Episode 81
Strivers, have you ever wondered what do I do to keep myself well? As a lifestyle medicine physician, I prioritize the daily interactions with our environment to treat and prevent illness. This podcast episode walks you through how I use lifestyle medicine to keep myself healthy, vibrant, and full of purpose and joy.
Lifestyle Medicine with Dr. Harris
How You Can Benefit From Rootine
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Dr. Richard Harris: Hello and welcome to the Strive for Great Health Podcast with your host, Dr. Richard Harris. This is a podcast where we empower you to take control of your health with lifestyle medicine and the health mindset to live with purpose and joy. And today’s episode is going to be a little different. It’s going to be less sciency.
Well, maybe, you know, me, I always like to dig into some science, but we’re going to be talking about a day in my life. I’m going to walk you through what I do on a daily basis. It’s something that I’ve alluded to before on the podcast with different bits and pieces, but we’re going to go through a full day and it’s going to be talking about exercise, nutrition, my mindfulness, supplements, everything that I do on a daily basis to help keep myself well. So are you ready to boost your health EQ and IQ? Cue the music!
Real quick before we get started. The Strive for Great Health Podcast is a lifestyle wellness and mindset podcast, but we can’t put everything about health, wellness, and mindset into the podcast. There’s just not enough time. It’s such a complex subject. That’s why we created our lifestyle medicine and health mindset wellness courses.
Now you may be asking, are these courses right for me? If you’re someone who wants to increase their health span, longevity, how long we live without chronic disease. If you’re someone who’s been told you have risk factors. If you’re someone that’s been told, there are some things that you need to watch out. For some things you need to change.
Otherwise you’re heading down a road that leads to disease. Or if you’re someone who has a chronic ailment and you’re wanting a more holistic approach to fix your self, to heal yourself, then the wellness courses are for you. If you’re not willing to invest in your health. If you’re not someone who is willing to do things in a sustainable manner, if you’re someone who’s looking for a quick fix, then the courses are not for you.
The courses are designed to teach you everything that I have learned reading hundreds of studies, hours of clinical practice, years of devotion to this lifestyle medicine and the health mindset. So you can live a life full of joy and purpose. If that sounds good to you, head to theghwellness.com and click courses at the top now to this week’s episode.
Dr. Richard Harris: Hello, Strivers and welcome to this episode of the podcast where we’re going to be talking about me. Something that I actually don’t really like talking about, but it’s something that I get asked all the time. Well, Richard, what do you do? And we’ve alluded to my daily routine here on the podcast before, but I wanted to go more in depth on what I do on a daily basis to keep myself healthy.
So are you ready? Let’s dive in to my routine. Of course it starts with in the morning I wake up, I usually will either walk [00:04:00] my dog or say my prayers and meditate. And I like to do belly breathing or diaphragmatic breathing when I do my meditation. My prayers usually are about 20 minutes or so. And then I’ll do about three to four minutes of meditation afterwards with belly breathing.
And that’s focusing on some verses of the Bible or some things that I’m really trying to work through. And then I’ll either walk my dog first or I’ll do the prayers first. It kind of varies depending on what time I wake up. After that, then I head to the gym. It’s time to get in that routine exercise. A lot of people ask me what I take for a pre-workout.
I actually make my own. What I do is I do the real ketones. I mix that with some acetyl carnitine. Acetyl carnitine helps shuttle fatty acids, long chain fatty acids to our mitochondria so they get burned for energy. I told you there’s gonna be some science people. You know me always gotta have some science.
But that helps you generate more energy. And then I also use some leucine. Leucine is a very powerful stimulator of muscle growth, of protein synthesis. And I use glutamine as well. Glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in our blood, and it is also a strong stimulus for protein synthesis, AKA muscle growth.
I take creatine. We’ve talked about creatine before on the podcast. Some people take it after they work out. Some people take it before. I like to do five grams before. There is a study that showed that it was more effective that way. And then finally, I also take some performance mushrooms. It’s from Laird it’s a four or five mushroom blend, and I scoop that in with my protein shake.
