Here’s How I Attained Better Health and More Energy After My Half Century

Ten holistic ways to my health and vitality only after hitting my 50s, leaving the problems behind joyfully

We start life from nothing and end it with nothing, both being beyond our control. Between these two nothings, there is something that we call the physical body that we can control to some extent.

I frame nothing as the mind and spirit because they are intangible and cannot be measured empirically. This powerful spiritual perspective reflects scientific truth because we are nothing at a subatomic level, as observed by quantum physicists.

Until my 50s, I lacked this profound knowledge and struggled with a mediocre life with unchallenged assumptions from my formal education.

I saw the accurate picture with informal learning and sensible experimentation. I started feeling the joy of a healthy body and mind only after reaching my half-century. Beforehand my life was fragmented and unbalanced.

Not being able to see the big picture of well-being and the purpose of life delayed my transformation. Identifying these missing links empowered me to re-engineer and redesign my life passionately.

The primary issue was to live the lives of others rather than my own. This realization opened a new window. It allowed me to reassess my purpose and create viable solutions to gain an authentic life. They resonated with my mind, heart, and spirit.

I underline the concepts of fragmentation and unbalance, as they designated the root causes of my health issues preventing me from tapping into my potential. By observing the lives of others, I noticed that I was not the only one.

This is not a prescriptive story, as details of my solutions might not apply to your life or work for you. Therefore, I only focus on the principles that might apply to you.

We all perceive the world differently. Although we have similar physical structures, our programming is different. I invite you to look at my discovery and see this personal story as a map for your unique journey.

We can only unlock the secrets to health and happiness after knowing ourselves and setting our purpose in life. The key themes of this story are balance and integration of body and mind endorsed by holistic principles.

I structured the story under two main headings, psychological and physical aspects, and summarized the critical points of my protocol under ten headings without going into theoretical details.

Part I: Mind and Spirit — Psychological Aspects

This section describes the psychological aspects that helped me manage my thoughts and regulate my emotions.

1 — Having an Open Mind and Adopting a Growth Mindset

My transition to a better life started with an open mind and choosing a growth mindset. This approach allowed me to challenge my beliefs and realize my values.

My new mindset enabled me to accept my uniqueness and create a new improvement plan that suits my needs and goals. I embrace self-care, self-compassion, forgiveness, self-love, and self-confidence.

The critical success factor was priming my mind to achieve anything I wanted within realistic boundaries. I took personal responsibility and acted boldly about experimenting safely and cautiously.

I suffered from a perfection problem in my younger years. It caused me analysis paralysis affecting my creativity and productivity. I chose imperfection, allowing me to achieve more with less effort.

The fundamental shift was moving from a fixed to a growth mindset. I focussed on opportunities rather than obstacles. I accept situations, events, and people as they are and approach them with empathy and compassion.

2 — Rewarding Small Achievements, Scheduling Fun Activities. Gaining More Hobbies

Daily biochemical boosts with everyday achievements can build up and rewire the brain for happiness and joy. This is a fundamental approach to building healthy and desired mental habits.

The plasticity of the brain creates new neural pathways and gradually strengthens them. Thus, when I complete a small task, my brain recognizes the accomplishment and releases good feel hormones.

When the brain perceives a tedious task, it will naturally resist. The primitive brain never stops worrying, even if there is nothing to be concerned about at a specific time.

If left unattended, it manufactures problems, creates hypothetical scenarios, and increases our anxiety. However, our neocortex can challenge false beliefs created by the old brain. So the new brain is at our disposal for improvement.

By scheduling fun activities, I overcame amygdala hijacks. I achieved this by not giving idle time to the old brain to worry. The more fun I had, the more creative and productive I felt.

Scheduling fun activities also helped me defeat mild depression. I made starting the day with a spark a habit. My bespoke hobbies help me have a joyful life improving my mental health.

3 — Regulating Emotions and Improving Cognitive Flexibility

The most important way to regulate my emotions was to observe, accept, and express them healthily without suppressing them. The next important point was setting healthy boundaries.

As I suffered from ambition and constant agitation toward perceived success, another solution was to learn to slow down intentionally. Slowing down allowed me to enter the flow state faster and stay longer.

