← The Art of Manliness
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- [00:01]
A
My family owns a 2023 Toyota 4Runner, and honestly, it's my favorite vehicle that I've ever owned around town. It's smooth and reliable, but where it really shines is on our trips into the backcountry. We've taken it on backpacking adventures to Colorado and New Mexico, loaded it up with gear, and never had to think twice about whether it could handle the terrain. That's what Toyota trucks are built for off road confidence, rugged durability, and the freedom to explore. Toyota has a long history with the outdoor community, and they're committed to helping more people get out there and experience what nature has to offer. From remote trails to scenic byways, Toyota trucks empowers you to take the detour, roam freely, and discover places that still feel wild and untouched. And they're not just making great trucks. They're working to expand access to adventure so more people can connect with the outdoors and pass that passion on to the next generation. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com trucks/adventure-detours that's toyota.com.
- [00:55]
B
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- [01:43]
A
Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast. Most of us know what we should do to be healthier, eat better, move more, sleep well. The real challenge actually following through on today's show, I talked to behavioral psychologist Amantha Ember, author of the Health Habit, who argues that the missing piece in most health advice isn't more information, it's learning how to bridge the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Amanda first outlines four habit hijackers that sabotage your best laid plans and shares practical research backed tactics to overcome each one. We then dive into some specific health habits that will give you a lot of transformative bang for your buck. We discuss how restricting your sleep can help you sleep better, the truth about the popular 10,000 steps a day recommendation, the underrated power of an after dinner walk, and more. After the show's over, check out our show notes at AOM is healthhabit.
- [02:47]
Alright? Amantha Ember, welcome to the show.
- [02:49]
B
Thanks for having me, Brett.
- [02:51]
A
So you wrote a book called the Health Habit. You are a behavioral psychologist. I'm curious, how did you think about using your behavior psychology to help people establish and maintain healthy habits? Because there's a lot of books out there about eating right, exercising. What did you think you bring to the table as a behavioral psychologist as to the discussion about health?
- [03:15]
B
Well, it was actually a bit of an aha moment. I was in my local bookshop, I was under a little bit of pressure from my publisher at Penguin to put in a proposal for my next book. And I'm a huge consumer of health and wellbeing kind of books and I'm a massive experimenter on myself. And it just kind of occurred to me as I was browsing through the many titles that exist in any bookshop around how to improve your health, that if any of them actually worked in the sense that you read the techniques and you changed your behavior and suddenly you were healthier and those, those new habits stuck for life, then there would be no market for health books. And I thought the missing thing from all these health books is actually the psychology around how do you make all this great health advice stick? And so the idea for the Health Habit was taking a lot of science backed, evidence backed strategies for how can we improve our sleep, our nutrition, the way that we move or exercise, but actually give people the psychological tricks to make those great habits stick for good.
- [04:27]
A
Yeah, I'm sure if there's any doctors listening who are family practitioners, they probably seen this. You know, they can tell their patients, well, you know, you need to quit smoking, you need to start eating right, you need to start exercising and then the patient doesn't do it. Information is not enough. You have to be sort of a psychologist to help your patients implement these things. You're telling them that they know they need to do.
- [04:49]
B
That's exactly right. I mean, I don't think there's too many people listening that would be thinking, oh, is exercise really good for me? Of course exercise is good for us. We all know that. Yet gym memberships go completely unused every month because there's a real gap between knowing something and actually doing the thing.
- [05:08]
A
What keeps people from following through on their health goals? They say, I'm going to start running, I'm going to start weight training, I'm going to start eating right. But then they don't do it. What are the big obstacles there? I mean, is it just Misguided ideas about habits or behavior change. What do you think's going on?
- [05:24]
B
Well, when I was researching for the health habit, I identified that there were four main barriers that get in the way for a lot of people. I call them hijackers. And very briefly, there are four of them. The first one is motivational, so where you kind of feel like you have to do the thing, but you don't really want to do the thing, so there's a motivational barrier at play. The second are relational barriers, where perhaps the social norms in your life are making it harder for you to do the thing that you want to do. Let's say you're trying to eat more healthy, but you live in a household where everyone loves junk food. That's there's going to be a relational barrier at play. The third are environmental hijackers. This is where the physical or digital environment that you're living and working with within is just not setting you up for success. And the fourth one, a cognitive hijackers, where you're just feeling really stressed or exhausted or overwhelmed. And when we feel that way mentally, it's really hard to change our behavior.
- [06:24]
A
Do different people get hung up on the different hijackers?
- [06:27]
B
Well, often at different times in our life and for different habits that we're trying to change, there might be a different hijacker in the way. Like, so, for example, let's take the, you know, the idea of someone wanting to quit sugar and a really common barrier. There are environmental barriers where if you're like a lot of people, you've probably got sugary snacks in your pantry, perhaps at eye level, perhaps in a transparent container. And if that's your home environment, there's a massive environmental hijacker at play. Like, if, you know, the sugary treats or snacks are within plain sight whenever you walk into your pantry. So that's one example. Another example around, say, motivational hijackers is that most people know they have to exercise or should exercise, but they don't really love it. And so there's often for people a big motivational barrier at play there.
