Transcription
So, for the past couple of months, I've been feeling like absolute Constantly sore and tired from training, sluggish, not sleeping well, and just not good in general. And that's a feeling you just don't want to have.
So, I did a bit of thinking and analyzing about my life situation, and came to realize there were probably a few things about my daily habits that I could improve. So, I gave myself 30 days to test it out and see if it could actually make a difference in the way I felt. The goal wasn't to do anything extreme. I wanted changes that I could realistically stick to over the long term that could help maximize my energy and recovery. So, here's what I did.
Habit number one, drinking enough water. I know sounds basic, but it has a lot of benefits. Like one, muscle function and recovery. Helps avoid stiffness and cramps. Also improves nutrient delivery to the muscles and cells. I've been feeling, like I said, stiff, sore. Also, my forearms during warmup were just starting to cramp. Like, what the heck? Number two, tendon and joint health. Dehydration can reduce the elasticity, making them feel more stiff and sore. I've been suffering with a few finger injuries over the years. They come, they go. Right now, they've come and they seem to be staying, and I really want them to leave. And number three, digestive health. Helps maintain a normal digestion and bowel function. Helps reduce constipation and bloating. Um, and so much more.
So, at this point, I was like, I might as well try. What can I lose? It could also just magically heal all of my problems. So, my plan, I'm not someone who can easily drink a lot of water. I think I was drinking maybe around one liter per day. Um, I'm just not someone who feels thirsty, you know, and if I do, I'm either too lazy to go get myself a glass of water or like search for my water bottle wherever it is. And then the feeling just usually leaves and I'm like, eh, okay, I don't need water. Probably not the best thing to do. But yeah, what I changed, I try to aim for 2 three liters per day. Considering that I do a lot of training, I thought it was an reasonable amount to try and stick to. Um, and what made this doable was to give myself some deadlines. So, every morning with breakfast, I would pull myself a half a liter of water and drink it with my breakfast. And then I carry this big ass water bottle around with me everywhere. Um, by lunch, I wanted to be done with my first liter. And then I'd have the rest of the afternoon up until bed to finish the second liter. And this really helped me. Like I was really able to stick to it. And I'm actually quite proud with how much water I was able to drink.
Now the results. At first I was just peeing like a lot. Um constantly going to the toilet which was very annoying. But after a while I started to notice small changes. My forearms weren't cramping as much during training. I felt less sluggish and my body just felt like smoother, if you know what I mean. Obviously, I know it's not just from drinking water. It's probably a mix of everything that I tried, but I still felt a small difference. And also, I started to pee much less, which means that my body was adapting and like absorbing the water and using it for something, right?
Habit number two, supplements. Now, this isn't as important as the other habits, but it's something really easy to put into place and can help in more ways than we realize. Um, I've been deficient in a few things. So, my doctor recommended I take this multivitamin daily. It basically just covers a bit of everything and helps support overall health and the immune system. I also started taking omega-3s recommended by my nutritionist. Also, I found one that doesn't taste like fish oil, thank God, because those are gross. But yeah, omega-3s has its own benefits on the heart, brain, and mental health. Reduces inflammation. Could it once again magically heal my finger injuries? Maybe. And just contributes to overall health. And so, these two things were really easy to add into my routine. I would just have them every morning after my breakfast. I would definitely recommend checking with your doctor to see if there's anything specific to you and they can help put in place steps that work for you.
Now, the results. This is a bit harder to say, but I do feel like when I was taking the multivitamins, I was getting sick much less cuz I remember there was a phase where I wasn't taking it at all and I got sick like multiple times over a couple of months. I'm sick. I'm sick. And ever since taking them regularly now, I haven't gotten sick yet. So, let's hope it stays this way. And for the omega-3s, once again, I don't really know. My finger injuries do feel a bit better. Um, but once again, that's also just probably linked to training and me also being a bit more careful.
Habit number three, eating enough and reducing my sugar intake. So, let me talk about first reducing my sugar intake. Look, I love a sweet treat. It's probably my favorite part of the day. I love having them after my meals. I think it's also important to have sweet treats and enjoy them to stay healthy for the mind especially. But throughout these past couple of months, I noticed that I was snacking on an insane amount of sugar. Sweets, chips, chocolate. I mean, cheaps isn't sugar, but yeah, you get the idea. Everything. And I've had my own experience of disordered eating. And I know that it can be easy to like fall back into like this kind of negative spiral. And that's kind of what was happening for me over those past couple of months. I kind of fell back into like a binge eating restriction because I was like really enjoying snacking on my sweet treats. I also started to think, oh, I should probably like reduce. So, I was giving myself limits. And once I give myself a limit, that kind of my brain up, you know? And so, usually I can never stick to that limit that I give myself. And then once I've passed it, I'm like, "Okay, day is over. I can eat whatever I want. I'll start again tomorrow." And then it felt impossible for me to stop snacking. And so since I knew I wasn't going to be able to stop myself from snacking, I kind of I control what I could by reducing the amount of food I would eat during my meals. So the global picture, I was kind of I was eating my meal three meals per day, but just very little of it. And then I was just in between each meal snacking on a lot of sweets, chips, chocolate, like I said, which kind of showed me that I was getting most of like my energy calories from snacks, which at this point is not good. And now I totally understand why I was feeling the way I was feeling. And I know in climbing we have this idea that being lighter means being stronger, which I think is complete And yes, strength to weight ratio matters, but what's even more important is having a healthy body and mind and making sure you're eating enough so you can train hard and longer and sustain that over the long term. You want to be able to do this for the next, I don't know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Food is energy.