And that is what I take in the morning for my pre-work. And then I will also take the product that we talked about here on the podcast for longevity, the C60. I’ll take that in the morning before I work out, that helps give me some mental clarity and focus throughout the day. If you haven’t checked out that podcast with Chris Burress, definitely check it out.
It’s a really interesting molecule, powerful antioxidant and improves longevity, which is something that we’re all about. So I shake up my ketone, carnitine, creatine, glutamine, leucine shake, and then I’m at the gym. And what I do at the gym varies depending on what week it is. So I have two different workout cycles and my workouts are three weeks on one week off. The off week I just do some cardio. But what I do is either a regular workout where I’m doing three or four exercises for four sets, 10 reps. And I usually take about a minute in between sets. I actually set a timer for this, and then I will do four workouts a week.
Usually for me that’s Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday is a cardio day. Thursday, Friday, Saturday is a cardio day. Sunday is rest, and then that’s one cycle. And in the second cycle, what I do is I do time under tension, meaning I actually have a timer and I will go for 30 seconds for one set and I go down slow, up slow.
I’m working the concentric and eccentric phase of the day. And that is with lighter weight and that’s the second cycle. And then after the gym I’ll come home, I’ll usually have some bone broth. I used to take a post workout protein shake, and now I don’t do that. [00:08:00] I actually take bone broth. And the reason I do that, it’s because it’s chock full of nutrients.
It actually has collagen. Which there’s a lot of studies being done on college. And right now for overall health, for skin health, for gut health, and then also for our muscles, joints, and bones. And the bone broth has collagen and has protein. So instead of doing a protein shake, I just do the bone broth and I do time restricted eating.
If you’ve listened to the time restricted eating or intermittent fasting podcast, you know that I do the 16/8 method. I don’t eat breakfast typically. Instead, after I do my shake, I’ll will shower. And then I will start my day. And that could be either working in the clinic or it could be when I’m home doing my business activities.
When I’m home doing my business activities, the first thing I do after I’ve showered up after I get back from the gym is I do my me time. And this is when I’m trying to acquire new skills or new knowledge. And so what I’ll do is I’ll read a clinical study or I will do Spanish. And I usually actually do both.
It depends on the time, but I make sure I get one or the other in. And with the Spanish, what I’m doing is actually watching Spanish tv. And then I’m also taking Rosetta stone. I used to be fluent in high school and like an idiot. I stopped speaking it. So that’s something that is very important, especially here in Texas.
There’s a very big Latin community here. And I think it’s a beautiful language. We travel to Mexico a lot. A lot of my good friends are Latin and I want to be able to better communicate with them and I want to be able to better communicate when I travel down to Mexico and South America. So that is my me time.
My work on me time. my acquire new skills time, acquire new knowledge time. Once I feel like I’ve gotten good at Spanish, I’ll fill that time with something else. I haven’t really thought about what that is yet because I still have a long way to go on my spanish and then I’ll start my work. I usually it really like to break things up with work.
I’ll do something for 20 minutes then I’ll take a five minute break and do something for 20 minutes, take a five minute break. I don’t like to continuously sit there and tax my mind. I do like to take frequent breaks. I have found that that does make me a lot more productive over the day, instead of just hammering there for like 10 hours and then taking a break.
No, I schedule my breaks more frequent. And of course I’ll have meetings throughout the day and things like that. And after every meeting, I make sure I have a buffer time of about 30 minutes to where I can take a break for 10 or 15 minutes and then prepare for the next meeting. Now around noon, that’s when I’ll usually stop.
And that’s when I’ll get my first meal. What does Dr. Harris eat for his first meal of the day? Typically it’s a combination of eggs with fruit, and then it’s a wild card. Sometimes I’ll do potatoes, sweet potatoes, or even white potatoes. Make them in the air fryer, they taste delicious. Sometimes it’s bacon with the eggs.
And then usually I’ll have a little bit of dark chocolate with some local honey, some cinnamon and peanut butter as kind of a snack. And then after that, I’ll have some green tea. Now that first meal is usually my biggest meal. I like to eat a big first meal at lunchtime. So I guess a lot of people will call it lunch, but it’s the first meal.