- [07:23]
A
Whenever someone's looking at, okay, what's preventing me from doing the thing I want to do, whether it's eating right or exercising or getting better sleep. Is there a way to figure out which hijacker is the obstacle?
- [07:37]
B
There is. I designed a really simple survey. It's in the health habit book. But I'll also give you a link that you can pop in the show notes for anyone to just for free, just assess what Is the biggest hijacker getting in the way of you successfully making a change to your behavior right now?
- [07:53]
A
Okay, well, we'll link to that and that'll be a great thing that our listeners can do. So you have these different hijackers, but you provide ways to overcome these habit hijackers. Let's talk about motivational hijackers. What are some tactics that people can use to overcome motivational hijackers? So let's say there's this thing they want to do, they just don't feel motivated to do it. What are some research backed tips that they can start implementing to maybe boost their motivation a little bit?
- [08:20]
B
Okay, so my favourite one, and this is the one that I personally use most often, is temptation bundling. So this is how it works and an example of the science that it comes from. So there was one particular study, and there's been many studies done on temptation bundling that looked at how could we get people to exercise more often. So they recruited a couple of hundred people at a university campus and they looked at their exercise behavior. So specifically, how often did they visit the gym on campus for 10 weeks? And people were split into three different groups. So there was one group that was given an ipod, which I know really dates this study, it was done over 10 years ago, and they were given an ipod and it was preloaded with top ranking audiobooks. And these participants were told, use this ipod, but only when you're at the gym, only use it when you're exercising and enjoy these brilliant audiobooks. The second group were given the same ipod, same audiobooks, and they were told, look, listen to it when you exercise, but also just enjoy it for the next 10 weeks whenever you want to listen to an audiobook. And then the third group were given $25 and that was it. Which is actually quite a lot of money for these university studies, but no ipod. What the researchers found is that the people that were in group one, the people that were given the ipod and said only listen to these audiobooks when you're doing exercise, went to the gym over 50% more often than the cash group, which was the control group. The second group that had the ipod but listened to it whenever they wanted, they also went to the gym more often. It was about sort of 25, 30% more often, but not as frequently as the group that only listened to the ipod when they were exercising. So this is an example of temptation bundling, where you're pairing the undesirable activity of exercising with something that is inherently pleasurable. In this case some great audiobooks. And so, for example, how I use this technique in my life is I actually love weight training. I have no motivational issues there, but I do have a motivational problem when it comes to cardio exercise. So I own a very expensive exercise bike, and I actually hate using it. And so a few years ago, I created a rule for myself where one of my guilty pleasures is watching the Bachelor, which I think. I don't know, I feel like it's in. It's like 200th season now or something. But I am a sucker for bitchiness on tv, and I feel, you know, quite guilty just sitting on the couch and watching the Bachelor. So what I did is I created a rule for myself and I said, I'm only allowed to watch the Bachelor when I'm on the exercise bike. And it completely changed my relationship with riding on the exercise bike. It also meant that I get three seasons pretty slowly, and I read all the spoilers. But that's okay. I still love the show. So Temptation Bundling. Highly recommend it. If there's a motivational barrier at play.
- [11:23]
A
I'm the same as you. I have no problem. I love weightlifting. It's my passion. I've done it for years. Cardio is just a chore.
- [11:31]
B
Yeah.
- [11:31]
A
And so for me, what I've done with. With the Temptation Bundling is I. I watch movies while I'm doing the treadmill. Like, I'm just walking at an incline on the treadmill. And it's been awesome because I've had this goal for a long time to become a cinephile. Like, I want to watch the Criterion Collection like Seven Samurai and Casablanca, but just didn't have time for it. So I thought, oh, I can do that while I'm doing cardio. And so, yeah, I just queue up a movie and I'm on the treadmill for an hour. And I've gotten through a lot of the Criterion Collection just by doing some temptation bundling.
- [12:05]
B
I love that. Great example.
- [12:07]
A
One tactic that you highlight on how to overcome motivational hijackers is, and I've never heard of this one, it's question powered self talk. What is that?
- [12:16]
B
Yes. So often when we are trying to do the thing, like, let's just, you know, stay on the exercise example. Okay, I need to exercise today. It's not particularly motivating when we tell ourselves, okay, I need to exercise today. What psychologists have found is if we can actually change that into a question, we're much more likely to do things. So instead of going, I need to Exercise today. Saying to yourself, or asking yourself, will I exercise today? Makes us significantly more likely to do exercise. So what our brain is doing when we're asking ourselves a question, as opposed to giving it a say statement, is we're tricking ourselves into feeling like we have choice, like we have autonomy over the decision. And when we feel like we've got choice, we're far more motivated to do the thing. So when we ask ourselves, well, will I exercise today? We think, oh, will I? I've got a choice in the matter. And then, you know, because we're trying to be good and trying to do the thing, we will be much more likely to go, yes, I will exercise today.