Then I discovered the power of gratitude nourishing my mind. I counted my blessings with realistic optimism. As a result, I don’t feel anger, jealousy, guilt, boredom, fear, or anxiety when I am grateful.

I record my gratitude daily. I also show my gratitude to others, improving my relationship with them. I extend my appreciation to expressive writing and self-talk for having a calming effect on the brain.

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adjust our thinking when facing multiple variables in an event or situation. It refers to observing, understanding, and assessing our thoughts before they turn into unpleasant emotions.

I gained this mental flexibility by acknowledging my thoughts and emotions without suppressing them. Staying optimistic and keeping hope with an open mind increased my cognitive flexibility.

4 — Acting Mindfully and Meditating Regularly

Meditating three times daily was the viable solution to lower my stress and anxiety. I learned mindfulness techniques and cognitive behavioral self-therapies with my new mindset.

Meditating regularly after a year, I felt noticeable changes in my physical and mental health. From the biological perspective, I quickly lost visceral fat and maintained lean muscles with a denser bone structure.

From a mental health perspective, my stress and anxiety lowered, as evident by optimized cortisol. My body tapped into fat stores much easier when cortisol gets lowered.

Besides, excessive cortisol might be toxic to the body. When meditating regularly and constantly acting mindfully, I slept better. Sleep deprivation was the cause of elevated cortisol, insulin resistance, and leptin resistance.

5 — Working in a Flow State Intentionally

A massive shift happened when I learned how to enter and maintain a flow state. Before, I quickly got annoyed, frustrated, stressed, and anxious.

When working in a flow state, I started enjoying my work with less effort, time, and stress but with more joy and fun. Productivity was a bonus.

Defeating work stress made me feel younger. I no longer see my job as work but as a hobby or challenge.

Since we spend most of our day at work, our reactions to work and dealing with people cause physical and mental stress.

With attention and intention, I created more AHA moments allowing me to tap into my subconscious mind by using the Reticular Activating System.

6 — Improving Relationships and Broadening Social Connections

My readers keep asking me how relationships and social connections relate to health and longevity. The answer is the adverse effects of stress and anxiety on our mental health.

The emotional part of the brain (the limbic system) craves relationships, acceptance, and appreciation. These are natural feelings. The amygdala senses the situation and creates more anxiety signals.

Our stress levels increase when we are rejected, not valued, or not appreciated by our loved ones, friends, colleagues, or community members.

When I had better relationships and met many new supportive people in my circles, my stress and anxiety lowered, and my motivation, creativity, and productivity increased.

Improvements in the previous sections helped me enhance my relationships and create new, more meaningful social connections. I also observed this in the lives of centenarians.

Improving my emotional intelligence contributed to establishing better relationships with loved ones and others. But, my relationships with others enhanced when I gained emotional maturity, using intellect and intuition.

Compassion and empathy for others are critical capabilities for emotional maturity. Thus, self-love, self-compassion, and self-confidence sharpened my emotional mastery, improving my mental health.

Part II: — Body — Physical Aspects

In this section, I describe the physical aspects which helped me balance hormones and neurotransmitters, improving my hormonal intelligence.

1 — Fueling the Body with a Customized Diet

Nutritional deficiencies caused by low-fat diets in my younger years adversely affected my health. My body struggled to get the required energy and nutrients from my diet.

Nutritional deficiencies in macronutrients and micronutrients are a severe problem for healthspan and lifespan. Too little or too many macronutrients and micronutrients can be problematic.

Another problem was not consuming bioavailable proteins, falsely believing protein from dense foods would cause cancer.

My old diet caused essential micronutrient deficiencies, leading to undesirable health conditions such as anemia and immunity issues.

After consuming adequate healthy fats, enough bioavailable proteins, and balanced micronutrients, my body and mind felt excellent. My previous health conditions disappeared.

I made significant improvements after customizing my diet and following a diet that suited my needs. Besides, replacing carbs with healthy fats and intermittent fasting helped me enter ketosis and gain more BDNF.

I gained more benefits by practicing one meal a day plan. Consuming omega-3 fatty acids and other healthy fats nourishes the brain.

