Changing your life for the better can be tough. Whether it be adding daily exercise to your schedule or changing your eating habits, change is hard and unpleasant. That’s why people started looking into biohacking their diets. It is a slow and steady process that can have huge benefits to both the mind and body.
What is a biohacking diet? To put it simply, biohacking your diet means that you will use the knowledge you already have and learn about what works best for your own body to slowly make incremental changes to your diet and lifestyle. You use your biological makeup to understand how to live a healthier life. You are essentially biohacking your body.
This diet will change the chemistry and physiology of your body with the changes you make in what you give and take away from your diet and daily life. The desired results of this diet include weight loss as well as enhanced brain functioning. You can look forward to quicker thinking, better moods, and zero cravings by taking up the journey of biohacking your diet.
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What is a Biohacking Diet?
A biohacking diet consists of small and slow lifestyle and diet changes according to what works best for your biology. The diet is experimental in most regards, but there is a way to tell what kind of nutrients you need through a blood test. The biohacking diet is pursued through a slow and steady technique but is said to have extremely fast results. This is the perfect diet for those that don’t know where to start or don’t want to change their lifestyle and diet completely.
Biohacking allows you to customize a diet that will work for your body and your body alone. By taking information from your blood, allergies, gut health, and past health you can crack the puzzle of your health and begin a new lifestyle that fits your body and mind the best. This is the most effective way to get the best results for your body and a more positive mindset that will last. And even better, you can change it as you go to better fit your needs.
What Are the Top 5 Ways of Biohacking Your Diet?
Biohacking your diet can be done in so many ways that the options are really endless. It can start with something as simple as cutting pop out of your diet. This will snowball into eventually cutting sugar entirely and meditating in the sunlight. This is just an example of how much biohacking can change your life. There are so many techniques to use when biohacking your diet. But because the diet starts slow, we will too with the top 5 ways to biohack your diet.
Meditation and Gratitude
When life gets you down and stress is weighing on your mind like a ton of bricks, meditation can ease your soul. Stress can cause many health issues both physically and mentally. The art of meditation has been practiced for centuries, dating all the way back to roughly 476-221 BCE. It is proven to encourage positive mindfulness and controlled breathing.
Controlling your breathing will relax your body and slow your heart rate. With a more relaxed state of mind, this will improve your lifestyle tenfold by putting you in a better mood and keeping you more focused. Meditation gives you control of your thoughts and body. It allows you to decide what you want to focus on and how much it affects your mentality.
Taking it a step further, you can begin to be more mindful of your gratitude for things or people in your life. A good way to do this is by taking a walk or keeping a journal, forcing you to think about what you are grateful for. With life being so fast-paced and busy, we don’t often have a chance to slow down and think about these things. By keeping a journal or going for a daily walk, it gives you a chance to remind yourself of the things you are thankful for.
By doing this, you will have the opportunity to be more mindful of how you feel, act, and live. Thinking about your day after the day is over will show you what you could possibly improve, whether it be your attitude or your diet. A good diet will improve your mood and a good attitude will improve your relationships. After a while, you will be able to show your gratitude without even thinking about it. This will help you have a happier and healthier lifestyle.
Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is proven to help you lose fat quickly while gaining muscle mass and energy. Fasting doesn’t have to be extreme and frankly, it isn’t practical. There are a few methods done today for intermittent fasting including the 5:2 method and the 16/8 method. The methods are similar in regard to the strict eating schedule, but otherwise, they differ immensely.
The 5:2 method allows you to eat 5 days a week and fast for the next two days, repeating the cycle every week. You can change your eating schedule up however you want, but the idea is to fast completely at least a couple times a week. The 16/8 method is different because instead of fasting entire days, you restrict your time to eat throughout the day. For example, you could eat between the hours of 10 am to 6 pm and fast for the remaining hours of the day.
Intermittent fasting has been shown to not only help you lose weight but also improves other health risks such as heart disease and bad cholesterol. Studies even show that short-term fasting can help prevent cancer and positively impact brain plasticity and neurodegenerative disorders.
Nutrigenomics
Taking a more scientific approach to biohacking your diet, nutrigenomics looks at your genetic makeup and shows you how specific foods interact with your genes. This technique is extremely controversial and hasn’t been researched to an appropriate extent to say that it, without a doubt, works. Even with the controversy, this diet is very popular. This diet isn’t just meant to help you lose excess weight. It targets your mind as well, finding a way to improve the way you think and feel.
Start Spending Time Outside
The positive impacts of sunlight and fresh air can be life-changing for both the mind and body. The nutrients in the sunlight your skin absorbs and the fresh air your lungs absorb can increase your oxygen levels and your vitamin D levels. Not only that, but the phytoncides produced by plants help increase your white blood cell count, which boosts your immune system and helps you fight off diseases and infections.
Immersing yourself in the fresh outdoors is a free stress reliever and energy booster. This will not only increase your energy and improve your mood, but it encourages healthy activities such as hiking and running. Going outside regularly is good for both your mental health and your physical health.
Music for the Mind
Music is a stress reliever for many. But what many people don’t know is that it has been scientifically proven that streamlined music can both relieve stress and increase awareness. Streamlined music can be used as a tool to focus on work or school and with long term use, start improving mood. It has been shown to have an effect on the frequency of brainwaves your brain is producing, which ultimately tells you how aware you are.
An increased awareness can benefit both your personal life and your professional life. Using streamlined music can help increase work productivity and your personal relationships as an effect of its positive impact on your mood and mindfulness.
How Do I Measure Progress in Biohacking My Diet?
As I mentioned before, keeping a gratitude journal is a good practice to start because it helps show you what you could be working on and reminds you of the things you should appreciate. Another thing it can do is show you the progress you have made since you began the journey. By keeping track of your daily activities and moods, you will be able to go back a reread your entries.
Another way to track your progress in your biohacking journey is by getting an at-home blood test. There is a test kit called Ixcela, that tests the gut microbiomes, giving you all of the information you need to improve your diet and lifestyle. Every time you use this testing kit you can jot down the results and look back on them to see just how far you have come.
This type of testing kit has been extensively researched in order to give you the most information possible to help you better yourself. With their testing kit, they will also give you a customized fitness plan and nutrition plan that will improve your gut health, as well as supplements you might need that you aren’t getting out of the food you do eat.
Additionally, there are many gadgets that can be used to help you monitor your heartbeat, sleep patterns, and sometimes even body temperature. A well-known product that does this is the Fitbit Alta. It can track your sleep and heart rate, and automatically log it into an app on your phone so that you can look back and see any progress you might’ve made. Many of these apps allow you to input any weight gain or weight loss as well, which can help you keep track of your diet.
In Conclusion
There are many more ways to biohack your diet, including the Bulletproof diet which is meant to help you discover the best food for your mind and body so that you can live a healthier and smarter life. Biohacking your diet can be beneficial in so many ways, and as long as you are doing it mindfully and safely, there is no harm in it. A few techniques to stay away from are DIY biohacking and Grinder because the safety concerns are pretty extensive.
The best way to get the most out of biohacking safely is to educate yourself on how your chosen technique can affect you in the long run. Many scientists recommend against biohacking not because it is not safe, but because not understanding what you are doing to your body can have unintentional consequences that you won’t likely be able to spot until it is too late. That is why it is so important to track your progress and keep a close eye on how your body is responding.
