One Principle To Live By for a Healthy Life

How the principle of longevity can provide us with a framework for ultimate health

There are so many diets, lifestyles, and exercise routines these days, that it’s become overwhelming. How are we supposed to discern what is right, or what is going to work for us?

Should we eat keto, vegan, or paleo? Should I do long cardio sessions or short HIIT sessions?

Amidst the chaos of diets and fitness regimes, one principle stands out: Longevity.

We only have to look to the places where people are living the longest — the Blue Zones — to see what lifestyle leads to a long life. According to author Dan Buettner, who wrote The Blue Zones, these areas are Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; Ogliastra Region, Sardinia; Loma Linda, California; and Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica.

I believe that utilizing the fundamentals of longevity will not only potentially give you up to an extra decade on your life as it does for those in the Blue Zones, living to enhance longevity makes you healthier and happier right now. By using these principles as a blueprint, we can optimize our health and happiness in the present.

People like Elon Musk and Tony Robbins utilize longevity principles in an attempt to surpass 100 years old — so they can continue working on their legacies. We all want to live longer, and the only way to achieve that is to change how we are living, right now.

So what are the principles of longevity?

Eat plants.

The diets of the Blue Zones are largely plant-based, consisting of up to 95% plants, however are not vegan.

They often consume fish, small amounts of red meat, and pork — eating meat only about 5 times per month, in small portions. Other animal products such as milk and eggs are consumed more regularly — about 3 times per week. They consume large amounts of legumes.

Implementation:

• Include plants as the base of your diet. Include foods such as:

Beans — black, soy, lentils 
Quinoa
Amaranth and millet
Sweet potatoes
Peas
Chickpeas
Nuts
Leafy greens

• Eat meat in moderation
• Eat dairy and eggs 3 times per week

Eat real food.

People who live the longest avoid processed and packaged foods, especially vegetable oil.

Vegetable oil is essentially poison — it’s one of the worst things you can consume. The brain is especially vulnerable to free radicals, which are molecules that can damage our cells as well as cause inflammation and disease. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals, but vegetable oils disrupt the brain’s natural antioxidant system.

Processed and packaged foods are new — we have not evolved to be able to digest them, let alone to be able to get any value from them.

Implementation:

Eat foods your ancestors would recognise — foods that come in their natural form. If you’re eating a largely plant-based diet with moderate amounts of animal products, this will be easy.

Move all day long.

We weren’t made to sit at desks all day, and then to sit in our cars for an hour, and then sit on our couches for the rest of the evening. Humans evolved to move; to sprint after prey or away from predators, to lift heavy things like carcasses and building materials, and to walk for sometimes days at a time. If we want to be healthy, we need to simulate the lifestyle that we evolved to have.

Long periods of sitting have been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and even premature death, as well as depression and obesity.

The people that live the longest tend to have high amounts of low-level movement in their day; they are working out in the fields, tending to livestock, walking everywhere.

Implementation:

• Do cardio-based exercise for 2.5–5 hours every week

Ideally engaging in this sort of movement every second day. This can include running, swimming, biking, or anything that makes you break a sweat and which you can continue for an extended period of time. I love to climb up mountains and hills. Being in nature makes you forget you’re even exercising, but your heart rate will skyrocket on the uphill part.

• Weight train

Again, this could look like anything. As long as you are putting your muscles under tension — whether bodyweight, free weight, or exercise machines. Putting a load on your muscles will ensure that they stay strong, and weight training also has numerous other benefits for heart health, mood, brain health, sleep, metabolism.

• Walk a minimum of 6000 steps a day

Aiming for 6000 steps a day ensures that you are moving all day long, because unless you’re going on a hike, you probably won’t do these all at once.