So, my goal became clear. Eat enough to fuel my training and recovery, but get those calories from proper meals rather than constantly snacking on sugar. And this is where my Garmin watch comes in. Um, I wore it for the 30 days. I'm still wearing it cuz I actually like the inputs it gives me. I also activated it during training. So then I could know how many calories I was burning per day, which varied between like the 1,500s on a rest day and went up to like 1,800 to 2,100 calories on a training day. So with these numbers, I also started counting my calories just to make sure that I was actually eating enough to support my training and recovery. Important note, I wasn't cutting out sugar completely. I was just trying to eat less of it. in a more balanced and nonobsessive way. And what I really noticed by focusing on my meals first and making sure I'm getting enough of like the good calories was that my sugar cravings became much easier to manage and that snacking felt much more in control. And I'm really really proud of that.
Now, I'm going to talk about the next habit first because they're kind of linked. Habit number four, eating enough protein. After everything I just explained before, I realized that I was getting nowhere near enough protein throughout the day. And protein is important for muscle repair and recovery. I really wanted to see how eating more protein could maybe improve my recovery more because like I said, I was feeling sore and tired every day. Tendon, ligament, and tissue health. Once again, all linked to my fingers. Probably eating more protein could help with that, too. Immune support for the antibodies and staying healthy. Once again, 2026 will be the year I don't get sick, hopefully. And also keeps you fuller for longer. And so much more. But let's just talk about those for now.
And so what I changed, I tried to aim for two grams of protein per kilo of body weight. The easiest way for me to get more protein was to start the day with adding protein powder into my breakfast. So I have a few I would choose from and I just put it into my porridge or just buy like a protein yogurt and make sure that I start the day with a good amount of protein. And then I would just really make sure that I have a protein source in my lunch and dinner and really get a good amount of it during those meals. But the real game changer was the mid-after afternoon snack. Instead of grabbing chips or chocolate, I'd have some sort of protein snack. Right now, I'm obsessed with protein smoothies. I've been testing a few recipes out, but I've been really obsessed with my banana vanilla protein milkshake. Really good. And then depending on how long morning training would go, I would also snack on some kind of protein bar or energy bar. And so adding this protein snack, it really helped with my hunger cues and kept me feeling full throughout the whole day. And it also just made the sugar craving so much easier to handle because I was also like snacking on things that I really enjoy. Like the banana smoothie just felt like kind of a sweet treat because it was so good.
Now the results, the biggest difference was how much better I felt in my body. It was crazy. I was honestly feeling so much more energized and motivated because I was just feeling so much better. And obviously I still get sore and tired from training, but it also went away much quicker. And there were days where I just felt like good, great, normal. My forearms weren't cramping anymore. My tweaky fingers felt much better. Like I would say they're close to 100% recovered. Once again, I know probably also because I was being careful during training. But let's say it's because of all the habits I changed. But I did feel a difference from day 1 to day 30. And that was the goal. Like the goal was to feel better. And I do now.
Last but not least, habit number five, sleep. Sleep is super important for muscle repair and recovery, allowing the body to repair tissues, heal injuries, and restore energy levels. I'm someone who usually gets a lot of sleep. But recently, the quality of my sleep has been quite bad. I've been waking up feeling so tired and drained no matter how early I went to bed and no matter how late I woke up. Like a lot of the days I was waking up like 8 9 and was just feeling completely dead, which is not a feeling you want to have when you're starting the day. And that's just because I would struggle falling asleep and then I would also wake up during the night and like stay awake for a couple of hours. And I do think the changes that I did make with my nutrition also helped with feeling more energized in the morning. But what I changed for sleep was really trying to go to bed when I felt like extremely tired instead of like forcing myself to go to bed a bit earlier. I would go into bed when I started to feel quite sleepy, turn on a Goodfield series, right now it's Modern Family, and watch it until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. And so most nights that meant falling asleep maybe around midnight or even later. But I really didn't focus on the time. I just really wanted to go to sleep when I was like tired tired. And by doing it like that, I would fall asleep in seconds or like in seconds. Okay, maybe not seconds, but I would fall asleep really quickly compared to how it was before. And of course, I still wake up a couple of times during the night just to like turn around sometimes to go pee because of the water I'm drinking. But I would fall back asleep quite quickly. By doing it like this, I feel like the quality of sleep was so much better, even though maybe the hours were less and I would wake up honestly feeling energized. Like I said, I would I didn't feel this like tiredness anymore when I woke up, which is great. My goal was achieved.
So, yeah, those are the small habit changes I made. I really don't think it's necessary to go to the extremes. What matters most is finding things you can stick to over the long term. And so it's already been a couple of weeks since those 30 days and I'm still sticking to it without like counting my calories anymore, without really monitoring my protein. I'm just kind of doing it automatically now. And so I'm really happy with how this like little experiment turned out. I I feel like this shouldn't have been an experiment. I should have just been doing these automatically, but you know, sometimes we got to learn. We got to go through things to learn. So I really hope that this was helpful and gave you some insightful information. And if you do have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message. But yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed the video and I'll see you all soon.