2 — Fasting and Gaining a Fat-Adapted Body

Frequent eating was a problem for me. But fasting helped to rejuvenate my cells. It led to a remarkable physical transformation, making my body fat-adapted. I no longer run out of energy.

Besides intermittent fasting via one meal a day, after each long-term fasting, my muscles enhanced, and my visceral fat shrank.

But fasting also helped me improve my mental health and performance as ketosis increased brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).

Fasting improved my cellular health. It cleared accumulated garbage from the cells, fed them with premium power (ketones), rested cells to rejuvenate, reduced oxidative stress, lowered inflammation, and activated self-healing mechanisms.

The key concepts to improve the health of cells and mitochondria were the natural cleansing process known as autophagy and mitophagy processes clearing accumulated waste from my body.

Improving cellular health has reduced chronic stress, lowered inflammation, strengthened mitochondria, and initiated autophagy.

3 — Moving the Body Joyfully and Recovering Timely

I knew sedentary life was the root cause of health conditions. Thus, I was always active. However, my exercise regime was problematic. For example, long-distance running inflamed my body.

After modifying my workout from long cardio to high-intensity training, I gained noticeable benefits. My hormonal profile improved, and chronic inflammation was reduced.

My solution was to see exercise as a hobby. Instead of running long distances, which caused inflammatory joint pain, I started walking barefoot on the beach or grass, giving me joy.

I replaced excessive cardio with high-intensity training and more resistance training using calisthenics and moderate weightlifting.

My favorite daily exercise is jumping on a trampoline which has minimal impact on my joints while activating the lymphatic system that removes toxins from the body.

I do breathing and gentle exercises to relax the body and activate the neocortex and parasympathetic nervous system. I also use dry saunas, ice baths, and daily cold showers to benefit from thermogenesis for recovery.

4 — Getting Restorative Sleep and Regular Breaks

When I experienced disturbed sleep, I felt awful. I tried sleep aids which made it worse. I tried prescribed sleep medicine which didn’t work.

Developing good sleep hygiene helped me get quality sleep. Restorative sleep is vital to health. When I improved my sleep, I reaped many benefits.

The previous items helped me solve my sleep issues and get more restorative sleep, balancing my hormones and neurotransmitters.

Thanks to restorative sleep, elevated cortisol levels got optimized, insulin resistance disappeared, abdominal bloating diminished, and the loose skin got firmer. The first time after 50, I gained six-pack abs.

Although sleep helped rejuvenate the body, I also needed to take more breaks at work and rest my body and mind. I diligently scheduled my work and break hours to maintain my health and happiness.

Conclusions and Takeaways

I gave examples from my diet, exercise, sleep, work, and relationships. But all these items are individual matters.

If you read my points with an open mind, this article might save you time designing lifestyle choices as a physical and mental model.

You don’t need to copy my protocol. By understanding the principles behind my protocol, you might design better protocols for yourself.

You might get ideas from the experiences of successful people and customize the choices and design them as they serve you. Our choices and decisions determine our success or failure.

The body and mind are tightly connected. An overactive amygdala can lead to excessive stress and anxiety. If these conditions are not treated in time, they might lead to depression and neurodegenerative disorders.

Chronological aging is inevitable, but healthy lifestyle choices can slow biological aging. Without underlying health conditions or genetic defects, staying healthy and young is possible with healthy lifestyle choices.

The bottom line is we need to take personal responsibility to improve our mental capabilities, which can contribute to our physical and mental health. Besides, seeking help when needed is vital.

I shared my approach to forming abundant energy in four steps. I documented why I diligently refined and strengthened 16 habits as I aged. I also described ten lifehacks schools couldn’t teach me.

We can stay healthy and age gracefully by choosing healthy lifestyle choices and living in the right zone. Lifestyle choices can improve our health and make us feel younger as we get older.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

I publish my lifestyle, health, and well-being stories on EUPHORIA. My focus is on cellular, mitochondrial, metabolic, and mental health. Here is my collection of Insightful Life Lessons from Personal Stories.

Disclaimer: My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives to provide information and create awareness.

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