“A sedentary life causes you to breathe only shallowly, and this strains the heart and starves the brain… You think you are fatigued or bored at the end of a day of sitting, but it’s really more than that. Your brain is starved of oxygen, and so are the tissues in your body.” — Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar, Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life

• Move for at least 5 minutes every hour

While this can be challenging when you’re focused on a project, or even if you’re watching a movie, it’s so important to move regularly. Studies have shown that even as little as 2 minutes of movement every hour can offset the consequences of a sedentary lifestyle, and decrease the risk of premature death by 33%. It may be even more important for overall health and longevity than doing a workout.

Modify your environment to encourage this movement: standing work stations, heavy things to lift or swing in your office or living room (e.g. kettlebells, dumbbells, or a pull-up bar)

Prioritize socializing.

All the people living in the Blue Zones have a strong sense of community. They also put their loved ones first. They live with, or at least near, their extended family.

They also have “tribes” — tight-knit groups of about 5 friends that remain friends for life. These are the people you can always rely on, that will love you unconditionally, that you can go out and experience the world with.

Implementation:

• Prioritize your family and friends
• Make time to spend time with friends — create your tribe
• Stay in touch with and support your extended family — especially parents and grandparents

Drink water, wine, and coffee.

People in the Blue Zones drink water — a lot of water. And not really any other drink except red wine and coffee.

They drink red wine daily with meals. Those who drink moderate amounts of wine tend to outlive those who don’t drink wine. Red wine is full of flavonoids — compounds that reduce cancer and heart disease.

They also drink large amounts of coffee, which has been linked again and again to a longer life. To learn all about the benefits of coffee, you can read this article:

Implementation:

• Drink water all day long — starting with a large glass as soon as you wake up. I always keep a big, 300mL glass of water on my nightstand so that as soon as I wake up I can hydrate
• Drink a glass of red wine most days
• Drink 2–3 cups of good quality coffee each day

Fast.

All the Blue Zones engage in some sort of fasting protocol. There is no shortage of research on the benefits of fasting on longevity.

Going for extended periods of time without food gives the digestive system a break, and induces cellular autophagy. This is essentially a cleaning out process where the body gets rid of old cells and cellular waste products.

Similarly, during the day take breaks from eating. Try not to snack between meals. It will have benefits for your gut as well as your circadian rhythm:

“By giving your body a break from food for five or six hours, you are allowing your digestive track to rest and reset its circadian rhythm.” — Dr. Suhas Kshirsagar

Implementation:

Experiment with different forms of fasting to see what works best for your body and your schedule. Different forms of fasting include:

• Intermittent fasting — regular fasts with 8–12-hour feeding windows and 12–16-hour fasts. For example, finishing dinner at 7 pm and consuming no calories until 11 am the next day — this would be a feeding window of 8 hours and a fast of 16 hours
• One meal a day (OMAD) — eat dinner, and then don’t eat again until dinner the next night
• Extended fasts — this is where you go for a day or more without food. Do research before trying this one to ensure you do it safely. Extended fasts are typically 3–5 days

Have a purpose.

People living in the Blue Zones know why they wake up in the morning. The Japanese call this Ikigai — a reason for being. The Nicoyans call this Plan de Vida — why I wake up in the morning.

Having a sense of purpose can prevent heart attack and stroke, reduce chances of developing dementia, and help you sleep better and live longer. One study found that those who can articulate their purpose in life live 7 years longer than those who can’t.

Also of note is the practice of gratitude. Keeping a gratitude journal, or at least speaking to what you are grateful for every day, has a range of health benefits.

Implementation:

• Find your purpose

It’s really important that you figure out your purpose, your vision, your mission, your Why. Whatever terminology works for you, you need to figure out and articulate the specific reason you get out of bed each day, the reason you were put on this earth, the one mission for your life, the gift you have to give the world. Especially now.

This is likely going to be hard, when everything feels foggy and unclear, and you’re maybe feeling a lack of purpose altogether. But trust me, this one will help you out.