- [13:28]
A
That's really interesting. Okay, I like that. And I've seen that in my own life. There's been times where I've used digital nudges to get me to do certain things, like get up to walk with your Apple watch. You can set it. If you've been, you know, sedentary for a certain amount of time, it'll say, time to get up for a walk. And I'm like, yeah, you're annoying. Get out of here. But I imagine if it just said, hey, would you like to get up? Be like, oh, you know what, do I want to get up? Yeah, maybe I do want to get up. Because it would give you that sense of autonomy.
- [13:55]
B
Yes.
- [13:55]
A
So I really like that idea of turning your self talk into a question. Any other things that you can do to overcome motivational hijackers?
- [14:03]
B
Yeah, I mean, look, there's quite a few in the book. One that I have found to be very effective is finding yourself. And what I mean by that is. And look, I'll give an example actually, from someone on my team at work who use this. So this particular teammate, she is a crazy mad fan of leads. So she follows the football in the uk and she'd set herself the goal of she wanted to read one nonfiction book for six months every week, a new one every week, which. Which is, you know, pretty impressive goal. And she declared to the team that if she did not hit this goal, she was going to donate, I think like $100 or something to Manchester United. That is the enemy. And this kept her motivated. I think. She also had said she was going to post a picture of herself on social media wearing a Manchester jersey, which, of course is just a disgusting thing to do if you happen to go for leads. So finding yourself and giving that money to somewhere that you absolutely hate can be very, very motivating to stick to a Behavior.
- [15:13]
A
Let's talk about relational hijackers. What are some tactics that are research backed that can help us overcome those relational hijackers? So that's basically our social environment is getting in the way of us accomplishing or fulfilling our health habit goals.
- [15:27]
B
That's right. And you know, I would say if you're listening to this and you feel like you're someone that's maybe a bit of a people pleaser, there's a good chance that there might be a relational hijacker at play. And so we can actually use those people pleasing tendencies to our advantage. And one of the most effective things that we can do is to make a public pledge. So this might be, you know, on a group, WhatsApp group to say, you know, I am going to, I don't know, like, eliminate all unhealthy snacks from my diet for the next four weeks. Or I am going to, you know, do the couch to 5K program for the next eight weeks. And if you announce your goal publicly, so it could just be to friends and family, it could be on social media, you know, just somewhere public, you're much more likely to actually stick to that goal because you don't want to let other people down and you don't want to look like an idiot. So it's really, you know, utilizing, you know, that tendency that you, you know, you feel quite accountable to the people around you.
- [16:32]
A
Yeah, I think it's also useful too, that public declaration saying, hey, you, look, I have this goal, I want to eat better or I want to exercise. And you tell this to your family and you can say, I want you to hold me accountable if you see me, you know, going for a fourth serving of mashed potatoes, like, hey, can you give me the nudge? Like, hey, dad, do you really. Don't, don't tell them, dad, don't eat the mashed potatoes. Like, dad, do you really want to eat those mashed potatoes? Because you want to do the self talk that will give him some autonomy.
- [16:58]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [17:00]
A
What about environmental hijackers? What are some tactics to overcome those?
- [17:04]
B
So I would say if you don't know where to start or if you're thinking, oh, these all sound like barriers, Environmental hijackers and overcoming those tend to be some of the most powerful strategies. So one of the biggest things that you can do is have a think about the behavior that you're trying to change and think about what in your environment, like, what is your environment setting you up to be the default choice? So let me give you an example. A lot of people have the goal to improve their sleep. They want to stop scrolling on their phone before bed. Very common behavior goal. And if your phone charger is on your bedside table, I can tell you right now that your environment is setting you up to fail. It is very hard to simply just rely on willpower to say to yourself, okay, even though my phone is within arm's reach before I go to bed, I'm just not going to scroll on it, I'm going to do something else. Or maybe I'll just go straight to sleep really, really hard. So what you want to do in that situation is you want to disrupt the default choice, because the default choice in that environment is to pick up your phone and scroll before bed. So to disrupt that default, you might want to, for example, take your phone charger and put it in a completely different room, put it in the corridor, put it in the kitchen, and instead charge your phone there. Because it is no longer the default option to go, oh, I'm going to scroll on my phone before I go to bed, because your phone is not near your bed.
- [18:37]
A
I love that. I think you can do that with nutrition. If you're trying to eat better, don't buy junk food, don't keep it in the house and instead buy lots of healthy options and make sure it's visible 100%.
- [18:48]
B
And look, if you, you know, say, have kids that demand the sugary treats or whatever, or maybe you've got a spouse that is refusing to give up sugar, for example, what you can do to disrupt the default is instead of say, having those treats at eye level in the fridge or in the pantry and in transparent containers, you can put them in opaque containers, you can put them out of arm's reach. So maybe you have to get a step ladder to reach those snacks or maybe just put them right at the bottom of your pantry or fridge where you're just not going to sit see them every time you're in those locations.
