Podcast Transcription: Unstoppable in 2025: Part 4 – The Smarter Sleep and Stress Optimization Blueprint for Men Over 40 to Boost Fat Loss and Crush Their Health Goals

Ted Ryce: Let me take you back to a time when I thought I had it all figured out. I was doing everything right. So, I thought I was doing my workouts in the gym. I was doing high intensity interval training. I was eating clean, mostly organic food. I removed toxins from my environment, from my toiletries and from my cleaning supplies. 

And I was taking a bunch of supplements, spending hundreds of dollars a month. So, it was back when I was in my late twenties, but my progress stalled. I was tired. I was craving junk. I was feeling burnt out. And eventually I would come to learn that I was ignoring two of the most critical factors for health, fat loss, and really just overall wellbeing. 

And that was sleep and stress. And I want to say something else here. I thought I was, I knew about those things. I started, I did my first holistic. And high performance life coaching or health coaching certification back in my early twenties. So I thought I had a good handle on these things, but I didn't get it. 

I had learned about it and I thought I was doing a good job, but looking back, Being 47 now and looking back, I really wasn't doing a good job with those things. And once I made a priority for sleep, especially in my early forties, when I got an aura ring, my energy came back, my cravings started to disappear and my body started responding the way I wanted. 

And today we're going to go over these overlook factors because they might be holding you back. And more importantly, I'm going to share what you can do about it. So what is up my friend? Welcome back to the new year series for 2025. This is episode four, sleep and stress recovery for high performance professionals. 

And if you haven't listened to the first episode, I go into mindset. You really want to start there. The second episode is all about exercise and how to approach it. In a way where you will be consistent and won't quit. And episode three is nutrition in that episode on nutrition. I give you a step by step framework that you can use to get results with nutrition in a way you've never been able to before. 

And I want to do the same thing in this episode with sleep and stress. So let's dive in. And the first thing is awareness is the first step. So some common mistakes and misconceptions that people have is that if you exercise and eat well, that's all that matters. And I want to say something exercise is really the key. 

And eating well is important too. But if you're still struggling despite eating clean and working out and you have your calories dialed in because you listened to my episode three all on nutrition and how to dial in your calories and you're still struggling, it's time to ask yourself, how would you rate your sleep? 

And more importantly, not just how you rate your sleep because a lot of people say, yeah, I sleep. how do you rate your energy levels when you wake up and how would you rate your day to day stress? And here's some signs that sleep or stress might be a problem. Like I just talked about, you feel tired even after a full night of sleep or you're craving high carb or sugary foods. 

Despite, your best efforts to stay on track and your workouts feel hard and recovery is slower than it used to be. And you feel like you're gaining and or holding on to belly fat no matter how hard you train and no matter how well you eat. So the changing that the thing that changed everything for me. 

Was getting an or ring because using wearables like an or ring or a whoop or even a Fitbit, you start getting metrics. what is your total sleep time? This is crucial because it's such an easy way to measure. Are you getting seven to nine hours of sleep? Because if you're not hitting that seven hour mark, you're probably not doing that well, right? 

Probably not doing that well. There's room for improvement. And if you're not going to bed and waking up at consistent times, also room for improvement. Another thing is sleep efficiency. So time in bed versus time spent to sleep. For example, I used to be in bed for, oh gosh, I don't even remember these days. 

It's been so long, but when I was a personal trainer, I was like, I've been in bed. I went to, I got in bed at this time and I got out of bed at this time. And the reality is once I started tracking with aura, I would see Oh, I'm, actually sleeping five and a half hours. So I was in bed for seven hours, but I wasn't asleep during that time. 

So the time in bed versus time sleep, that is your sleep efficiency. And one thing I want to talk about with wearables is they can be amazing. And I highly recommend them if you have a problem with either stress or sleep, but. Don't worry about the sleep stages. There was a review, a study done in 2018 called a review of the validity of wearable sleep tracking devices. 

Wearable sleep tracking devices just aren't accurate. If we're talking about, are you in REM sleep or are you in deep sleep? It's all just forget about it. Okay. You can see, the thing that I learned from wearing an or a ring for so long is that the more time it really was about how much time I spent asleep. 

So the point is that you don't want to worry about the deep sleep and the REM sleep. It's not actually accurately can speak English this morning. I'm in Buenos Aires. So a lot of Spanish lately. So it's not accurately measuring sleep stages. So just forget about it. Spend time on total sleep time, sleep consistency, and in terms of bedtimes and wake times, sleep efficiency. 

Those are all good. and then we'll talk a little bit in the stress section about some of the other metrics that I think are important to monitor. Here's why sleep is crucial for recovery and fat loss. One is that sleep deprivation disrupts your hunger hormones and satiety hormones. So in a study done in 2004, the impact of sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function by Spiegel et al, they found that ghrelin, your hunger hormone, increases after poor sleep, and your satiety hormone, leptin, decreases after poor sleep. 

So You're going to be hungrier and you're going to be less satiated when you do eat. And another thing that happens is that you have cravings for high calorie foods. And another study called the effects of sleep restriction on energy intake. And this one was done, in 2016, they found that sleep deprived participants consumed an average of 559 extra calories per day. 

When there was a, sleep deprivation involved. And one thing that I've found with my sleep deprived clients, their memories aren't so good. So I remember a client telling me, Oh no, I'm doing really well. And, I'm eating and I'm making good decisions and I'm not overeating. And I'm like, okay. 

What did you have for dinner three days ago? Oh, I don't remember. So you just told me that you're eating well, but you can't even remember what you had for dinner three days ago. Why do you remember that you're eating well, if you can't even name one meal that you've had right. A few days ago. So we get into this thing where we feel like we're doing the right things, but we're actually not. 

It's just a story that we tell ourselves. And by the way, this goes back to what I talked about in the previous episode in nutrition, tracking your calories can show you that you're overeating. And so going, go back to that nutrition episode and relisten to it. If you didn't download my fitness pal and give it tracking a go, because it can tell you exactly. 

Where you're going wrong, just like a credit card statement or bank statement can tell you where you're going wrong If you're spending too much money, it's this it's really the same thing, right? It's really the same thing. You got a budget you're working with and if you ever do the budget Then you're out of it. 

And if you're going to have problems with fat loss And again people who don't sleep well don't have a good memory short term memory at least You And they tend to overeat. Another thing that happens with sleep deprivation is it can increase cortisol and cortisol Can promote fat storage, especially around the abdomen and I want to be clear here if you have high stress levels I used to think that cortisol caused fat gain. 

So you could be eating the perfect diet and exercise and eating the right amount of calories, but you would still put on fat because of high cortisol. That is not what happens. Okay. The people who are starving to death also have high cortisol levels and they're losing weight, right? So that's not what happens. 

What ends up happening is you overeat. You don't realize you're doing it because you're telling yourself that you're Eating properly, but you have no idea what you had for dinner three days ago. And it's just, your brain is a bit messed up because of sleep deprivation. So some practical tips for better sleep are sleep seven to nine hours a night. 

And to make sure that you're actually sleeping seven to nine hours a night, wear a wearable for a while. I like Oura rings. I know some people get annoyed because Oura yeah. Has like a monthly subscription and I was grandfathered in. I don't have to pay that, but we're it for a year or a few months or whatever you feel comfortable with and it can start giving you some dad on how you're sleeping and so you can start to change your behavior. 

Another thing is to. Keep a consistent sleep schedule as much as possible. You want to go to bed and wake up at the same time. Why is that important? Just a quick. Story that I think will drive this home. Have you ever traveled across time zones and been a little jet lag? Like maybe you've flown to Europe. 

Like I have many times and you're just five hours time difference or six hours, seven hours time difference. And you feel weird, even if you've slept seven hours, eight hours. Or even if you've flown from, let's say California to Florida or New York or vice versa, even that three hour time difference, it can throw you off a bit. 

So that's what happens. The same thing happens when we go to bed at different times. We start getting, instead of jet lag, because we took a flight, we get something that has been named social jet lag. So you're not jet lag because you took a flight to New York from LA, you're jet lag, you're socially jet lag because you typically go to bed, let's say 11 on the weekdays, 10 to 11 on the weekdays, but on the weekends, you go to bed at 1 a. 

1. Because either you're out having a good time or because you're like, man, I worked so hard during the week. Let me stay up and watch another episode of this Netflix series or Amazon prime series or apple plus series, whatever you're into, or is it apple TV? Sorry, Disney plus. Get so confused so many streaming services now and you stay up and watch a few extra episodes doesn't matter what the reason is But if you're going to bed at different times, even if you sleep the seven to nine hours You're still gonna wake up feeling weird.

Another thing that you can do is Start to back off or, avoid heavy light exposure by one to two hours before bed. Now, typically people will say avoid screens and blue light, but the reality is, most of our computers, they have that night mode or whatever it is. I don't even remember what it's called, but it starts to change the type of light that you're exposed to so that it doesn't interfere with your sleep. 

The real issue I find is not about avoiding screens, but it's about dimming the lights in your home. I remember people used to say a few years back, it's stay off. You're just don't watch TV before bed. Okay. So you're not watching TV, but you're reading and, you have the lights blasting, right? 

So it doesn't matter, where the, light is coming from it. What matters is the intensity of the light. Okay. So at night in my place, what I do is I watch, I have a nice big TV in the Airbnb that I'm staying in. I'll watch a movie or a series on my Mac book and I'll keep the brightness, I'll control the brightness and put it as low as I can. 

Without taking away, the enjoyment of watching whatever I'm watching. I watch a series before bed or a movie, a little bit of a movie every night, almost every night. It's what helps me go to bed. And it's really about the light exposure. It's in the intensity of light exposure. It's not where that light is coming from. 

Okay. Does that make sense? Another thing you can do is create a calming bedtime routine. And for me, you can do light stretching. You can do journaling. You can read. You can do what you want for me. I like to watch a series or a movie. I find that I start drifting off. As long as I control the light in my bedroom, I drift off quite easily. 

And of course, controlling the light, not just in your bedroom, from the lights inside your house and inside your bedroom, but make sure that you make it as dark as possible, as quiet as possible and as cool as comfortable. I know having, men like it cold, colder women. as a general, as a stereotype, let's say women like it warmer, but make it a bit cooler and err on the side of being cool. 

And of course, if your partner has an issue, you can do a couple of things, you can buy them a nice blanket and pajamas. You can also get one of those beds that, or, one of those cooling mattresses that cool your side. I haven't experienced or experimented with those. But that would be probably my choice there. 

It doesn't have to, you don't have to make the entire room so cool, but it's really about the mattress. So I think it's, I forget what it's called. The Cooley I'll even look it up for you. Chili pad. That's what it is. So the chili pad, because even if your room is cold, if your mattress and is hot, along with the, covers, you've got some serious covers going on, that's going to cause a problem. 

So keep that in mind, find a balance between optimizing your bed, your, your covers and also the ambient temperature, but be mindful of your partner, of course. But do make it as dark as possible and as quiet as possible. I'll even, let me tell you a personal thing here is that I will stay in an Airbnb. 

Like I had the opportunity to stay in a really nice loft apartment here in Buenos Aires. And I ended up staying in a, place that wasn't as nice. Because I knew that they had blackout blinds and they're really not even blackout blinds, but I've been able to, I bring some tape along and like, I tape the, curtains together to block light because, that I've noticed from messing around with the Oura ring and just being in a lot of different places. 

I know that I wake up early if I get too much light. So to ensure that I sleep enough, I'll stay in places and kind of mess around with the curtains to block out as much light as possible. So that is it with the sleep. Let's move on to stress. And I want to talk about stress. Metrics and their impact on health stress is considered the silent killer because what ends up happening, especially with Americans, I found working with Americans and again, other cultures have issues with stress, but Americans tend to do things like this. 

You'll be talking to someone and they'll be like picking their nails or fumbling their fingers or biting their lip. And then you're like, Hey, what do you think your stress level is on a scale? like how stressed are you? And they'll say, no, I'm not that stressed. And you're like, really? 

So why are you eating your lower lip for, a snack then? People are very disconnected from their body because they're just used to pushing aside how they feel and pushing on. And while that's a good thing to be able to compartmentalize and just power through negative feelings, because we need to be able to do that sometimes what ends up happening is it becomes a habit of suppressing emotions. 

And not dealing with them and they still have effect on you. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with my entrepreneur clients who, mostly men, they feel like, it's weak to, admit that you're stressed or even to consider that you might be affected by stress. 

And it's That's like saying it's weak to look at your, to make better decisions about how to run your company. It's not weak because the issue is that stress has measurable effects on your body. We'll get into that in a second. Chronic stress elevates your stress hormone. 

There's a few stress hormones, adrenaline, Which is more short term, but cortisol, which is more long term. And as I mentioned in the sleep, when we talked about sleep, stress creates, elevated cortisol and elevated cortisol promotes fat storage, particularly visceral fat. And in a study done in 2000, which was titled stress induced cortisol secretion is consistently associated with obesity related measures, stress They found that stress increases fat storage, particularly visceral fat. 

So again, it doesn't magically mean that if you're eating 1200 calories a day, you're not going to lose weight or even put on fat because your cortisol levels are high. What it means is that stress, high stress is going to preferentially store the excess calories as fat as opposed to, let's say, muscle or other things. 

Okay. And it will also preferentially store fat around your midsection stress. Also disrupts your sleep quality. That's why I always talk about sleep first because we can, we all know that sleep is important. We all do it every night, right? But people who have sleep issues don't realize, it's not normal to wake up in the middle of the night. 

And not be able to go back to bed because your mind is racing. That's a stress issue. So stress disrupts your sleep quality and it can perpetuate a negative cycle because stress disrupts sleep disrupted sleep increases stress. And so on, and we know that stress suppresses immune function and increases disease risk in a study done in 2009 called stress and the disorders, stress and disorders of the stress system, they found that immune function gets suppressed by stress, and it increases disease risk, whether we're talking about the common cold or flu, flu. 

Or something more, more chronic like diabetes. So how do you measure stress? Yes, you can do something like the perceived scale, the perceived stress scale. This is a great one. This is something that I use with my clients, some questions on it. You can just Google perceived stress scale, but, some of the questions on it, just to give you an example in the last month, how often have you been upset? 

Because it's something that happened unexpectedly. In the last month, how often have you felt that you were unable to control the important things in your life? In the last month, how often have you felt nervous and stressed? Just to give you an idea. Here's another one in the last month. How often have you been able to control irritations in your life, right? 

Are you effectively controlling your emotions? Do you feel like you have control? That's what, those are the signs of stress. So again, that's the perceived Stress scale. You can Google it and just do it every month and you can get a good measure of your stress in that way. You can also measure your resting heart rate. 

This is something that aura does quite well and you can see elevated heart rate. Incre equals incre increased stress. So something that happens, something that I learned and my clients learn from measuring their resting heart rate with an aura ring, whoop, et cetera, is that one alcohol raises your resting heart rate and disrupts your sleep. 

And by quite a lot, actually, like we're talking 10 beats per minute. Again, no judgments here. I had a glass of wine yesterday. I'm in the land of Malbec. I've been drinking much more, than normal here. which isn't that much, I'm having a glass of wine a few times a week or two glasses of wine a couple of times a week. 

So another thing that you can see with resting heart rate is when I travel across time zones that will mess up my resting heart rate. And again, this isn't about the narrative. You're telling yourself about stress because so many people wrongfully incorrectly say, Oh, stress is all in your mind. 

It's not all in your mind. Okay. If you have high blood pressure, you're like, no, it's all in my mind, man. And it's no, you are just totally disconnected from, the effects of stress. Now, obviously how you perceive stress does have an effect on it. But a lot of that is, yeah, a lot of that is, is, the things that happen in your life. 

How do you react to them? Okay. But if you're talking about, if you regularly work long hours, drink a lot of coffee in the morning because you didn't sleep well and then you drink alcohol at night because you drank too much coffee in the morning and it's hard to get going. and you're in this cycle, you're stressed, right? 

Even if your life is good, your body is under chronic stress. So keep that in mind. Another thing that you can do is measure your heart rate variability. I don't want to talk about that too much. Yeah. But aura does an okay job of it and other, whoop also does an okay job of it. So low heart rate variability indicates high stress or insufficient recovery as a general role. 

Now this can get quite complicated with heart rate variability. I've had a lot of people on the show in the past years talking about this. but just generally pay attention to the trend. Same thing with resting heart rate. Another thing I want to say that I don't think is, appreciated enough is that your stress levels raise over time as you age. 

