People either wake up ready to tackle the day or get tackled by their day. In this episode, you will be able to plan your morning routine checklist for adults and start new habits that will put you in a state to handle all the stress that your day can throw at you. Start approaching your day feeling like you don’t have to push the snooze button 14 times every morning!
Table of Contents
- Morning Routine Checklist For Adults: An Introduction
- Dr. Whitney’s Morning Routine: Bulletproof coffee
- Dr. Jason’s Morning Routine: A Systematic Approach
- The Routine of “Three Musts”
- Why Meditation is Important
- How To Start Having a Morning Routine From Scratch
- Fueling Yourself as Part of Your Morning Routine
- Closing Thoughts: Just Start!
Morning Routine Checklist For Adults: An Introduction
Dr. Bryan: All right. Here we go again. Wellness Connection Show episode 14. Thank you so much for all the great feedback that we’ve been receiving so far. It’s been real exciting as we kicked off this new journey here, new episode or new chapter. All the great comments and feedback.
Dr. Bryan: Everyone’s actually sharing that they enjoy hearing this information and they’re actually throwing different comments and feedback our way. Continue to do so and we will continue to try to answer as many comments and questions that you have. With that said, I am in the studio today with husband and wife combo, Dr. Jason Hamed and Dr. Whitney Hamed. Hello.
Dr. Bryan: As always, I’m Dr. Bryan Joseph. We are going to today talk on a topic that is extremely relevant for everybody that wakes up in a bed and actually goes into their day to start their day.
Dr. Jason: As opposed to not waking up in their bed. What’s it like? Michael Jackson oxygen chamber.
Our morning routines over the years
Dr. Bryan: The chamber. Right. What we want to talk about today is what we find over the years is people either wake up ready to tackle their day or they get tackled by their day, right? A lot of that is dependent on how they actually set up some of their patterns and habits and rituals going into the day or even the night before.
Dr. Bryan: We’re going to share some of our morning routine checklist for adults that we’ve learned and developed over a period of years and then start to offer some other alternatives on top of that ones that we do that may open your ears to some new habits that you can put into your day so that you don’t get tackled by your day.
Dr. Jason: Yeah. That’s great. I think that’s very well said in regards to like people literally getting themselves beat up by their day because there’s no space. You got to be able to plan what you want your day to look like. But with that planning, it’s deliberate, right? It’s not just planning your day, but how can you get yourself into a state? How can you get yourself into a place where it can handle the stress? We are not alone, as far as everyone in this room. We’re parents and then many of you listeners out there, you’re a parent, right, or you’ve got a stressful life or you got a stressful job.
Dr. Jason: How can you prepare your life, or excuse me, your body, your mind to go and tackle life so again, like Dr. Bryan just said, it doesn’t tackle you?
Dr. Whitney’s Morning Routine: Bulletproof coffee
Dr. Bryan: Let’s jump in and actually start with sharing some of the ways that we have heard, learned and developed and implemented ourselves so that we can share how other people can maybe approach their day so they don’t feel like they’re getting their butt kicked and want to hit the snooze button 14 times.
Dr. Jason: Yeah. Whit, why don’t you start?
Dr. Whitney: You know, I do have to say, listeners, if you’ve heard of Bulletproof Coffee, you drink it or you don’t drink it yet, I’m definitely going to tell you what I do. Because I mean, the reality is sometimes you have late nights and you prepare. We could talk about how you prepare to really setup your next morning, whether it be your running shoes by your bed or what not, but Bulletproof Coffee is really what motivates me to get out of bed. I have it ready. I have my coffee pot set. What is Bulletproof Coffee? It’s a cup of coffee. It’s clean as you can possibly make it, meaning get a good ground bean that you know isn’t full of chemicals and pesticides, and then you put your favorite creamer with it.
Using organic creamer and MCT oil
Dr. Whitney: Again, I use a creamer that’s organic, no sugars, whether you do almond-based or coconut-based or you do a good organic half and half, and then you add a tablespoon of MCT oil to it. I love some cinnamon too. Just sipping on that half a cup of coffee before I go to start my routine is what really revs me up. That’s one of my big secrets. Big secrets.
Dr. Bryan: There’s nothing wrong with coffee. Coffee’s not unhealthy. What she’s saying is the type of coffee or how you approach coffee, if it makes you happy, brings you joy and actually you keep it clean, then it could actually be a really good way to start your day. That’s cool. That’s cool. Prior to us getting together, Dr. Jason was sharing some of the thoughts that he … Some of the things he experiences in terms of doing the night before in preparation before you can actually go into a morning routine. Why don’t you speak on that a little bit? What goes into the night before?