- [19:25]
A
A big thing that I've done to overcome environmental hijackers or exercising, it's paid off big time for me just having a home gym because it just makes it so easy. I just walk down to my garage and I can exercise. And you don't even have to have like a whole home gym. It could be you got a kettle bell or you have some sort of pull up bar and it's just there in your house and you remove all that friction from exercise. You don't have to, you know, okay, I got to get in the car. Drive to the gym, workout, drive back, you can just do it.
- [19:53]
B
Yes. And friction is really important because when you're trying to do more of a behavior, if you can reduce the friction that is involved in doing that good behavior, like rather than having to drive to a gym, it's right in your home. And I did the very same thing and have had a home gym set up, you know, oh gosh, since 2020. And it's easy. You can also, when you're trying to not do a behavior or try to eliminate a behav is you can put friction in the way. But I do love the idea of removing friction. Something that I have heard a lot of people do successfully that are trying to do more exercise is to sleep in their gym clothes. Because when you wake up, there is no excuse not to exercise because you are literally dressed for the gym. I also applied this strategy to parenting many years ago when my daughter was in the earlier years of primary school. And you know, for those that have young kids, you will know that sometimes getting them dressed into their school uniform takes a lot of time and is a massive battle that most of us don't have the patience for in the morning. So I started dressing my daughter to go to bed in her school uniform so she would wake up and she would be dressed and ready to go. And yes, it would have some creases, but hey, who cares?
- [21:12]
A
All right, so environmental, it sounds like it. Look for friction points and see if you can reduce them. That'll go a long way. Or if you don't want to do something, increase the friction. Let's talk about cognitive hijackers. What are some research backed tactics to overcome those?
- [21:26]
B
Well, probably my favorite one here is the power of a particular word and that word is don't. So this comes from some research that was led by a professor, Vanessa Patrick. And what she did, she got a group of people into the lab under the guise of she was just there to teach them some strategies to make healthier choices with their eating. And she divided people into two groups. One group were taught to say, when presented with an unhealthy temptation like chocolate, they were taught to say I don't eat chocolate. And a second group were taught to say I can't eat chocolate. So very similar strategies, literally just changing two letters can't versus don't. Then everyone left the lab. But the cracks of the experiment actually happened when people were leaving the lab and they were presented with an option of two different snacks. So one option was a chocolate bar. The second option was a Healthy granola bar or muesli bar. And what the researchers found is that those that were taught to say I don't eat chocolate were 50% more likely to take the healthy granola bar instead of the chocolate bar all through just changing one little word in their self talk. So why that works so well is when we say, I can't do something which is pretty reflective of a lot of people's self talk, like, oh, I can't do this, I can't do that, oh, I can't really eat dessert because I'm on a diet, is we just feel a bit restricted and a bit crappy about ourselves. But when we say I don't do the thing like I don't eat chocolate, I don't eat dessert, I don't have sugar as examples, we actually feel like that is part of my self identity. And as humans, we want to act in a way that is consistent with how we see ourselves. So for me, I used to be a massive sugar addict and this strategy had the biggest impact on me quitting sugar. And it's been over a decade now since I quit sugar as a daily habit.
- [23:37]
A
One tactic you recommend for overcoming cognitive hijackers is using the power of a fresh start to boost your health habit goals. I think this could be useful because we're coming up on a new year. What is the fresh start tactic?
- [23:50]
B
Yeah, so the fresh start effect is a really handy one. And it suggests that when you pick a date that is like the start of a new thing. So it might be the start of a year, January 1, it might be the start of a new start season, like, you know, the start of spring or fall, or it might be even just the start of a week, like Monday. We are significantly more likely to stick to the habit that we want to do because it literally feels like a fresh start. It's like a new chapter in our book. We don't need to worry or think about all the times that we failed in the past because it's a fresh start today. So when researchers have looked at people that have tried to kickstart a new habit on, say, a Monday compared to a Thursday or in the middle of a month versus the first of a month. Those that start at the start, if you like, of that month or that week or that season are far more likely to be able to stick to that new behavior.
- [24:55]
A
Another tactic you highlight to overcome cognitive hijackers is I've used this with my own health habits. Is giving yourself a hall pass to bend the rules.
- [25:03]
B
Tell us about That I love this strategy and I use it for myself across several different realms of my life. So we've probably heard of the term hall pass when it comes to, say, marriages and, you know, having a hall pass if, you know, this particular celebrity ever wanted to spend a night with me. But hall passes are really great when it comes to changing our behavior. So there was one particular study that looked at people who were trying to do more steps, do more walking in a day. And all the participants in this study were given the goal of doing 20% more steps than their current month's average. So, you know, it was a bit of a stretch target. So one group were basically told to walk every day for 30 days and try to hit their goal, 20% more steps every single day. The second group were given two hall passes every week for the four weeks of the study. So the researchers said, look, hit your goal every day, but we're going to give you two hall passes, so you can pick two days whenever you want them to be per week where you don't need to worry about hitting your steps target. And what the researchers found is that those given the hall pass strategy were actually more likely to hit their daily steps target. And when they had a day where they failed, they were much more able to bounce back, so they were more resilient. So if there's a daily habit that you're trying to create, and I think this is particularly good for people, you know, trying to turn over a new leaf with their eating or dieting or something like that, what typically happens is we're like, okay, I'm starting a diet on Monday, and then by Thursday we've, I don't know, binged on, like, a bunch of things that we're trying to avoid. We have this thing that psychologists call the what the hell effect. And it's like, ah, what the hell, I've broken the diet. I may as well just go back to my normal eating. But hall passes overcome that because we can simply just say, well, Thursday I decided to take a hall pass and I'm going to get back on, you know, the good behavior regime on Friday.