When I [00:12:00] break my fast. And then I have some green tea on the back end, just because I love green tea. There’s so many benefits to green tea. We’re going to do a segment on EGCG the main ingredient in green tea that derives a lot of its health benefits on one of our supplement discussions. After I had my green tea, I usually to take the dog for another walk.
I try to get 8,000 steps per day, and most days I easily achieve that. When I’m working from home, even when I’m working in the clinic, I achieve that. When I’m working in the clinic, I still do the same schedule. I don’t do the morning me time, but I still eat my first meal around 12. Then I take my first round of supplements.
So that first round, what I take is I take a probiotic and I use two different probiotics, one spore based one isn’t, they’re all available in my E-store and I take those two different probiotics because they do different things. They have different functions. A lot of the research coming out of the microbiome right now is that it’s important to have diversity, not to have over abundance of a certain type or too little of a certain type, but a good balance in diversity.
And so I take the two different strains of probiotics to ensure that diversity. And most people actually don’t need a probiotic. The reason that I take all these supplements is because I’ve done my genetics, I’ve done my micronutrient testing, my metabolism, and I know exactly what my body needs. And so these supplements are custom designed for me based upon that.
And I do that with my private clients, because I think it’s very important to know what supplements you’re taking, why you’re taking them and tailor them specifically for your body, your metabolism, your genetics. I take those two probiotics, because I have a genetic mutation in something called FUT2.
It basically helps put carbohydrates on our intestinal cells which helps feed the good bacteria. I have issues with that and I’ll have problems maintaining good microbial diversity. The next thing is vitamin D vitamin K2. We’ve talked about these things before on our supplement discussions. I also will take a product from my allergies called seasonal shield.
It works very, very well. I’m here in Texas. We usually don’t have a freeze. We had a freeze this year and still has been a terrible allergy season and the seasonal shield works very well. I also take a methyl B-complex we’ve talked about several of the B vitamins here on the podcast before how important they are for numerous processes, including our metabolism.
And I actually have multiple genetic mutations and several B-vitamin pathways. And so I take a methyl B complex in order to help facilitate the metabolism and all the other effects that the B vitamins have. Next it’s on to our afternoon. And typically it’s more of the same as the morning in the afternoon.
In some of these breaks if I’m feeling a little bit stressed, I may do some belly breathing during the breaks to help just reorient my body, reorient my brain, feel energetic. It definitely does help taking those walks outside, even when I’m at the clinic. After I eat, I will take a walk outside to help reenergize me for the afternoon.
And then it comes to be dinner time. At dinner time, what do we usually eat? It’s usually some type of meat, fish, chicken, turkey, pork, whatever. I eat it all with vegetables at that plate about say 50 to 75% of the plate will be vegetables. So I’m making sure I get in plenty of [00:16:00] vegetables at that dinner.
And my dinners usually smaller than my breakfast. Breakfast is usually the bigger meal. I said breakfast, but it’s at noon. It’s the first meal and what veggies do we eat? It could be all over the place. We use Imperfect Foods, we use ButcherBox. So we get a selection of food shipped to us every week. And some of my favorites are brussel sprouts.
I love asparagus. I love broccoli. I love zucchini. We make zucchini noodles a lot. There’s a lot of different vegetables that we’ll try, especially with the Imperfect Foods, onions, garlic, kale, we put kale in the air fryer and make kale chips. It tastes delicious. And that’s usually what we have for dinner.
I typically don’t have very many carbohydrates at dinner that aren’t vegetables, vegetables are the major source of our dinner carbohydrates. After dinner, I will take another round of supplements and it varies depending on what day it is Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I take an anti-inflammatory supplement that’s got tumeric and resveratrol in it. It is balanced immune it’s in our E-store. I also take fish oil. The reason I take fish oil, even though I eat fatty fish, most people who eat enough, fatty fish, two to three servings per week, don’t need to take fish oil. But the reason I take fish oil is again, my genetics.
I have the APOE4 mutation. We’ve talked about this on the podcast before it impairs fat processing and fat transport. And there’s evidence that those with that gene need to have an increased omega-3 intake in order to help get them into the brain. And that is why I take them. I take magnesium as well. A lot of lifters are deficient in magnesium.