Dr. Jason’s Morning Routine: A Systematic Approach
Dr. Jason: For those of you don’t know me on a deep level, that aren’t friends or family that have known me since I was kid, to our listeners, I am extremely systematic. With that being said is many of these habits have gone from being very, very rigid to now they’re good healthy habits. What Dr. Bryan’s referring to is I recognized at one point I was trying to get up extremely early. Like I’m talking ridiculously early, like 3:30 in the morning early.
Dr. Bryan: He was trying to beat the roosters.
Dr. Jason: Right. Yes. That was outside of my normal rhythm. However, I no longer do that. I still get up early naturally. That is some of the wiring I have, but when I was going through that phase, I started to recognize how important it was to prepare myself the night before. Actually your morning routine checklist for adults doesn’t necessarily start in the morning. What Dr. Whitney didn’t tell everyone is that she is methodical about getting her coffee pot ready the night before. She won’t come into bed until her coffee’s ready to go and all she has to do is walk out and hit the button. I mean she even has a cup sitting underneath the pot. All she has to do is hit the button and it drips into her cup.
Morning routine starts the night before
Dr. Jason: Very similar. My morning routine actually starts the night before. What I mean by that is I’m setting a time that I am going to be in my bed. There’s no negotiating. This is when I’m going into my bed. I also prepare my body with different things. I take magnesium glycinate every night. That supplement has been shown to decrease muscle stress, neurologic stress, help to stabilizing blood sugar as well. I’m preparing my physical body for sleep. I also stop watching the television. The waves or even the iPhones or the iPads, there’s a lot of blue lights that come off of that. Again, we know from research that stimulates your brain. We think that we’re chilling when we’re watching TV, but it’s actually stimulating our brainwaves.
Blue blocker glasses and how it helps sleep
Dr. Jason: One of the things I’ve brought the last year that Whitney and the kids make fun of me tirelessly about is I have a pair of blue blocker glasses. I think I look like Bono personally, but clearly I look like a bonehead is probably what I look like instead. But anyway, I wear these glasses. It literally will filter some of the blue lights that I’m getting from the lights of the iPad or the phone if I’m checking my phone prior to bed or watching a video of some nature.
Dr. Bryan: A lot of these things that you’re saying that you do before you go to bed are done for what intention?
Dr. Jason: I’m literally preparing my brainwaves, my brain, my body to let myself know it’s time to go to sleep. Preparing for rest.
Dr. Jason: Again, here’s the deal, I come from a … My concepts, as you know Bryan, is really of a primitive nature, right? Everything I’m trying to do is aligned with primitively how we function. If we take ourselves back hundreds of years, there wasn’t lights. When the sun went down, you inherently were getting ready for bed. But now with the advent of all the stimulation we have, all the kids activities, all the videos, everything at our disposal, we are stimulating our bodies well beyond the point at night that they should be stimulated. Therefore, it’s harder for our bodies to get into a deeper state of sleep.
Priming your body to sleep
Dr. Bryan: You’re almost trying to prime your body and your mind to be able to rest.
Dr. Jason: The quicker I can into that deeper rest state, I get deeper recuperative sleep, therefore, I now can get up earlier and more refreshed to now have the space to do this morning routine checklist for adults.
Dr. Bryan: Yeah, I’m with you. Then the night happens and you actually get a restful night of sleep because you calmed your muscles, calmed your mind, and you wake up before the roosters. Then when you get up before the roosters, what are the first few things that you usually find yourself doing for either of you?
The Routine of “Three Musts”
Dr. Whitney: You know, I thought about this today, this topic, because I have to say I have a routine of three musts to my morning. I cannot say that they happen every single time in the exact same order. Reason being is because we do have late nights with sports or there’s more to get ready for in earlier in the morning or more demands.
Dr. Whitney: But the three non-negotiables, whether I’m doing them right when I get up or maybe between when I drop off the kids to school and getting to the office, is a 10 minute meditation. My favorite app is Insight Timer. It’s a free app on your iPhone. I love it because you can pick a five minute meditation, a 10 minute meditation. In the mornings, I like to focus on gratitude and prayer, so I’ll go with those themes.