- [27:11]
A
Yeah, it gets rid of that all or nothing. Thinking, yes. Yeah, I've used that with my own health habits, like with eating and exercise. Some days I'll have days where I. I need to train and I'm just not feeling it because I'm tired, I'm stressed out, and I say, okay, I'm not going to do my usual. My program session. I'm just going for a walk and it's not the. It's not exactly what I wanted to do, but I at least move my body intentionally. Or when it comes to nutrition, you know, I track my macros, so I try to hit certain protein and carbohydrate and fat targets. But sometimes, you know, you're at a party and there's like pie or cake and you don't want to be the guy's like, I'm not eating that. And just I want to enjoy. And food's a way to socialize. So I'm like, okay, you know, I'll have some cake. It doesn't exactly fit my macros. I don't need to have like three slices, but I can have a small slice, that's fine. And I'm okay with that. I don't beat myself up because I just had a piece of cake.
- [28:08]
B
I think that's so great. It's also why cheat days are actually really effective, according to science.
- [28:13]
A
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- [31:55]
B
Yeah, okay, let me talk about the one that has had by far the biggest impact. So I am someone that has struggled with insomnia during my 20s, during my 30s, and then in my 40s, where I am now, it's pretty much gone. So what happened in my 20s is I was living in Sydney at the time and every morning I would drive across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to get to work and it would be early in the morning and I would always be tired. And one morning, it was about 8 o' clock in the morning, I thought to myself, I wonder if there are people that don't actually feel constantly exhausted like I do. And I thought, well, what a stupid thought. Of course there are people that feel that way. And then I thought, huh, I wonder if I've got a problem because I'm always tired. And so I got to the office that morning and I googled sleep Dr. Sydney and I booked myself in to see a sleep doctor. And what sleep doctors typically recommend is to go into their rooms or a hospital and do an overnight sleep test where you're hooked up to about 30 or 40 different electrodes and it's very uncomfortable. And then the doctor says, okay, now sleep. So it's not a fun night, but at least it's a night where, you know, you can get some data on what is going on. So I did that. I felt like I had a terrible night's sleep, but hey, nothing new because most nights were terrible night's sleep. And I went back to see the sleep doctor a couple of weeks later with the results. And you know, he said, look, the good news is that there's nothing physiologically wrong. You know, you don't have, you know, sleep disorder, you don't have sleep apnea. But I guess the bad news is that it means that it's psychological and there is no magic pill to fix that. And so what he prescribed, so to speak, was sleep restriction. So he asked me, how many hours do you reckon you're spending in bed right now? And I told him that at the time I was getting into bed at about 9pm and I was getting out of bed at about 7am and so that's 10 hours in bed, which might seem like a lot of time, but in my sleep deprived brain I thought, well, the longer I'm in bed, the better the chance I've got of catching some sleep. Which I think is how a lot of insomniacs think it kind of feels rational, but it's actually not. So the sleep doctor then asked me, how many of those 10 hours do you think that you're actually spending asleep? And I thought about it and I said, I reckon maybe six hours. And so he said, okay, what are you going to do now is you are going to limit the time that you are in bed to just six hours per night. And so he said, keep your wake time the same, so keep getting up at 7am because one of the other habits I talk about in the book is having a consistent rise time or consistent wake time. But he said, you're only now allowed to spend six hours per night in bed, which means you're going to go to bed at 1am And I was in shock because going to bed at 9pm versus 1am, that's a very big change. I thought, how am I going to stay up so late? But he said, this is really important because we need to retrain your brain to associate bed with sleep as opposed to bed with catastrophizing and ruminating and worrying that you're not getting enough sleep. So for the first few nights, I managed to stay up until 1am and by the time my head hit the pillow, I was out. And I was managing after a few nights to have a really solid six hours of sleep. And then once I was managing to do that for a few nights, the sleep doctor then said, you can extend your window by half an hour. So I was allowed to go to bed at 12:30 instead of 1 in the morning. I did that for a few nights until I was sleeping pretty consistently for six and a half hours and gradually brought back that go to bed time until I was in bed for about eight hours, which is what I'd estimated at the time was how much sleep I needed. So sleep restriction therapy is generally, with most sleep doctors, when there's a psychological issue, generally the first point of call is what I found and it is so effective.
