Sleep, Eat, and Move to a 105 Year Old Life

Jason Yun, a successful online trainer and cellular coach shared his insight about what it takes to live a lifestyle that makes my fitness goal possible: live until 105 years old.

He told me the first rule to living a healthy lifestyle is having the proper mindset and belief that you can do it. Everyone has different past experiences with health and fitness that prevent them to making changes today.

For me, I was extremely obese as a child. My poor eating habits and lack of self confidence affected me many years until I made the decision to turn my life around. Read the whole story in Living a Wealthy Life

Jason became infatuated with fitness after watching Rock Balboa and Pumping Iron with Arnold Schwarzennager, Jason went from 167 lbs to 222 lbs in a 6 month period (drug free). Jason’s past experience is not only uncommon but inspiring.

We had a discussion about how to avoid yoyo dieting, the 5 pillars of health to a 105 year old lifestyle, the problems with traditional cardio, and much more.

What are some common mindsets that limit people from getting the results that they want? What are practical ways to get over these mindsets?

"People who want to lose weight cut their calories significantly. They do not understand that you have to eat in order to lose weight. For example, if you have a low calorie diet eating 1,200 calories a day and you are working out hard through strength training, interval training then 1,200 calories will simply not be enough and your body will go into starvation mode. This means that body will try to store the food as fat even if it is healthy food.

Your body needs to feel that is receiving plenty of calories to sustain the processes within the body. Calories is not just a number that makes the scale go down, up, or stay the same. Calories feed your organs, brain, heart, kidneys, nails, hair, and all chemical processes throughout the body. Most of the time people cut calories too severely. This will eventually wear on them. They will lose weight at the beginning and then they will plateau they will get frustrated eat more and the weight will come back so that’s the typical form of yo yo dieting."

Does it matter where the calories come from if you stay under a certain number?

"Yes. Typically more healthy fats that we consume will allow us to have a more controlled metabolism. This will control our weight. Fat is #1, then vegetables, then protein, and then carbs. However, most of your carbohydrates should come from vegetables."

Should we focus on calories to lose weight or is it more than that? 

"First find out your base metabolic rate (BMR) with activity. You never want to eat under your BMR. This is the amount of calories you will burn throughout the day if you just sit in your bed all day. If you stay under that number for too long then it will slow the metabolism and go into starvation. Thats when bad things happen like inflammation, sickness, and disease.

I suggest logging everything you eat, examine current sleep schedule, current stress levels, current medications, supplements, and past history when it comes to weight and fitness. Before you make drastic changes, I focus on sleep, stress, and water first. In terms of nutrition, I want to make sure my clients are getting enough calories to ensure a strong metabolism."

What are the most important habits that anyone can implement today regardless of their fitness or health level? What’s the progression of habits?

"Typically trainers say it’s 80% nutrition and 20% fitness. I say there are three more: sleep stress, and rest/recovery. Majority of people are not getting enough sleep or wake up tired. They usually need something to wake up like caffeine, energy shots, energy drinks, you name it. 

There are many things that disrupt our sleep pattern such as fluorescent lights (like street lights), TV as it emits blue light and tricks the body that it’s morning. For example, if we watch TV at 7:00 pm and are exposed to blue light it will trick the body that it is 2:00 pm.

Being exposed to this light will raise our cortisol which is our stress hormone. Early in the morning our cortisol levels are supposed to raise and decrease during the day. Melatonin levels are supposed to raise during the night and this helps us go to sleep and get into REM sleep.

This is important. We can sleep 10-12 hours without getting into REM sleep and that is not doing us any good. We are just spinning the wheels. 

Switch out white/blue fluorescent lights with orange fluorescent lights in your house. Get blue blocker glasses which will allow you to be on your computer, phone, tablet, and watch TV before bed without disrupting your sleep pattern. REM is important so you can recover. It’s not about the hours of sleep, it’s about the quality of sleep.

Sleep is the foundation. If you don’t sleep well, your nutrition will suffer and crave unhealthy foods. If you don’t sleep well, your workouts will suffer. If you train hard but fail to sleep well then you will not recover as well if you had sleep. Sleep, stress, rest, nutrition, and fitness are all interrelated but sleep lays the foundation."

How do you ensure to get REM sleep every night and how can you tell if you do get that sleep?

"When you are sleeping, you want to have the room as dark as possible. You should hold your hand in front of your face and not be able to see your hand because its that dark. Always turn your phone to airplane mode. If its not in airplane mode it disrupts sleep. Make the room somewhere between 62-67 degrees. You want it cold. I also wear a sleep mask to cut out the light. 

The amount of energy is a drastic change. Some people tell me that they do not need coffee or energy drinks in the morning. We should have a natural type of energy when we are getting high quality sleep and you will not need any stimulants."

Do you know the science behind eating high fat and low carb promotes the need for less sleep?

"You don’t want to eat a huge meal before bed. You really don’t want to be eating a high carb meal at night because your blood sugar is going to rise and then your insulin levels will rise to push those insulin levels back down. Digestion is one of the most metabolically demanding process within the body. and if we are consuming a big meal before sleep a lot of our energy and focus will be used to lower our blood sugar instead of getting quality sleep."