Dr. Whitney: That’s my first non-negotiable. Then five to six days a week it’s moving my body. I might even call it exercise, yes. Some days are weight sessions. Some days are cardio sessions. That I’m more in that mentality, but other days it’s 10 minutes of foam rolling and yoga. Something most days of the week to get my body going and then a smoothie. That’s the one. I might be sipping that as I’m getting ready to address patients, work on patients, but those in some form of an order are in my morning routine checklist for adults.
Why Meditation is Important
Dr. Bryan: Both of you mentioned meditation. Here’s what I find for myself, I didn’t know anything about meditation maybe 10 years ago. This was a newer thing to me. I had heard of it, but I hadn’t really spent any energy doing it or learning it. Why is meditation a nonnegotiable for both of you?
Dr. Whitney: I have such a real life example and I actually just connected this probably 15 days ago. I realized and I actually have switched up my meditation between when I drop off the kids if any of you have a crazy busy morning and then working because it’s all about cortisol. I find that when my stress levels go up and my cortisol goes up, I get instantly feel fatigued. You may have that for yourself at lunch, in the morning time right after you exercise. I have found literally a direct link between when I meditate just for 10 minutes, one of the greatest benefits is getting my energy back. Part of that is the deep breathing too, so you’re breathing, you’re reoxygenating. When you get in the habit of meditation, it’s a time out.
Dr. Whitney: Wayne Dyer has talked about this. He’s talked about 10 to 20 minutes of meditation can feel like an hour nap for your body. When you get in the habit and you use a guided meditation because I … To just listen to music and try to do that myself, my mind is all over the place, right? It’s like a train wreck. When you do a guided, like the Insight Timer I mentioned, it really helps you with your breathing. It really helps to lower the stress levels. For me, it’s like an instant energy boost. I love it.
Meditation lowers stress levels
Dr. Bryan: I think in terms of lowering the stress threshold, most people … This is what I find for myself. When I know I have a vacation coming up, it’s very easy for me to wake up because there’s like a clear purpose and I’m excited and there’s something coming up. But a lot of times just on a regular workday you don’t feel that same sense of zest or energy and vibrancy. I could be alone, but maybe everybody else feels this when you actually feel like you’re waking up and you don’t feel that excited for the day, that can trigger some stress in your body right there to be like, “Gosh. I’m going to against the grain.
Dr. Bryan: I’m going to do a job or a routine that I don’t really want to do every bit of it today. On top of that, I got to run all sorts of errands with my kids or for my kids or for my family.” Your mind wakes up after sleeping with a ton of thoughts. When we have a ton of thoughts in our mind, then that can drip cortisol or stress hormones into our body.
Dr. Bryan: That’s why Dr. Whitney is sharing and Dr. Jason the need for us to try to bring our bodies back to a healthy threshold right out of the gates by meditation, which I think is great. If someone’s never meditated before? I know you mentioned the Insight Timer or the Insight app. Dr. J, anything come to mind in regards to a resource somebody would go to or try if they’ve never meditated?
Non-guided meditation is okay
Dr. Jason: Yeah. Unlike Whit, I won’t use necessarily a guided meditation everyday. I literally just … I’ve gone on to iTunes and searched meditation songs. Usually I’m looking for just a melodic track, like no vocals. Just something that you would maybe hear on a spa or a massage place, whatever. I’m literally just downloading those and I’m letting them go in the background. Just trying to let my mind … I’m allowing those thoughts to come, right? Yeah. Just a simple track. Just the music.
Dr. Bryan: All right. There’s really no wrong answer. It’s literally taking a time out or a pause session to try to allow your breathing to normalize, your head to clear, your stress hormones to decrease and for you to really to get in the sense … I heard you mention the word gratitude, right? Reflect on something that you might be grateful for so that you can actually walk into your day feeling good about what’s about to happen and who you are walking into that day. Next, I heard you both say something about moving, right? Coffee out of the picture for a second because coffee obviously is how we all start the day.
Morning exercises
Dr. Bryan: Yeah. Coffee, meditation and then some form of movement. Does that mean you jump on the floor and start doing burpees right out of the bed? Your stiff or do you stretch? What does movement look like to start a morning for each of you?
Dr. Jason: That’s one of the reasons that my little sequence happens because when I have the coffee, when I meditate, when I journal, I get my body a chance to warm up, right? Literally it’s woken up. Then I’ll ease into the workout. I may hit a foam roll session. Depending, as Dr. Whitney said, where my time is that day, my schedule, I maybe able to do just a series of pushups, air squats. Yeah. Maybe I will knock out some burpees. Just not to the point where I’m dripping with sweat, but I just want to move my body.