- [36:15]
A
Okay, so with sleep restriction, you're only going to be in bed for the amount of time you are actually asleep each night. And you're doing that so that you only associate your bed with sleep. So to start out, you're going to count back the hours you do sleep at night from your wake time, and that's going to be your new bedtime, and that's going to be much later than you're typically going to bed. To start. I did something recently. It wasn't exactly sleep restriction, but I was trying to retrain my Sleep schedule, and it involved staying up till midnight every night. And it was pretty daunting or demoralizing to make yourself stay up late when you don't want to and you're not used to it because I love going to bed early. So knowing that it's hard to do, what can we do? What sort of tactics that we talked about earlier can we use to stick to sleep restriction so that you can get the benefit of it?
- [37:05]
B
Yeah. And look, sleep restriction, this is, this is a good one to think about temptation, bundling, because you are going to be dreading those hours that you are forcing yourself to stay awake. So try to make it, try to make those hours fun. Like, don't do something stimulating because that is not going to be helpful in terms of sleep. But you might say, you know, save up episodes of your favorite podcast to listen to in those hours where you're trying to stay awake. Or you might save up episodes of your favorite TV show because, you know, TV watching is a pretty passive activity. So I would recommend that people think about what is something that they can really look forward to to make staying awake those extra few hours more doable and maybe even a bit more enjoyable.
- [37:55]
A
Yeah, that's why I did. I started playing video games. I'm not a big video gamer, but I started playing this video game again that I've already played two or three times. It's called Red Dead Redemption. You're basically a cowboy in the American west. And it's. It can be stimulating because you're a bad guy and you're shooting other bad guys. But I would just go on there to ride my horse in this fictional American west and go hunting for bears. And it was actually really relaxing. And so you mentioned some other things you can do for your sleep. You know, wake up at the same time. That's a big one. And then also I think the stuff that people already know. Establish a good going to bed routine. Practice good sleep hygiene. You know, set a time where you, okay, I'm going to get off my smartphone, get off Twitter or X Instagram, and I'll do something a little bit more relaxing.
- [38:43]
B
Yes, those are all really important. And then when we wake up in the morning, one of the most important things to do is, is to get exposure to daylight, to sunlight. So doing that just resets our circadian rhythms. It resets essentially our body clock and it makes it easier to fall asleep at night. You know, research shows that even just getting out for five to 10 minutes into natural light and daylight in, you know, the first hour or two after waking can be incredibly effective at resetting our body clock talk.
- [39:18]
A
So let's talk about habits we can implement to improve or increase the amount of we move during the day. Because you highlight a lot of research about what not only just exercise, but just general movement can do for our health. One health habit you recommend is vilpa. This is an acronym so V I L P A. What is vilpa?
- [39:37]
B
So vilpa stands for vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity. It is a mouthful, but it is incredibly effective, particularly for those that hate exercise or say, I don't have time for exercise. So what filter is? And remember, it's lifestyle physical activity. These are just moments that you know, might be a one or two minute moment in your day where you're like somehow incorporating quite vigorous physical activity into your day. So you know, like an example might be if you say catch the bus or the train or subway to work and you're running late and you sprint the final, you know, 4 or 500 meters. That is an example of vilpa. It's not exercise. Like you didn't, you know, map out a minute in your day to do this exercise. It was simply just part of your lifestyle for that particular day. You know, another example is where maybe it's after school, after work, and you're out in the backyard and you're playing chasey with your kids and you're doing some intermittent bursts of running around. Again, it's not exercise that you planned, but it just happens to be in your lifestyle where you're doing, you know, a one or two minute burst of pretty vigorous physical activity. So what a huge research study found into vilpa, and this is looking at people who had three to four bouts, if you like, of Vilpa. So those one to two minute intense physical activity moments in their day were 40% less likely to die early. So you know, when we look at like all cause mortality, they basically had dramatically reduced the chances of dying prematurely from diseases that were largely preventable if we can be healthier with our habits. So it's a really great thing to actually deliberately incorporate into your day. Like maybe instead of just randomly running late to catch transport to your workday, you can just challenge yourself. Every morning I'm just going to sprint that final 500 meters to the bus stop, for example, or every afternoon I'm actually going to plan a game with Tracy with the kids, or when I take the dog for a walk, I'm just going to sprint those last few blocks with the dog to get some vilpa. Into my day.
- [42:00]
A
One thing that we do in our family is we have this rule. I guess this would be an implementation intention. I think you talk about this in the book, but it's our. Our rule for to get some vilpa is if there are stairs, we take the stairs. We got. I got this from Michael Easter. He's an author who writes about health and fitness, and he has this statistic. I don't know if it's true, but it's basically 2% of the population take the stairs if there are stairs. And so we tell our kids and ourselves, all right, McKay's were 2 percenters. If there are stairs, we're taking the stairs. And you see this a lot at the airport, especially because you got your big, giant suitcase, and it's so tempting to be like, all right, we're taking the escalator. Can you just stand there with your. It's like, nope, you got to get your suitcase, hold it, and you got to go up the stairs. And it's a short little workout. I mean, it is vigorous.
- [42:49]
B
Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah. I love that being the 2% club.
- [42:54]
A
Another habit you recommend for getting some more movement is to get at least 7, 500 steps in a day. Why just 7,500? Typically, the number you hear thrown out there is 10,000 steps.
- [43:06]
B
Absolutely. Most people, if they've got a walking goal or a steps goal, it's 10,000 steps a day. And there is absolutely no science behind that number. Where it actually came from is that a company in Japan found that the Japanese symbol for walking looks like the number 10,000, or the symbol for 10,000 looks like a man walking. So they thought, oh, okay, you know, let's. Let's create this. I think it was a pedometer that suggests that you should do 10,000 steps a day, and that is how the myth was created. But when there have been meta analyses conducted around how many steps per day actually reduces the chance of dying early from things like heart disease, what they found is that typically it's about seven and a half to 8,000 steps a day. That is the magic number. So I would love it if listeners just adjust their daily steps goal, make it a little bit lower. Seven and a half thousand steps, because there's actually science behind that as opposed to 10,000 steps, which is purely a marketing gimmick.
- [44:15]
A
So any tactics that we've talked about earlier and how you can implement this happen and stick to it.
- [44:20]
B
Yeah, look, I personally love the whole pass strategy for this, and you know, I think one of the interesting things about the whole pass strategy as I described, there was a study that actually looked at people who had a steps goal and the impact of incorporating whole passes. So you know, it might not be possible every day to do seven and a half thousand steps. So just give yourself two hall passes a week and say to yourself, this is my daily steps goal. But there's going to be two days every week where I give myself permission to not meet my steps target for whatever reason. Maybe you found yourself in back to back meetings and you just had no chance to get out for a walk walk, for example. So use the whole past strategy to make yourself more likely to get that daily steps count.
- [45:07]
A
Another health habit related movement that you talk about is taking a walk after a meal. Why that habit?
- [45:13]
B
Okay, so I think that most people know that when it comes to blood glucose or blood sugar levels, which is, you know, what happens in your body when you eat something or do certain things, particularly if you have like a big sugary high carb snack, you're going to cause your blood glucose levels to spike and then crash. And you will have experienced this crash if you've ever felt really tired or brain foggy or even hungry, like just after you've had a meal sort of, you know, typically about 30 minutes after you've had that kind of a meal. And you know, there's not many nutrition experts that would disagree that we need to try to keep our blood glucose levels as, as stable as possible. So any strategy that we can use that's going to help stabilize our blood glucose levels, particularly after we eat, is really, really good for managing our health and managing our energy. And so what researchers have looked at is what is the impact of after we have a meal. And let's just say that it is a meal that would normally spike our blood glucose levels. Like a really big bowl of pasta is something that will take typically spike most people's blood glucose levels is what if we actually move after that meal? And they've looked at all sorts of movement patterns, like moving straight after the meal, moving for one minute versus 10 minutes versus an hour. And what they found is that on average the best thing we can do after we've eaten is about half an hour or so after we've eaten, just have some gentle movement incorporated into your day for about 10 minutes. So if you aim after say your lunch or your dinner, about half an hour afterwards, just to go for a 10 minute leisurely walk around the block, you will significantly increase the chance of Your blood glucose level of staying pretty stable and you'll significantly decrease any spike that was going to happen.
- [47:16]
A
I've actually experimented with this and it's true. So there was a period a couple years ago where I was using a continuous glucose monitor and I heard about this research about taking a walk after you eat can help reduce blood glucose spikes, particularly if you eat a high carb meal. And it's true. If I didn't take the walk and I ate a carby sugary meal, my blood sugar would go up to 140, 150. But then if I waited 30 minutes, it was interesting, I had to wait 30. If I did it right after I ate, if I did the walk, what would happen? The spike would just be delayed. Because I think what happens is your body, it takes about half an hour, 45 minutes. It's for your body to start breaking down the carbs into glucose. And so if you do it too early, all it's gonna do is just gonna delay that glucose spikes. But if you time it so that you do the movement right when your glucose is spiking, your body's digested and sending the glucose to the different parts of your body. You move your muscles and your muscles are just basically vacuums for glucose. Like your muscles run on glucose. And so you get those vacuums going by moving your body. It just sucks up that glucose. And if I took a walk walk 30 to 45 minutes after a, the glucose monitor would just be up to 120. It wouldn't be as high. So it does work. It is really powerful.
- [48:25]
B
It totally does. And I love that you've mentioned continuous glucose monitors, which for those haven't heard of CGMs. If you imagine something that's about the size of a ping pong ball flattened and stuck to your tricep with a little needle that pierces your skin, it's basically a way of getting a continuous read on what your blood glucose levels are doing. They typically last for a couple of weeks and, and they sync with an app on your phone. And I've experimented with them at different times over the last few years. And I find that it is such a great tool for actually changing your behavior because you've got the data right there in front of you. There's no oh, well, you know, Amanda said this, or research said this, but is it going to work for me? You can see the data and when you can actually see how the inside of your body is responding to different tactics or experiments that you're trying, you're much more likely to keep going with those experiments when you can say, oh, they're actually working for me.
