#17: The 5am Club

Hey friends,

The last couple of weeks we talked about a wide variety of food/nutrition related topics, but this week we’re changing pace a bit. I’m going to talk through why the morning is an essential time of the day to improve your health and overall productivity.

Weekly Action Point

⏰Set your alarm for 15 minutes earlier than you usually would for this week, and go for a 10 minute walk.

A couple of rules:

1. You go for your walk before looking at your phone. No social media, no email, nothing. If you use your phone for an alarm like I do, shouldn’t even touch your phone other than to turn the alarm off. This means no music or podcast for your walk. It’s only 10 minutes.
2. Do it before drinking any coffee or eating anything. Should just roll out of bed, put on some clothes, and walk.

The vast majority of folks who read this are located in Minnesota, and I hate to break it to you guys, but our time for morning walks that aren’t freezing is getting short.

Let’s enjoy them while we can. I’m sure you’ll be surprised how much better you feel in the mornings just after a week of doing this.

The 5am Club

I recently read a book called “The 5am Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life”. It was a great read, kind of a quirky fictional story combined with personal improvement. The fictional take on a personal growth book made it much more interesting and easy to digest, definitely recommend.

It actually prompted me to write about why I think the morning is the most important time of day for reaching your fitness goals and just generally improving the quality of your life.

Yes, that’s an affiliate link. I’m not talking about the book because of the $0.25 or whatever I would get from you purchasing through my link. Just figure if I want to link something, may as well be an affiliate link 🤷‍♂️ 

The benefits of Becoming a Morning Person

Ever told yourself you were gonna workout after your work day, and then for some reason it didn’t end up happening?

Maybe you ended up having a crazy busy day at work and were totally exhausted. Or maybe you felt that you’d rather spend time with family or friends. Maybe during your work day a whole bunch of things popped up that you realized you needed to do when you got home. Laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning etc.

There’s a million reasons why we might skip a workout that we told ourselves we were gonna do.

I know for sure it’s happened to me before.

Motivation and productivity go down as the day goes on, so as it gets later in the day, people are generally less likely to feel like doing hard things. For many, a workout counts as a hard thing that they might not want to do. When you’re tired at the end of your day, are you more likely to go workout or sit down and watch your favorite Netflix show?

A workout is one example in the context of fitness, but I believe it applies to any area of life.

Family, friends, career, and health all have challenges or things you might not feel like doing, but know that you should do anyways. I organize my life around the belief that I should be doing all of those things as early in the day as possible.

In my opinion, there are so many benefits to getting an earlier start on the day, and more specifically, I wanna talk about the benefits of exercising early in the morning.

Here’s a couple that I would highlight:

🧠 Reduces depression and anxiety

• Morning exercise releases endorphins, which helps to improve your mood and sets a positive tone for the day

• Waking up earlier to exercise also helps to relieve stress and calm any nerves that might be causing you to feel anxious

🔁 Increased consistency and habit building 

• If you workout first thing in the morning, there are fewer distractions and interuptions (most people are still sleeping)

• Allows you to consistently workout at the same time every day, which helps you to build a routine and build momentum

• Builds discipline and habits, which will carry over into things such as your food choices

📈 Boosts Productivity

• Morning exercise increases your energy levels, which allows you to get more done. That’s helpful for fitness, but also for making you better at your job and being a better husband/wife/parent/friend

• Generally speaking, you’ll feel more organized and on top of things because you have an established routine

 💤Better Sleep

• Waking up and exercising early will help you fall asleep earlier and improve the quality of your sleep each night

• Sleep of course is the cornerstone of any fitness goal, so better sleep will make it easier to build muscle or lose fat

⏲️ More Evening Free Time

• Are you more likely to spend time with your family and friends between 4:30 and 8am, or between 4 and 9pm? I’d say for almost everyone, they’re more likely to devote time to relationships in the evening. If I asked my friends to do something together at 5am, they’d laugh in my face. Ask them to grab dinner at 5pm? Different story.

• Working out in the morning frees up your evenings for other priorities such as socializing, hobbies, TV shows, or whatever else might be enhancing the quality of your life beyond just your fitness goals. Don’t spend your evenings in the gym when there are so many other things you could be doing with that time.

😁Feel Good About Yourself 

• Starting the day with a workout gives you a feeling of accomplishment. You feel good about yourself knowing that you already knocked out your workout while most of the world was sleeping (which also ties in with reduction in depression and anxiety)

• For me, knowing I moved my body in the morning makes me feel positive about the rest of the day. No matter what happens, the day is already a win after I’ve worked out in the morning

🔋Your “Natural Caffeine” 

• As I already mentioned, morning workouts boost your energy. Getting your heart pumping and blood flowing is a great way to wake up the mind and body

• You’ll feel more awake throughout the day, reduce the tired/groggy feeling that comes after lunch, and maybe even drink less caffeine

Ben’s Best

🥗Now that we’re getting into fall, I start using my slow cooker for meal prep more frequently. Here’s the recipe I prepped this week:

stealth_health_life

View more on Instagram

*For the sauce, I couldn’t find white miso paste, so I just skipped it and thought it turned out fine. I love peanut butter, so really that’s all I would have needed for this to be good…

🎙️Podcasts I loved this Week: 

• Mind Pump 2442: How Strong Should You Be? The Fastest Way to Get Bigger & Stronger at the Same Time

• Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal: How to Stay Focused and Beat Distraction - Nir Eyal

My goal of this week was not necessarily to tell you that you have to wake up at 5am, because I know that sounds awful for some people. Rather, my goal was to hopefully get you thinking a little bit about what your morning routine looks like. Are you putting time and attention into making sure you have an awesome morning?

Or do you just roll out of bed and go through the motions to start your day? Being intentional about your morning can have a profound impact on your day, and putting a bunch of good days together leads to good weeks, better months, and great lives.

In next week’s newsletter I’m going to talk about some tips and advice towards becoming a morning person with an excellent routine. We’ll see if we can actually put some of this stuff into action instead of just talking about why it might be beneficial.

Have an awesome week!

Ben