Meditation to stimulate the brain
Dr. Bryan: Here’s my question is if the meditation is done with the intention of actually centering yourself and reducing stress, what’s the intention behind moving right out of the gates?
Dr. Jason: To stimulate my brain. I cleared the brain of stressful thoughts. Now I’m going to activate my body. I’m going to change my physical body movement. I’m going to change my physiology, which in turn help me change my psychology. I mean think about it. When you’re on a couch and you’re sick or you’re sitting there for a day or two days and you can’t move, you don’t feel very motivated. But you get a little sweaty and you get a little exercise, you go for a brisk walk, you get a little pump in your muscles, all of a sudden you feel internally like you can handle more. You can increase your capacity if you will. That’s the reason that I move. What about you, Whit?
Dr. Whitney: Yeah. Motivation and momentum. I think in the past it was all about training for something or these lofty exercise goals or I want to change my body because I want it to look this way. Definitely with age and wisdom, it’s more about okay, now it’s more of the psychology behind it. I want to feel this way after I exercise. I want to feel like all right, I’ve already conquered half my day because I feel some momentum with my, like you said, physiology. That’s what it’s about for me.
How To Start Having a Morning Routine From Scratch
Dr. Bryan: If somebody’s starting their day right now with no movement, just like no meditation, how much time would you suggest that they actually start moving right out of the gates? These are new habits. Right now there might … You just said something about getting their mind right, right, which is what I heard with meditation. Now we’re talking about getting your body primed and right. Then when we can go into, it sounds like, how you get your chemistry and you’re eating right because that’s what part of your next thing was. How much time would they actually … Do you do an hour workout out of the gates? Do you usually do just five minutes? Where would you suggest somebody starts if they’re not moving?
Dr. Bryan: Because I would think, before you answer that question, is so often people wake up out of bed really stiff. They’re uncomfortable. The idea or the thought of them just jumping around and start moving for a lot of people would be a painful thought. Where can they start?
The Key Is Motion
Dr. Whitney: They can start, I know you guys would agree because we’ve talked about this together with patients, is 10 minutes.
If you can start with 10 minutes of movements that feel good for your body, that’s a great place to start.
Dr. Jason: Yeah, but I even think you could start less than that. I mean just getting up and moving. Listen, folks, it does not have to be intense. Wherever you’re starting at, the key is motion. Don’t feel like you have get up and knock out a bunch of burpees or pushups just because you heard me say, “I knock out pushups.” If that’s not where you are, don’t worry about it, but just move, right? Get that coffee going. Get your mind right. Calm down. Do some gratitude reflection and just move. If you had a home, you can walk around your kitchen for two minutes, right? You can go up and down the stairs.
Dr. Jason: If you’ve got some exercise bands at home, you can just pull those out and just do 30 seconds. The key initially if this all new, the key is just to start somewhere.
Dr. Bryan: Yeah, because I think so many people don’t have a morning routine checklist for adults at all.
The effect of having no morning routine
Dr. Bryan: When you have no morning routine, that’s usually when you’re getting tackled in the day. You’re walking in just to chaos because you didn’t take any control of how you want to create your day. So far we’ve talked about the idea of prepping the night before, whether it be your coffee machine or whether it be in the minerals in your body and your mind and decreasing the simulations.
Dr. Whitney: Ladies, let me tell you this, you got to prep yourself, meaning I’m not going to take the time if I’m going to them gym to wash and dry my hair at the gym. I don’t have time. The prep even cosmetically might be different the night before on a workout day. You’ve got to think about all the practical aspects, like having your food packed and ready for the next day, having yourself ready, you’re grooming, getting it down to 10 minutes versus 20 or 30. Some of these practical things too make a big difference.
Dr. Jason: My grooming doesn’t suffer though. I still groom.
Dr. Whitney: No, it doesn’t ever.
Prep work before the morning routine
Dr. Bryan: The night before there’s prep work. We’re getting ourselves ready. I want to kind of put this in a frame for people so that they can walk away with some tangible way that they can implement some things into their morning routine checklist for adults. Let’s look at this as maybe waking up with a half hour to yourself, right? A half hour of morning routine that you dedicate to yourself each morning before you start giving yourself to work or your kids or everybody else. That half hour so far is broken up into so far 10 minutes for the mind and the spirit, which is gratitude and meditation or journaling, then the next 10 minutes is broken up into some form of movement.