- [49:19]
A
What about just making a regular workout part of your routine? Any advice there?
- [49:24]
B
Oh, look, definitely a regular workout is a great thing and what we overestimate is how long we have to spend working out. So there's been some great research into not just HIIT training, which I think we all know is, you know, high intensity interval training, but what is called rehit training which is basically boiled down to shorter and less frequent bursts of all out intensive exercise. So what some research from McMasters University found is that the smallest, if you like, minimum viable dose of exercise that we can do to get massive benefits for our cardiovascular health health is just a 42nd micro workout where you do a little warm up, get your body warm for two or three minutes, then do an all out 40 second sprint. It might be sprinting around the block for 40 seconds or doing a sprint on an exercise bike and then doing a cool down. And you can get the same kind of gains from a micro workout or reheat workout as you can from going for like a 40 minute, 45 minute jog. It's absolutely amazing. And for anyone that is saying I don't have time to exercise, well, all you need is 40 seconds and you will get some amazing benefits from that.
- [50:44]
A
Let's talk about nutrition habits. What hijackers frequently get in the way of sticking to nutrition habits.
- [50:50]
B
I would say that environmental hijackers are the biggest ones here. Like if you think about what is in your fridge and what is in your pantry and how much of that is the food that you want to be consuming more of versus food that you think that you should be consuming less of. Like quite often there's a lot of food that we do want to be consuming less of that are at eye level, in plain view whenever we go to make a food decision. So I would say environmental hijackers, if we can change the physical environment that we're living in and working in to make it really easy and just natural to select the thing that we want to be eating more of, like that will go a huge way to having healthier habits when it comes to nutrition.
- [51:37]
A
And yeah, so you have specific habits in this environmental framework that you talk about that people can use to reduce the temptation to sabotage your diet. So the big one is to reduce the amount of hyper palatable foods like the really tasty Oreos, Doritos and then the ultra processed foods which are, are typically hyper palatable as well. Yes, and just keep those out of the kitchen as much as you can.
- [51:59]
B
Definitely.
- [51:59]
A
We've had a guest on the podcast talk about the microbiome, the gut microbiome, and how it affects everything about health, from your weight to mood to sleep. And to support your gut microbiome, you recommend that instead of taking a probiotic, people eat their probiotics. So how can they do that and make it a habit?
- [52:17]
B
Yeah. So eating probiotics, this is all about eating fermented food. Like things like, like kefir, things like sauerkraut, kimchi, and, you know, yogurt is probably the most easily accessible, palatable probiotic that you can eat. And so, you know, certainly what Tim Spector, Professor Tim Spector from the uk recommends is, you know, ideally, having some fermented food, eating your probiotics just in small amounts four or five times a day. So, you know, you might have a couple of tablespoons of yogurt with your breakfast, for example, you know, maybe like a little bit of kimchi or sauerkraut. This is like a little side, you know, again, a couple of tablespoons is all you need with your dinner. So just, you know, having small doses throughout the day is one of the best ways to improve gut health.
- [53:08]
A
Yeah. What I do, I started doing a while back ago is I have some kimchi with my eggs at breakfast, and it's not very much. I get this. There's a little bag, and I just scoop out like a serving of it. Not even a serving, just like a spoonful of it. And I gotta eat that. And the other one is I eat yogurt. I eat Greek yogurt for a snack and probably get all the probiotics I need. Just making those really small changes.
- [53:32]
B
Yes. And it's far cheaper than getting expensive probiotics from the chemist.
- [53:36]
A
Correct. This is true. So if someone is listening to this episode and they're feeling overwhelmed by the health habits they want to implement, what do you think is the smallest habit you'd have them start with tomorrow to build some momentum?
- [53:51]
B
I would come back to Environmental hijackers. I would think about what is the behavior that you're trying to change, and think about your environment, your physical environment at home and work and any other places where you spend a lot of time and think about what is one change you can make to your environment to make it easier to do the thing that you're trying to do more of or to make it harder to do the thing that you're trying to do less of.
- [54:17]
A
I love it. Well Amantha, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?
- [54:22]
B
Well, they can go to amantha.com or they can check out the Health Habit book to learn more about this. And I host a podcast called How I Work where I talk about different rituals and strategies that some of the world's most successful people use to get more out of their day.
- [54:37]
A
Well, fantastic. Amantha Ember, thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.
- [54:39]
B
Thank you so much Brit.
- [54:42]
A
My guest was Amantha Ember. She's the author of the book the Health Habit. It's available on Amazon.com you can find more information about her work at our website amantha.com also check out our shownotes at aom is healthhabit where you find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.
- [55:02]
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website@artofmanlies.com where you find our podcast archives. And while you're there, sign up for our newsletter. We got a daily option and a weekly option. They're both free. It's the best way to stay on top of what's going on at aom. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member you think was something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time's Brett McKay remind time to listen to the OM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.
- [55:47]
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