a lot and they just make random movements when they’re awake.

So you actually have a type of fat in your body that burns fat. Imagine that? Cold therapy activates it. 

Even as little as 30 seconds of cold shower is enough to get you benefits. Yes, it sucks at first. Just breathe your way through it. You’ll get used to it eventually. It’s voluntary hardship which builds mental fortitude. 

Another alternative is to go outside a little under dressed when it’s chilly. Think of it as a free cryotherapy sessions. Yes, I’m one of those crazies that do it.

Cold exposure has kinda become this forgotten thing in our ultra convenient modern times. But our Paleolithic ancestors didn’t have water heaters or down jackets. 

My point is that the cold is your friend. A cold shower a day keeps the doctor away.

As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!

Need More Help?

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