Can you talk about the importance of limiting and eliminating stress?

"Stress is known as the silent killer. You could have the perfect nutrition plan. You could have a personal chef cooking all your meals and following the perfect workout plan. You could be following Micheal Phelps workout plan during the olympics, but you could drop dead tomorrow because of stress.

Basically, all diseases and sicknesses stem from inflammation in the body. You could have trauma by getting hit in the leg which causes inflammation in that one specific spot, but stress leads to inflammation all through out the body.

Certain medications put stress on your stomach, lack of sleep puts stress on the brain, overtraining is a stressor on the body, not consuming enough calories also causes stress. We also have relationship, career, job, and family stress. Some of the best ways to get rid of stress is become aware of it. If you are not happy with certain situations or relationships they may be causing stress and I recommend creating an action plan to get rid of them. 

Either use meditation, yoga, or a breathing practice called box breathing where you breathe in for 5 seconds, hold that for 5 seconds, exhale for 5 seconds, and hold that for 5 seconds.

After you do this for awhile you can lengthen the time you hold each time. Then increase the number of cycles. I recommend box breathing app. You can set the time for how long you want to inhale. 

Walking is one of the best forms of exercise. I recommend getting 10,000 steps every day and getting outside as much you can to get fresh air. Walking is the only type of cardio I recommend other HIIT."

If you suggest only walking or HIIT, what do you tell people who run every day? What should they be aware of?

"This is something that separates us from most training places. Unless you are a marathon runner or a triathlon athlete, I do not recommend running because you probably do not have good running form. Generally, running will put pressure on the joints, ankles, knees, hips, and lower back especially if their form is not 100%. 

If people do want to run or are running a lot, I recommend Ready to Run by Kelly Starrett or hire a coach to teach you the running form. Even if the running form is perfect you are going to have 2 or 3 times impact on the joints than any other workout. That’s why you never see 70, 80, or 90 year olds running because their body has broken down through movement inefficiency.

There are workouts that do not put repetitive pressure on the joints. That’s why we stick to interval type workouts. Also steady state cardio [like running] burns calories while you are doing it but stops when you are done. However, if you focus on HIIT and weight training this builds lean muscle tissue. This allows you to burn more calories and fat at rest (after the workout). It’s called EPOC and the higher you can get your heart rate during the workout the more calories or fat you can burn when you stop your workout."

What should someone eat if fat loss is their main priority?

"Typically, nutrition will be relatively the same for someone overweight/obese or has stubborn belly fat and it comes down to eating more good fats. I recommend the book Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It by Gary Taubes. It basically goes over the history about how fat and cholesterol have been thrown under the bus instead of carbohydrates which led to the obesity epidemic. People need to understand that fat doesn’t make you fat, instead it is actually the carbs. 

Control your health, overall longevity, and healthy aging by controlling your blood sugar. The number one nutrient that will raise your blood sugar is carbohydrates. Fats keep your blood sugar stable throughout the day. When people are consuming carbs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and snacks that means your blood sugar is rising and decreasing throughout the whole day. When the blood sugar is elevated your body uses insulin to push your blood sugar levels down and when insulin is present you can not be burning fat. 

If we focus healthy fats like coconut oil, ghee, avocados, eggs, grass fed butter, fattier meats like chicken wings, and thighs we will maintain a stable blood sugar level. After fat and protein, focus on vegetables and plenty of water. The majority of your carbs should come from vegetables. This combination will cause the turnaround and make us burn fat.

Most people can't get off carbs because carbs turn into glucose. The body wants to make everything as simple as possible so it will turn carbs into glucose, fats into amino acids, and fats into fatty acids.

Glucose is sugar to the body so that bowl of oatmeal will turn into glucose and that snickers bar will turn into glucose as well. Obviously the snickers bar will raise the blood sugar faster but to me and the body it’s all the same. 

We want to make sure we are cutting down the carbs slowly and increasing the intake of fat slowly because we have enzymes that help digest carbs and enzymes that help digest fat. If we switch too quickly then there might be some issues that the body can’t handle."

What advice do you have for people who want to compete and get to extremely low levels of body fat, and avoid plateau?

"Have an end date in mind. The typical training range will be 12-16 weeks. I map out my entire 16 weeks. I will have my number of calories and calories for each day and week.You want to continuously cut the carbs, cut the calories, but you don’t want to just stick to the same amount of calories day in and day out. because your body is very smart. A low level of calories might put your body in starvation mode. and start adding fat. You want to cycle your carbs and calories so your body doesn’t freak out and go into starvation mode. If you want to get down to extremely low levels of body fat you need to be relatively healthy to begin with its something I don’t recommend doing if you are overweight. You need to be healthy, have experience, and pretty close to your ideal body weight so its not like in 16 weeks you decrease by 20% body fat because thats not realistic or healthy."

What does it mean to cycle your calories or carbs?

