00:00You can eat clean, you can train hard, you can do everything right, but if your sleep sucks,
00:05your results will too. For a long time, I thought I was dialed in, but I wasn't recovering properly.
00:11In this video, I'm not going to give you generic advice like stop drinking coffee after 2pm. I'm
00:16going to give you real strategies that I've used to personally fix my sleep, how to reset your
00:21rhythm, and the habits that made the biggest difference for me. If you care about building
00:25muscle, losing fat, or just feeling good day to day, sleep is the biggest lever that you can pull.
00:32Poor sleep wrecks your testosterone, increases cortisol, and slows recovery. It makes you
00:37hungrier and it tanks your energy. If you just put a little bit of attention into this video and
00:43learn knowledge, simple things that are super easy to implement, but took me years to figure out,
00:49you will get the results that you deserve from all of that effort that you've put in to your
00:54nutrition and your training. Now, let's get into the first key step. To just go outside when you wake
01:00up. So first thing in the morning, when you wake up, put on your shoes, put on some clothes, and then
01:05just get out into the sun. It can be for something simple, like just a 10-20 minute walk, go out, go
01:10walk in the beach, go walk in the forest. If you can't go for a walk, just go outside, do a little
01:16mobility routine, do some stretching, do some yoga. The key thing here is that you just want to go
01:21outside. Because when you go outside and the sunlight hits your eyes, that resets your circadian
01:27rhythm. It basically tells your body that like, hey, it's time to wake up. And it's not only going to make
01:33you feel better then, but it's also going to make it way easier for you to fall asleep later at night.
01:40It also gives you the benefits that when you get out into the sun, you also get vitamin D and you also get a
01:46little bit of movement, right? So you get some exercise, something simple, right? Doesn't have to
01:50be something overcomplicated. Even 10-20 minutes is enough to reset that circadian rhythm. So that's
01:56the first key thing. If you wake up in the morning, get out into the sun, then you're going to improve
02:01your circadian rhythm. And that's going to drastically improve the quality of your sleep. But it's also
02:05going to improve when you feel tired and when you feel awake. And the second one, which is an easy
02:10one, is to just do some exercise. So like on the days where I exercise, I'm feeling way more satisfied.
02:16I'm feeling way more tired, the good kind of tired, where I'm relaxed and it's easy for me to fall
02:23asleep. And I also can sleep way deeper. And this is proven, right? Like if you exercise, you sleep
02:29better. Like in today's day and age where we sit down, we have sedentary jobs, we drive to work, we sit
02:34in the subway, like we're not moving enough. So then doing some kind of movement every single day,
02:40is always good where you don't need to do like a super tough workout every day, but just a little
02:44bit of movement. It improves how deep you sleep. And it also balances out your stress and energy
02:50cycles. We live very stressful lives. And when we are stressed, like that affects our cortisol, which
02:56keeps us up at night. And a very good way to lower your cortisol and to make yourself more relaxed
03:03is to exercise. The third step is to not eat too late, especially carbohydrates. I recommend all my
03:09clients and me, myself, I try to not eat two or three hours before I'm going to go to sleep. And
03:15there's a few key reasons why this is the case. Number one, you don't want your digestive system
03:21to be working when you're sleeping. So like if you eat just before going to bed, your digestive system
03:26is going to be processing. That's going to increase your body's temperature and your body is going to
03:30be in processing mode. It's not going to be in relaxation and recovery mode. So you want to give
03:36your body a little bit of time for the food to process before you go to bed. The second reason,
03:41and this comes with the type of food that you're eating, if you eat high carbohydrate meals,
03:45which is going to spike your blood sugar, which is then going to trigger an insulin response. And
03:51insulin reduces the secretion of melatonin. And melatonin is the hormone that tells you when it's time
03:58to be tired and when it's time to go to sleep. When it comes to eating high carbs late at night,
04:04that's one of the reasons why you want to avoid it. And not only for sleep, but just in general,
04:09you want to eat high protein meals and that come from animal based sources. So like chicken,
04:15meat, dairy, eggs, and these types of food that are high in protein. If you mix these with a little
04:21bit of carbs, you're going to keep balanced and stable blood sugar levels, and you're not going to
04:26get this insulin spike. Also eating enough protein obviously is necessary for building and maintaining
04:32muscle. And I could talk about diets forever. So for this video, we're just going to leave it at
04:37that. Now let's continue with step number four, make your room a sleep cave. You want to make sure
04:43that your room is within a temperature of 16 to 19 degrees Celsius. It's proven that you sleep better
04:50and deeper and you recover better when you're sleeping in these temperatures. And just to give you a
04:55little story, like I just moved from one villa to another here in Bali. And when I moved into the new
05:01villa, the AC that I had in my room was some cheap version that the owner decided to put in and it
05:07wasn't really cooling the room enough. It was making it cold, but not cold enough. So I would wake up
05:12during the night and be sweating. So like here in Bali, it's like 30 degrees year round, which is
05:18quite hot. So you do need a little bit of power to bring that temperature down. So I got a new AC,
05:25more powerful, and it kept the temperature at 18 degrees. And I sleep way, way better. I don't wake
05:32up during the night anymore. And if you don't have an AC or you don't have access to install it and
05:36these things, there is like mattresses that you can put on your bed that pump cold water through the
05:41mattress and stuff like this. And most likely, if you don't have an AC, you live in a country where
05:45it's already cold. So open the window, have some fresh air come in, just make sure that the room
05:50is cold. The second thing is that you want to make sure that the room is dark. And you might
05:55think like, oh yeah, but like I have a little bit of light coming in, or you have some light from your
06:00computer or some electronics that you have, like all of those things, like your brain, it notices it.