A lot of people are deficient in magnesium. Period. And we talked about that on the supplement discussion, how you can be deficient in magnesium. And the other thing I take a couple of times a week Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, I take liposomal glutathione. Now some people take NAC or NAC for this. I take liposomal glutathione.
We’ve talked about glutathione before how it’s the major antioxidant in the body the major detoxifier. The reason I take that is because I’ve done my genetics and I have several mutations in the pathways that activate glutathione. And because I have those mutations, it’s better for me to actually take liposomal glutathione. My wife, for instance, she doesn’t have those mutations and she takes NAC. And then we wind down with our work day at about seven o’clock.
That’s what I had to put in. This is something I actually struggled with. And I think I talked about this on one of the wellness journeys about how I had to force myself to put in a stop time, because I’m a workaholic. I will work as long as there’s stuff to be done. And I have multiple businesses, there’s always something to do.
Literally, always something to do every moment of the day, but I was running down. Working 16 hour days, seven days a week. And I said, no, I can’t do this. So 7:00 PM is my cutoff time and I make this about 99% of the time where I’m completely done with work at seven. And then after that, what do I do? It’ll vary.
Sometimes it’ll be watch a documentary with the wive. Sometimes it’ll be played video games. Sometimes it will be watching anime. We watch a lot of anime here at the Harris household. It’ll be play with the dog. Usually after dinner, we do take the dog for another walk. That’s the third walk in the day.
And then sometimes I’ll do [00:20:00] some meditation. Sometimes I’ll do some more prayer. It really all depends on where I am in my mental state at that time. Finally, for most nights, I start winding down about 9, 9:30. I like to be consistent, even when I’m not in the clinic. The reason for that is Bain is a incredible alarm clock.
No matter what time we go to bed, Bain is up at seven around seven, no matter what we can go to bed at 2:00 AM. Bain’s up at seven. Sometimes he’s even up as early as 630. So in order to get enough sleep, I have to go to bed early because he’s a big boy. He’s going to make some noise and sometimes even digs his nose into you.
Or sometimes even punch me in the face to get me to wake up and take him for a walk. What is my wind down routine? Well, we’re big fans of sleep hygiene here on the podcast. It’s something that we talk about in depth in our wellness courses. In fact, all of these behaviors, everything that you hear today we talk about way more in depth in the five pillars, lifestyle course, and the why behind why I do these things. I can’t go into all of that in a 20 or 30 minute podcast. What is a wind down routine? I typically try to shut off social media or my phone or any other type of device 30 minutes before we go to bed. What we’ll typically do is walk bain during that time period, get his final walk in, and then I will come back to the house. That’s when I take my CBD, I’ll brush my teeth sometimes before I brush my teeth, I’ll take a camomile tea. Then it’s hop into bed usually by 10, 10:30 is what time I’m in bed.
Try to wake up about 6:30. So I try to get at least seven hours of sleep. That’s my goal. Every single night after brushing my teeth is get back in bed and it’s read my Bible. I will read my Bible for five or 10 minutes before falling asleep, kiss the wife, good night. And that’s my day. Now, some of the things that will change depending on what we have with our schedule, but for me, that’s the ideal day.
That gets me a lot of the things that we hear on the podcast I get in throughout the day. And I’m covering the essentials. Getting enough sleep, exercise, meditation, mindfulness. I don’t really talk about or want to go into all the different products that we use at the house. And we talk about that a lot in the wellness course, what to watch out for what to avoid as far as household products and cleaners and avoiding toxins.
But really, I know this was a little bit shorter than most of my podcasts, which is fine. I think the last one was an hour. So I wanted to give you all a little bit of a break today, but I wanted to dive a little bit more into my daily routine. Show you what happens here in the Harris household and show you that I’m big on accountability that I do the things that we talk about. Now, if we expand the routine to a weekly routine, I’ll throw in some other things. I will do a cold shower a few times a week. Usually three times a week. I try to do a cold shower. I don’t do ice sponges or ice baths or anything like that at the apartment. I just take a nice cold shower.