I recommend reading Simon Sinek’s Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team to help you articulate your Why. He provides a very straightforward process to discovering, and putting into words, your Why. If you can’t access the book, he has information on his website. You can also google ‘finding your purpose’ or something of the like, look on YouTube, or find some podcasts. It won’t be a quick process, so don’t expect to have your final product today.

Something else that hugely helped me to figure out my Why, was creating a morning routine. Morning routines are very popular now, and there is no shortage of articles written on them. The specific morning routine that helped me can be found here:

• Gratitude journal

There are so many ways to implement this — there are hundreds of gratitude journals you can buy that will guide you through the process. I include gratitude in my regular journalling practice. In the morning when I am reviewing my plan for the day, I will write down one thing I am grateful for. In the evening when I am reviewing my day, I write down 3 things I am grateful for.

It doesn’t have to be elaborate. A lot of the time I am grateful for my cup of coffee, or for podcasts, or for my cat. Sometimes I struggle to find a single thing I am grateful for, but I sit there until I can think of one. After watching The Theory of Everything, I was grateful that I have full use of my body. It can literally be anything — it is the act of consciously thinking about that which you are grateful for that has innumerable benefits.

Reduce stress.

We’re currently experiencing an epidemic of stress, and it’s killing us. Humans haven’t evolved to be able to withstand the chronic stress that our lifestyles have created. In the days of our ancestors, stress included being chased by predatory animals, and sometimes other tribes of people. We had to fight or flee, and our lives were in danger. These days, stress is usually non-life-threatening. A report due at work, bills to pay, a long to-do list. While very stressful, they’re not going to kill you. But they’re having a huge impact on your health.

Implementation:

So what can you do? You need to communicate to yourself that you’re safe in order to turn down the volume of your sympathetic nervous system and restore some balance.

• Breathwork

A great way to achieve this is through breathwork. We don’t breathe well anymore. We often breathe shallowly and through our mouths. Both of these actually stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, therefore increasing stress.

Breathing properly is so important. In fact, I even recognized this fact when I was 16 years old. I bought a book about breathing, and I made it my summer holiday mission to learn how to breathe properly. Simply breathing through your nose, and ensuring your stomach, rather than your chest, is rising, will be incredibly powerful for modulating your nervous system. This will communicate to your brain that you are safe.

As you continue doing this regularly, you actually change your autonomic response. Your body begins to be better able to modulate your fight or flight responses to stress and you will be better able to move in and out of this state at will.

Further ways to reduce stress:

• Massage
• Hot and cold exposure
• Meditation

Adopt a form of spirituality.

98% of the centenarians that Dan Buettner interviewed belonged to some form of faith-based group. The denomination didn’t matter — what matters is that they engage in a form of spirituality.

Implementation:

If you belong to a religion and actively engage in religious practices, then you have this one covered.

Otherwise, you have some other options. I always struggled with this one, being non-religious. I wanted to have some form of spirituality in my life but couldn’t figure out what was going to work for me.

Here are some non-religious options:

• Meditation
• Journalling
• Daily meditations, such as Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic
• Exercise

Include hormetic stressors.

A hormetic stressor is essentially anything that is good for you in low doses but might kill you in high doses. Anything that induces a temporary, small amount of stress on your body is going to be beneficial. Some examples are:

• Exercise
• Hot and cold exposure
• Fasting

Implementation:

• Exercise regularly — daily if possible
• Expose yourself to extreme temperatures — saunas, hot baths, cold showers, cold plunges, the winter air while wearing a t-shirt
• Engage in regular fasts

In Conclusion

Aiming for longevity, rather than fitness, is arguably an effective way to reach your goals and to live both a healthier and happier life. The principles of longevity outlined in this article can provide an effective and straight-forward framework for health and fitness.

To implement this framework in your life, adhere to the following protocols:

• Eat plants
• Eat real foods
• Move all day long
• Prioritize socializing
• Drink water, wine, and coffee
• Fast
• Have a purpose
• Reduce stress
• Engage in a form of spirituality
• Include hormetic stressors regularly