06:08So you want it to be completely dark. If you can't put in blackout curtains, you need to get one of
06:14these sleep masks and that's going to improve your sleep. It's not just like the sleep that like
06:19you think, oh yeah, I'm sleeping good, is the quality of your sleep. Like when you actually
06:24get to sleep and staying asleep. Then you also want to make sure that the room is quiet. If you
06:28live in a city or if you have loud neighbors, the best thing that you can do is just to get
06:32earbuds. So I'm a very light sleeper. So even where I'm sleeping now, if a car comes by or a bike comes
06:38by, I hear that. So for me, the best thing was to get earbuds that I put into my ears and then I sleep
06:43super well. When you sleep, you have different cycles of your body going into deep sleep and then
06:51your body going out of deep sleep. So if you're woken up, when you're getting into deep sleep,
06:56that's going to take you, your body time to get back into that. And if you don't have enough
07:00cycles of deep sleep, you're going to have a bad night's sleep. Let's continue with point number five,
07:06which is going to be to kill the screens before going to bed. When you sit with screens,
07:11especially your phone or your computer, just like this straight on your face before going to sleep,
07:18the light that comes to your eyes from the screens is repressing or it's not allowing the
07:24melatonin, yeah, which makes you tired to be secreted in your body, which makes it so you
07:30don't feel tired. So you can sit there and scroll all night. You can sit there and scroll until super
07:34late. And I used to do this before when I was younger. I can remember when I was in university,
07:38I would lay with my laptop in my bed and I would watch series. I would watch the Game of Thrones
07:43and remember you watch one episode and then that finishes. You're like, I'm not tired. I'm going
07:48to watch another one and another one. And then you sit there and it's like three o'clock in the
07:51morning and you have class at nine and you're like, fuck. And that goes to the melatonin. Like
07:56when you have your screen this close, you're just not going to get tired. Before going to bed,
08:0130 to 60 minutes at least, try to not have any screens in front of your eyes. And I do like
08:07everyone else. Like I watch Netflix at night with my girlfriend and it's a bit different
08:12when you have the TV is far away. I noticed that for me, the TV doesn't really affect that
08:18much. I do still try not to watch Netflix just before going to bed. So like there's at least
08:2436 minutes before going to bed, but it's more the small screens like the iPad or the iPhone
08:29or your laptop, you know, having it super close to your face. And then when it's time to go to sleep,
08:36like I am, I'm the kind of person, like I'm always thinking, my mind is always going,
08:40having ideas, having thoughts, you know, like I could just sit there. If I was going to go to bed
08:45just with my thoughts, like it takes me hours to fall asleep. I'll start thinking about when I was
08:50a child, I'll start thinking about some fight that I had. My mind just goes crazy. So what I found
08:57for me, instead of sitting with my phone or a screen to kind of like not think too much before going to
09:03bed, I listened to a podcast. So I put my earphone or my air bud in my ear and I just listened to a
09:09podcast. And sometimes if I'm not very tired, I'll listen for half an hour or an hour and then I'll
09:15fall asleep. But on the days where I'm tired, like I can, I can just listen for maybe 10, 15 minutes
09:21and then I'll fall asleep and I sleep really, really good. So if you're someone like that,
09:26that you need something to help you fall asleep, then listening to a podcast is a really good
09:31solution. For me, it really helped. So it can be a podcast or an audio book, whatever you prefer.
09:36So now we're going to get into the last step and that's supplementation. And the reason why I put
09:41this last, right, is because you want to be hitting all of the other things before even thinking about
09:47supplementation. Try the other things first, and then you can start thinking about supplementation.
09:52And when it comes to the supplementation, it doesn't have to be super complicated. There's only one
09:56thing that I think everyone could benefit from is magnesium glycinate. And the reason why
10:01magnesium glycinate is good is because it's one of the most important minerals for sleep and
10:05recovery. It helps calm your nervous system. It relaxes your muscles and lowers brain activity.
10:11So you can fall asleep easier. Probably heard it before, but one thing that you don't know is that
10:16the more bioavailable version of magnesium glycinate is magnesium biglycinate. It's a bit harder to get a
10:23hold off. It's a little bit more expensive, but it's more bioavailable and it's better for your
10:28digestive system. So that's why I like to take magnesium biglycinate. But if you can't find it,
10:34then just go with magnesium glycinate. And one of the things that I found and which I think is super
10:40interesting is like I used to take magnesium from like a multivitamin. Many of the multivitamins have
10:47the cheaper version and the less bioavailable version of magnesium. And usually that's magnesium
10:53oxide because it's the cheapest to produce, but it's also the least bioavailable type of magnesium.
10:58Basically, you could stop there. You could just do all the other steps that we talked about and
11:02then take some magnesium as a supplement and you would be good. Perfection. When it comes to the
11:07timing, I just take it one hour before going to sleep. If I forget, I'll just take it just before
11:12going to sleep. Sleep is the most underrated part of your transformation. You can do everything else
11:16right. But if you don't fix this, you'll stay stuck. Energy, fat loss, muscle growth, discipline,
11:22it all depends on your sleep. So take this seriously. Apply these steps and I hope that
11:27you have a good night's sleep. Thank you for watching. I hope that you learned something
11:31and I'll see you on the next one.
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