Eating .8 to 1 gram per pound of body weight is the key to keeping your muscle and metabolism healthy.

Journaling has been a big part of my life since I started my fitness career.

I first used it to write out my goals and plans to achieve them. I've evolved to use journaling as an avenue to become more self-aware.

I believe that when you're making any change in your life it's best to keep a journal of your progress.

This helps lock in the necessary identity shifts for long-term change and it acts as a way to navigate the eventual obstacles that pop up.

That's why today I want to share an evidence-based journaling practice that's been shown to improve lung function in asthma patients, increase immune response, decrease pain, and improve sleep.

The great thing about it is that it’s zero cost and the best part is that it could change your life.

That being said...

Here Is Your 4 Minute Friday:

1. A Journaling Tool To Boost Your Mental And Physical Performance

I've used journaling to track my progress toward certain goals like quitting alcohol​ and quitting porn​.

It's been a great tool I've used it to get in touch with the voice that's inside of me.

There's a journaling practice in particular that has been shown to create massive improvements in both your mind and body.

This practice is called Therapeutic Journaling created by renowned scientist Dr. James Pennabaker.

Here's how you do it:

1. You pick an emotionally triggering event in your life.
2. You sit down and write down every thought about that event for 15-20 minutes. Use a pen or type this on digital. The key is to not stop to think. Just keep writing.
3. Write for yourself. No one will see this.
4. Do this for either 4 days straight or once a week for 4 weeks. The results will be the same.
5. If an event is too upsetting to write about don't write about it. Just write about the things you can handle.
6. After you're done with this process look at what you've written.

This type of journaling works because emotional expression is good for our health (4) and can enhance our immune system.

When traumatic events occur, we are often not able to process what happened and the event can become stuck in our memory.

By expressing our thoughts on paper we can move forward by letting go of the feelings involved.

Here's a link to a pdf describing the process and how to do it​.

As for me, I haven't journaled but haven't done it like this before.

I'm going to commit to this process and do an entire article around it when I've integrated the necessary lessons.

2. High Protein Diets And Aging

Is eating a high-protein diet safe for you or not​? If you ask this question to many people you get many different answers.

A new study analyzed the food intake and health outcomes of 50,000 nurses from the 80's to 2016 (2)

They defined healthy aging as being free from 11 chronic major diseases, having good mental health, and having no cognitive or physical impairments.

Here's what they found:

Those who had a higher protein intake correlated with higher odds of healthy aging.

Some of the benefits from directly from protein's effect on essential bodily functions while other benefits come from protein's ability to improve muscle.

Also, higher protein intake has been shown to protect us from cognitive decline as we get older (3).

Muscle is one of the most important longevity organs in your body and protein intake is crucial to building muscle as you age.

This is why protein is a pillar in our ​Lean Body 90 course​.

3. Can You Reduce Biological Age By 5 Years In 8 Weeks?

Chronological age is how old you are.

Biological age has been reported as how old your body is, which is your true age.

You can't control chronological age but you may be able to influence biological age​.

A study (1) was done to see if they could reduce a person's biological age through lifestyle and supplementation.

They had 6 women between the ages of 45 & 65 follow an eight-week program that included changes to their diet, supplements, sleep, exercise & stress management.

What they found was that one subject reversed her biological age by up to 11 years while the entire group averaged a 4.6-year reduction.

One important note is that there is some controversy among scientists on the methods they use to measure biological age.

Longevity science is still new and emerging so we should take studies like these with a baseball grain size of salt.

If you want to learn more about the specifics of this study I did a thread you can access here: