Fair warning: 5 minute read on how which 6 things you need to do in the morning to look amazing naked as well as in the pencil skirt

When you work from home, like I do, you need a strict pre-work routine. Otherwise, you will start doing the laundry and vacuuming in the interim without making any progress with your work. Or worse–you stay in bed until mid-afternoon!

It’s tempting to clean up, cook or bake, but I learned to ignore everything unrelated to my work and focus. Going out and doing all those recommended activities not only helps me stay in shape but also get into the swing of things in no time. What’s better, I look forward to it!

Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist from Stanford, has a brilliant podcast, a YouTube channel, and an annual membership program. He is my trusted guide when I lose my nerve or after I find it. I realized lately that his neuroscientific advice also calms my nerves when I need it.

So what is my morning routine exactly about?

I call it six impossible things to do before breakfast.

Every day, regardless the temperature, I go for a 25 minute walk. If you don’t know, I live just a few blocks down from Santa, so when I say “regardless the temperature” I mean that I go for a walk even in -35 degrees Celsius (which is counting-the-hairs-in-your-nose kind of cold in Fahrenheit). For such occasions, I wear extra layers of outdoor clothing and resemble an extraterrestrial creature.

It’s not as bad as it may sound. In the right gear, you’ll get used to it in a jiffy. The key is not to fall. Or fall behind. If you fall behind, you’ll be left behind. And freeze to death. No joke.

Given that my -35 degrees gear is all white, I’d blend in with the snow, and no car or another mad walker would find me until March. Dogs might, though. That’s why I choose an off-leash dog path for my morning walks. Well, this is only one of two reasons. The other one is that I want to make my walks as pleasurable as possible and see as many lovely faces as possible. Some of the owners have nice faces, too.

I don’t go for a walk in the pouring rain, naturally, but if it just drizzles, I’m out. Fortunately, the most frequent form of precipitation close to the North Pole is snow, which is not as wet as rain.

Dr. Huberman emphasizes that seeing natural blue light for at least 10 minutes (or 25 minutes, if it’s overcast) in the morning sets our circadian circle. Boy, is he right!

I used to be a so called night owl that had the appeal of an anglerfish in the morning and stayed grumpy until noon. I wrote about it here. Now, I wake up before the sun and go to bed like a normal person. I used to read books until wee hours for years. Now I read three to five pages of historical fiction and dream about the Jacobite uprising before 11 pm.

Before I had this crucial piece of information, I went for a walk whenever I felt like it. Since I am a practical person who prefers killing two birds with one stone, so to speak, I check the sunrise information for the following day the night before. Thus, I know when I need to wake up to manage to drive everyone around and still squeeze in my 25-minute morning walk within the first two hours after sunrise.

The best thing about having your circadian circle set is that you go to bed around the same time and you sleep like a log until morning. No insomnia, no nightmares, no social media at 3.25 am.

We should exercise daily. Everybody knows that. Nobody does it. Ok, very few people exercise every single day of the year. Most people I know that exercise regularly, have a one-day rest, usually on Sundays.

The glutes are peculiar muscles. I read that they are our biggest muscle group (medius, minimus, and maximus) but they aren’t exercised, unless you do exercises for them. So I thought that getting my…err… body out of the house every day for half an hour without actually moving my… glutes is a bit wasteful.

Then Cindy Crawford and her bus trick from the nineties sprang to mind. I neither know, nor care if it’s a true story or not but she said that to have a nice round behind, you can exercise without anybody noticing – while you wait for the bus at a bus stop. You just squeeze your halves together for a minute repeatedly. That’s an easy caveat, isn’t it?

Even though I wasn’t standing and waiting but walking, I tried to squeeze the glutes at every step. At first, I had to remind myself to do it consciously because my glutes were being such glutes about it, that they got back to their typical lazy sagging mode before I noticed. In five walks, my glutes and I made an agreement. After a week, they began working automatically.

So not only am I outside as I should, be walking as I like, in blue morning light without sunglasses as Dr. Huberman says I should, I even exercise – at the same time! Genius!

Typically, I come home as if I came from the gym – sweaty, with red cheeks, smiling with my tongue out like the dogs I meet. I walk quickly and squeeze as if my life depends on it. Don’t laugh! Your fifties are not fun in the gravity department. Once you get there, you’ll squeeze like mad, believe me.

Many men enter a tub filled with cold water and ice cubes for various health benefits. Technically, I don’t immerse in cold water because I don’t need to increase my sperm count. I shower with cold water but I always start with warm-ish water and then I reduce the temperature until the water is as cold as I can stand without swearing.

Dr. Huberman says that we should have about 11 minutes of cold exposure weekly, which – divided by 7 – makes about 90 seconds per day. Manageable.

I asked Marc to install a clock in the bathroom, so I can measure how long I actually stay in the cold shower. Hot summers are much easier but my energetic walking in the winter months removes the cold barrier and the subsequent need to warm up under boiling hot water. I got used to cold showers in two days.

That’s an easy caveat. I don’t drink coffee. The reason why is here.

For the majority of the general populous who cannot exist without their morning coffee, “a delay in caffeine for about an hour or two in the morning after waking can help offset the later crash and lead to overall energy increases, “ says Dr. Huberman, the very man who is behind my marvelous morning routine. In short, do sunlight and movement first and then drink your coffee.

Another easy thing for me to do. I enjoy fasting – both the process and the results. On most days, I fast intermittently for about 17 hours. On some days… Let’s not go into specifics.

Check out what Dr. Huberman says on the topic. I wrote about my eating habits here.

So there it is. outdoors, walking, morning light, exercise, cold exposure, no caffeine, fasting. Everything at the same time. Or almost.

Then I kill the Jabberwocky.