Dr. Bryan: We’re stimulating momentum and getting our body thought out and moving again. Then the next 10 minutes is going to be about fuel and feeding ourselves. I know we all drink smoothies. Talk a little bit about what do you put in for fuel to start your day? On top of water, we didn’t talk about … We probably all start with a cup of water, right?
Fueling Yourself as Part of Your Morning Routine
Dr. Jason: I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah. I have the water, glass of water, on my nightstand. When I get up, the very first thing I consume is water. I pour that obviously the night before so it sits there. That’s another part of the night routine. Thanks, doc, for bringing that up. Water is the first thing I put in my body.
Dr. Bryan: How else do you fuel yourself now to complete your morning routine checklist for adults in some sense? If we already done these other things, now you want to fuel yourself, what are you fueling yourself with? What’s the smoothie look like for you?
Dr. Jason: I’ll take water. I’ll put it in a blender. I’ll put a handful of kale. I usually put half a banana, some blueberries, and then I’ll put in a protein powder, just one scoop of protein powder. I’ll blend it up. Blueberries and the banana are usually frozen. We’d freeze them so that gives a nice consistency. That’s how I drink mine down. What about you, Whit?
Proteins to fuel your morning routine
Dr. Whitney: Similar. As far as the proteins we use, I love the rice-based one that we carry here. I like to make sure I have a protein powder that’s not going to give me digestive issues. Some of the whey-based protein powders or milk-based just … If you’re starting a new protein powder, just beware of look at your digestive system to make sure you’re not getting irritated by that. But yeah, a good protein powder that matches what you need. I like to fluff mine. I’ll add some would it be flax seeds or almonds or almond milk. I just like to make mine taste good. Sometimes some peanut butter. Sometimes some dry oats. I’ve got to mix mine up. I need some variety and I need it to …
Dr. Whitney: Anyway, yeah, you can have fun with it and just match up the ingredients that you’re looking for.
Dr. Bryan: What happens after the smoothie? Okay. Again, I’m looking at this in my mind as a morning routine checklist for adults to start their day. They’re checking the box, night before we prep. Then they check the box of spiritually connecting and mentally clearing ourself in some way. Then they’re checking the box of moving and getting momentum, and they’re checking the box with fuel. What happens after that or is that enough?
Dr. Jason: I’m in straight daddy mode at that point.
Dr. Whitney: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean that’s it. The cool thing is our kids know our routine. It’s hard in the beginning when they were babies. Of course, we had to switch off oftentimes and trade-off our morning routines or do one area, not do the other so the other person could go. It’s always about getting creative.
Closing Thoughts: Just Start!
Dr. Bryan: All right. Rather than get tackled by the day, that’s a simple little checklist of things that we can try to implement just to make sure we’re actually treating ourself the way we deserve to be treated, which is basically feeding our soul and feeding our body and feeding our mind and feeding our spirit, right? Any closing thoughts for either for you before we wrap up?
Dr. Jason: Just start somewhere. We’ve talked about a lot of things today. One of the things that can be misconstrued is you have to start out with exactly what you just heard. For some of you out there, this might seem like wow, that seems like a lot. If it does, I totally get it. I understand, but don’t allow it to be, meaning start somewhere. As Dr. Bryan alluded to, you can break this down and make it fit into your life however that needs to be. Right now if 15 minutes is all you can right now think of that you could give in the morning, then fine. Work backwards from there, but just start somewhere. Fuel your mind, fuel your soul, and fuel your body.
Build up the habit in seven days
Dr. Whitney: Give yourself seven days. Try it for seven days. If you can’t pick all three or all four things we talked about, pick one and then just build on it. Add momentum as you go.
Dr. Bryan: Great advice. Hopefully this blesses and help some people just to get out of their bed feeling like they’re ready to actually be on point, be on purpose and actually serve whomever they serve, whether it be work or their families throughout the course of their day. But I can guarantee in my own experience is when you get up and you do not prep yourself in any way, shape or form, the day just seems a little bit off.
Dr. Bryan: If you want to avoid being off, you want to be on, you want to actually be ready to rock and you want to actually drive into the day and feel like you’re coming home like you crushed it, then really important to make sure that you start with some kind of morning routine checklist for adults that’s going to keep you healthy and well for many, many years to come. If you feel that this would bless somebody else, I’m going to ask you to share this message or share with this podcast with someone else that you know probably doesn’t have a morning routine. Just if they can actually, like Dr. Whitney said, do one thing or just to start somewhere, they will see some momentum that they can build off of.
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