And again, this is a result of, adrenal receptor sensitivity or insensitivity. Rather, I don't want to get into it one because I don't understand the mechanism that well to explain it in a way that's going to be easy for you to understand. Cause it's a little bit complicated, but. Just understand that as we get older, our stress level tends to elevate just because we're older because of physiological changes. 

So if people who are older and they're more irritable, even though. they do a lot of the right things that could be, it could, it's something that can play a role. Okay. It's not everything and you can do a lot about it, namely increasing your aerobic exercise and eating an antioxidant rich diet can help with those things, but just understand if you're not taking good care of yourself and your life is generally good, your stress will still your autonomic nervous system, which is, where stress gets activated. 

It can activate or let's say increase the amount of what's called your sympathetic tone over time or sympathetic activation over time. So sympathetic is just your fight or flight. That's the scientific or anatomical term for your fight and flight or fight or flight part of your nervous system. And then you have your rest and digest. 

That's the parasympathetic. You probably heard those terms before. But fight or flight tends to get activated more over time as we get older. Okay, so these are all these. How old are you? What's your blood pressure? What's your resting heart rate? What's your heart rate variability? And again, you can do something like the perceived stress scale to use. 

to assess, let's say, how you view the stresses in your life. now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about practical recovery strategies for sleep and stress and just a few other sleep optimization tips. Limit caffeine to early in the day. This is something that I think there's some nuance here. 

There's people who can drink coffee right before they go to bed and then sleep fine. I'm not one of those people. If I have a decaf at 3 p. m., I might have disrupted sleep. So one thing I'd also say about this, and this is, not based on a study. It's based on personal experience, but depending on the amount of stress I have in my life, During that time, I am either more resistant to the effects of caffeine or less resistant. 

So if I've got a lot of stress going on, I have to really be careful with my caffeine intake. And if I'm like on top of the world, if I'm going through a period of life, those periods are so good, right? You're just like, Oh my gosh, everything is great. You can drink a bunch of coffee, maybe like on vacation, you find that you can drink more coffee and it doesn't affect you as much. 

Pay attention. What I tell my clients and what I do myself is I have to earn my caffeine, meaning I love drinking cappuccinos. I've had two this morning and I will like, will I have a third one? No, it's a little bit stressful for me at the moment. Not going to go into why, but just, some personal stuff and things that were changing in the business. 

So I'm more, I'm not in a bad place. I'm in a good place, but it is a time of increased stress. So I'm not in that like vacation mode or like life is going extremely well mode. So pay attention to that. Pay attention to, but I say this because you can, let's say that like I just said, I have. 

Two cappuccinos, but something in your life changes and you're like, I'm just going to do my habit of two cappuccinos. But all of a sudden you're finding that second cappuccino really is pushing you into more anxiety. And you're not sure why. now, because I do believe. There's some change that I see it with clients as well. 

The second thing is avoid alcohol close to bedtime. It disrupts sleep quality. Sometimes you're not going to be able to avoid it, close to bedtime because your Out socializing or doing a client dinner, whatever it is, and you're going to be drinking close to bedtime, but just understand it's a cost. 

It's taking away from your health and increasing stress. Again, no judgments there. Just want you to be aware of the effects and also. To be more on top of how you, let's say, approach alcohol for me again, it's the same thing I say, earn your alcohol is life going amazingly well for you. Okay, maybe you can, drink. 

A little bit more at more frequently. And I don't mean, Oh, you can have five drinks instead of two. I don't mean that. I'm just saying more frequently really try to keep drinks. If you're not keeping drinks to one to two, you're drinking too much. Okay. So it needs to tell you really the optimal amount of alcohol is two drinks per week, which is what I typically stick to. 

But I've been, I'm already at three drinks this week. So yeah, the optimal amount of alcohol is two drinks per week. Okay. Any more than that, it's going to be taking a toll on you is from what we know from the best research. The last thing I want to say with a sleep optimization tips is experiment with sleep aids. 

And I don't mean melatonin, which you can mess around with. But what I recommend people try first is by glycine, L glycine. It's amino acid. Take three to five grams before you sleep. 30 minutes to an hour before you sleep. And I would also take around 400 milligrams of magnesium. I also prefer magnesium glycinate because you get more glycine in there, but you can take magnesium glycinate. 