During the summer months, I will go swimming as well for some of my cardio days. Also PEMF I get in my PEMF about once a week and that’s just to help reorient [00:24:00] and recharge myself. We talked about PEMF in the cellular exercise podcast, how it’s one of my favorite healing tools. One of my favorite holistic tools.
There’s one thing that I’m trying to incorporate into my routine. And it’s the next thing I’m looking at. And it’s something that we’ve talked about on the podcast, but I haven’t done yet. I want to start doing sauna and infrared sauna. I think the reason I haven’t incorporated the traditional sauna into my routine yet is because I go to the gym in the mornings.
I think if I went to the gym in the evenings, Then it would be easier for me to do the sauna, but that’s something that I’m trying to figure out and get into my routine. I want to start doing 20 minutes, a few times a week in the sauna, and then having the infrared sauna at the house that I do for an hour a week.
Like the PEMF, that’s what I’m working on, incorporating into my routine. Now, one of the things I almost forgot and the reason I remembered it is because it’s always near me. On the video, you can see I’m holding up a beautiful, Encourage X water bottle given to me by my good friend, James, we did that encouragement podcast together.
Hashtag product placement. I always have water near me. People ask me how much water do you drink on a daily basis? And I say, I drink enough to keep my urine light yellow. Everyone’s different with how much water they need to intake. It can depend on your metabolism. It can depend on your genetics. It can depend on where you live.
It can depend on your physical activity level and you can look online that says, oh, you need X amount per body weight or whatever, your kidneys are really, really good at telling you if you’ve had enough water to drink. And how can they tell you if your urine is light yellow, you’ve had enough water to drink and that’s my barometer because by the time you’ve already felt thirsty, you’re already dehydrated.
And we talked about that in the hydration podcast with one of my favorites, replay electrolytes actually take the replay every day after I workout. So now I’m remembering some things that I do in my routine. I probably should have outlinedthis episode. I usually outline the episodes. So I have a nice flow.
And then I ad lib a lot in between. This episode I actually did not outline, I wanted to see how it goes without an outline. So if I sound a little more disconnected and disjointed it’s because I didn’t outline the episode. So I’m going to go back and outline the episodes from now on this didn’t go as well as I wanted it to go.
The replay I take as part of my routine after I work out to get those electrolytes back in, it’s hot here in Texas. And that’s something that I do every day. Didn’t use to do it every day. I used to only do it on cardio days or after I played basketball. That’s another thing I play basketball on Wednesdays.
That’s part of my cardio. And for cardio, I mix it up. I do low impact, high intensity training cardio. So I’ll do the rowing machine. I’ll do the stair climber. I’ll do the elliptical. I’ll do the Jacob’s ladder. I’ll do the battle ropes. Those are the things I do for cardio. I’ll do some body weight stuff, like jump rope, jumping jacks ,medicine ball tosses, that type of stuff. But I don’t do a whole lot of running per se, unless I’m playing basketball. Well, that’s been my routine. Oh, I almost forgot alpha male. Again, I should have outlined this. It’s all over the place. Thank God for the transcripts. Right? So you can go back and look at what I’m saying, because it’s all over the place.
If you’re taking notes, but I take my alpha male every single night. You can see I’m holding it up on the video. [00:28:00] This is what we’re going to be talking about in the supplement discussion is a alpha male. I take that every single night before I go to bed. And that’s been a real game changer when it comes to my stress levels and my mental health because of the ashwagandha in there. Ashwagandha is amazing.
Can’t wait to tell you about it in the supplement discussion. Okay. We’re getting close to 30 minutes and I told you I wanted to get you out of here early cause last week’s episode was so long, so we’re going do that. If you want to know more about why behind the things I do, they’re in a lot of the podcasts, but definitely check out the five pillars lifestyle course.
It is everything I know about lifestyle medicine and the why behind it, the science behind it, and why I do the things I do to keep myself healthy and recommend to the people who come to me for help in their wellness journey. Okay. Strivers y’all have a blessed day. We’ll be back next week with another great episode.
God bless.