"This is what my week looks like when I cycle calories:

Saturday: 3,300 calories

Sunday: 2,600 calories

Monday: 2,575,

Tuesday: 528 calories (cleansing and intermittent fasting day)

Wednesday: 2,800 calories

Thursday: 3,000 calories 

Friday : 1,175 calories (intermittent fasting day)

Cycling throws the body off and creates confusion in the body and feels like their is plenty of calories. When I cut below my BMR I will burn more body fat and stoke my metabolism back up. Body doesn’t go in famine or starvation mode and start hoarding fat so that’s why this method is extremely effective."

You talk about having an end date in mind, what advice do you have for someone who wants to keep a low level of body fat for longevity?

"I recommend always keeping your end goal in mind. If you just want to maintain or keep cutting I would just stick to that nutrition plan I mentioned earlier. When I am not in a 16 week challenge, my calories usually stay between 2,700 and 3,300 which allows me to maintain 11% or 14% body fat. "

What’s your insight on cheat days, cheat meals, holidays, is it okay to eat whatever you want on one day? What should you be aware of?

"I call them treat meals or days. Cheating has a negative connotation. Honestly, it depends for everyone. Many people are emotionally attached to food and if they go buck wild and eat as many calories as possible it could throw them in a tizzy. Treat days or meals could lead to more and stronger cravings than before.

For some people, they just need one meal or day to keep them on track for a 30, 60, or 90 day period. This also helps them to introduce their favorite foods back into their diet after their healthy eating and workout plan is over.

For me on my treat days, I eat as much as possible then I get back on my plan the next day. I don’t have too many issues the next day because eating low carb high fat eliminates my cravings. I always keep track of my calories in My Fitness Pal because want to know how many calories I am consuming. I pretty much eat whatever is available like chicken wings, mac and cheese, pies, and for breakfast I will eat donuts, biscuits and gravy usually stuff that I don’t get to eat all the time. That’s why it’s a called a treat meal. I also plan out my treat meals and days so I can stick to my nutrition plan until that day or meal.

It all depends on the person and history with food because we don’t want them to relapse. "

What’s your take on alcohol? Can people still drink if they stay under their calories?

"It depends on the person, their goals, and how fast they want to achieve their results. I offer a 47 day keto challenge, 30 day cleanse challenge, and Paleo challenge. Ideally, I want them to avoid alcohol for the whole time but if thats impossible I want them to limit alcohol to only 1 or 2 nights of the week. 

Every time you consume alcohol it will shut off the fat burning process for at least 12-24 hours. Alcohol is a toxic for the brain, stomach, and liver. The body wants to get rid of it ASAP and all the metabolic processes focus on rushing it out of the body which stalls the fat burning process. I recommend sticking to healthier alcohol options like wine."

What is a cellular cleanse coach?

"As a cellular cleanse coach we are trying to get rid of any toxins and toxins will come into our pathway in three ways: the food we eat, the chemicals we put on our skin and toxins from our environment. 

Unfortunately we can not avoid toxins from the environment especially if you live in a major metropolitan area. Toxins get stored in our fat cells and if we have too much toxin we can’t burn that fat cell for energy.

When we do a cleanse, we detoxify the fat cell and when we do that we are able to use that for energy and burn that fat off. That is when energy skyrockets, we lose the inches, body fat gets released, stress goes down, and inflammation goes down."

Whats the biggest mistake you see people making when trying to live a healthy and fit lifestyle? What trends do you see?

"Biggest mistake is not staying consistent. Consistency is number one. Workouts need to be 3 times a week for 52 weeks.

You can do more, but you cant go less than the 3. This is going to build those habits because not everyday or week we are going to feel like working out. Its those days that you don’t feel like working out and you show up and do it you get that energy and thats going to create that mindset. This mindset turns workouts into my drug, my coffee, my sugar hit. 

Not having any goals is another killer. You should always have goals for number of workouts, type of workouts, pant size, your before or after picture something that will motivate you to stay the course.

For nutrition, I tell people to follow the rule of 90% which states that if you follow your nutrition plan for 90% then you have 10% leeway to have a treat meal or treat day in the other 10% which helps people to stay more consistent and achieve goals."

I want to live a long healthy life. One of my goals is to live until I am 105 years old, what recommendations do you have for me to achieve this? 

"5 pillars: Sleep, stress management, nutrition, workout, rest and recovery. We need to make sure that we are moving. Sitting is the new smoking. If you sit 3 hours or more that is equivalent to smoking one half a pack of cigarettes. If you sit 8 hours a day that is like smoking a full pack of cigarettes. Moving like walking and having the proper form are extremely important. It doesn’t even need to be intense workouts as long as we are moving. I have also noticed that people who sit the longest also have the worst posture. Overall focus on the 5 pillars, movement, proper form, and posture."

What books do you recommend?

The Plant Paradox by Dr. Steven Gundry

How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy by Paul Chek

To learn more about what it’s like to work with Jason, subscribe to Jason’s Youtube channel or schedule a nutritional consultation.


Alhan Rahimi

Arabic & Persian Translator & Interpreter, Children's Author

6y

Very informative! Thanks!

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