Magnesium bisglycinate. Magnesium taurate is also a good one because it's. Combined with amino acid touring, which is also going to be beneficial for stress levels, cardiovascular fitness, blood pressure, even of course, it depends on the dose, but getting a little bit more torrent touring is not a bad thing. 

stay away from magnesium, citrates, or especially what's the one. The iron one oxide, magnesium oxide. Yeah. any of the magnesium that you feel like run right through you, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you will, if you buy a cheap form of magnesium, it'll literally go right through you. 

and then if the glycine and magnesium don't do it, okay. Maybe experiment with a small dose of melatonin, like 0. 5, 0. 5 milligrams. All the way to maybe one milligram stay away from five milligrams or 10 milligrams. It's just way too much magnesium. I'm sorry, melatonin way too much melatonin. So stick to one milligram or half a milligram. 

Let's talk about some stress relief strategies. So mindfulness and breath work, I don't talk about it much, but I meditate almost every day. And as I mentioned earlier, things are going well in my business and my life generally, but I'm a little irritated with it, with the situation right now. 

Again, I'll share that another time. I don't want to. make this conversation. I don't want to go off on a tangent, but I'm meditating almost every day in the morning because it helps to set the tone for the day. So just a few minutes, 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes of meditation. We know that. 

Meditation reduces cortisol levels. So you can lower your cortisol levels, not by changing how you look at life or, any of the things that we talked about, you can literally just breathe your way to a lower level of cortisol. Meditation is really tough. So what I tend to recommend to clients is just setting a timer for five minutes or three minutes or 10 minutes and doing, a breathing exercise five seconds in five seconds out. 

I don't like Brock box breathing where you hold your breath. You can do that. If you're doing that, you feel it works for you. Great. But let me ask you something. What does holding your breath do for stress levels? If you're not sure the answer, hold your breath for as long as you can. And once you start panicking, I think you'll make the connection that whenever you hold your breath, it starts increasing stress. 

That's why I'm not a big fan of breath holding techniques like box breathing. I prefer inhale and exhaling for five seconds. Roughly. Another thing you can do is things like yoga, Tai Chi. Those are good. Not because of. That the exercise helps, but also the breathing techniques that you get coached on when you're doing yoga or Tai Chi can be really good for you. 

Studies have also found this to be true. Low intensity walks outdoors, combining movement with nature exposure. Hopefully you have some nature exposure, but just being outside really helps a lot, especially if you're in an area That is, has good sunshine, good light, and, going to digital detox. One thing that we don't talk enough about is chronic social media is, use is linked to higher anxiety, depression, and poor sleep. 

So if you're spending over three hours. A day on social media, you're going to be 27 ish percent higher likelihood of having some type of issue. And, I spent, I work online, so I work with social media, so it's quite, difficult sometimes. And it, and I realize when it's taking effect on me, it's really annoying because I trying to find the balance. 

So time in nature, 20 to 30 minutes walking in a green space, like a park, or if you live near the ocean, going for walks in nature, just make it even more powerful to lower stress levels. And of course, taking vacations, super important. It's one of the reasons why we started hosting retreats, not just to reduce stress because reducing stress is nice. 

But a lot of people, they're like, Oh, my life is so stressful. And then they go on vacation. And it's oh, this is the life. And then they come back to their stressful life. They're behind on work and have to catch up. And it's they lured the stress briefly, but then came back to the same mess. And with the same skills. 

So one thing that we started doing is now we're hosting retreats, not just to reduce stress, but to empower our clients with better mindsets and skills for long term stress management. So again, what are you taking away from this episode? Because I want you to focus on being actionable here. Are you prioritizing sleep and stress management in your life? 

And when I say that, are you doing it in a way that you can measure, or are these The missing links holding you back. And what's one small step you can take today, whether it's setting a consistent bedtime, practicing mindfulness, or simply taking a walk outside. What can you do today? And of course, if you're serious about reducing stress and unlocking your full potential, consider joining one of our retreats. 

It's not just about relaxation. It's about equipping you with the right mindset, education, and tools to thrive. So that is it for today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. And again, what is one thing that you're going to do differently, by the way, our retreats in 2025 are going to be scheduled for April and October. 

So those are the tentative dates. That is it for me. Hope you enjoy this and I'll see you on the next episode and the new year, new you 2025 series.