In this edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter:

I will be going over,

• The 3 mistakes I’ve made that caused my health to deteriorate.

• A protocol that you can apply to achieve those same health benefits.

My promise is that I’ll cover all of these topics so that by the end of this post you will receive actionable advice on how to become superhuman in brain and body.

Before we begin,

Table of Contents

• In this edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter …

• The 3 Mistakes that I’ve made that caused my healt …

  • Author’s Note:

  • Mistake #1 (Overoptimizing for bodybuilding traini …

  • Mistake #2 (Not prioritizing sleep or recovery)

  • Mistake #3 (Eating Brain Fog Foods)

The 3 Mistakes that I’ve made that caused my health to deteriorate.

Author’s Note:

My intention with this post is to give you the lessons that I had to learn so that you are able to avoid the same mistake that I’ve made in the future.

So, I’ll will be giving you very specific, autistic detail on the mistakes that I’ve made so that you can take to apply to your own self-improvement journey.

Assuming that you regularly read this newsletter, I assume that you are serious in self-improvement and or at least trying to get consistent in habits such as journaling, meditation, or exercise.

If you are, then you have my humble respect for even trying to apply what you’ve learnt so far.

If not, then you honestly won’t really benefit much from this post at all.

This post will be catered to one of my main goals for this newsletter, which is to help you achieve a superhuman level in brain, mind, and body.

And throughout these recent posts, I want to explore more on the tactics that I’ve used personally to become superhuman in brain and body.

I know that I’ve covered more on the mental/psychological side of self-improvement, but I also want to discuss the physical aspect of it since I believe that it is extremely important as well.

Having peak health is a high ROI skill that we all should invest in, since it affects our relationships, our own mental wellbeing, and especially in the quality of work that you are able to do.

I want you to have this mindset where improving your health will lead to our aspects of your life to be better as well.

And I don’t mean just your physical health hence why I used “health” in a general sense. But your mental/psychologically health is going to the deciding factor in determining your quality of life.

If you’re mind isn’t capable to meet its demands, then the body will eventually collapse soon after.

The only reason why I’m speaking so heavily on this is because there was a period of time, specifically last year of 2024 where I had the worse health probably in my entire life so far.

I had constant brain fog, I was always out of breath, mind wandering, extreme anxiety, and no energy for my life.

On the outside, I looked like I was in great condition both in mind and body, but it was unfortunately not the case.

So, in this post, let me break down the 3 crucial mistakes that I’ve made that drastically deteriorated my health.

Mistake #1 (Overoptimizing for bodybuilding training)

Now this one may seem weird at first but there is a reason to why I put this first on the list.

It wasn’t really about the bodybuilding training itself, but the mindset behind it of becoming a one-dimensional person and concentrating all of my efforts into this one pursuit, even at the cost of others.

But you might be wondering “How does this relate to me if I don’t do bodybuilding?”

Well at the end of this post, I’ll give you a framework which I used that allowed me to allocate time for other pursuits in self-improvement.

But first, let me tell you a story.

Back in 2023 and throughout the span of 2024 was when I aligned my entire purpose to achieving one goal.

That was to build a 10/10 aesthetic physique that would have made my future self-proud.

And I kid you not and I’m not even taking the piss with this one, but that was probably one of the most disciplined periods of my entire life.

All be it very lonely and repetitive, it was the one thing that I’ve focused on for more than 3 years now.

And that came at a very steep cost…

I geared my entire life towards bodybuilding, and I mean pretty much everything.

My diet had to be calorie dense and high protein, or I wouldn’t eat it, I had to at least do one gym session everyday even if I had to stay up late, and my sleep hours were horrendous as well.

I cut off most of my social connections from friends in order to pursue bodybuilding, and I would spend most of my days inside, lifting, eating, sleeping, then repeat.

Looking back, I am extremely grateful for my younger self for putting in the work to build me the physique that I have right now.

And even though I look back at those times with gratitude, I also look back at it with extreme levels of regret because I had thrown everything out for this one cause.

There were surely better, more healthier ways to prioritize building muscle and trying to get an aesthetic physique, but I couldn’t realize it at the time due to the mental health issues and insecurities that I hold deep into my subconscious.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turn into months, and months turn into years, as my health slowly but surely declined.

Because I was doing bodybuilding training religiously for so long and with high intensity, sure I did build muscle, but my flexibility worsened over time.

I packed on so much size and mass that I wasn’t able to move my body as easily as I used to.

This made my life quality really go to shit because it was like I was wearing a muscle suit that was constricting my movements every single day. At that time, I could barely run or move as easily as I used to.

Adding onto that, I was always out of breath all the time, even if I was jogging slowly or playing some type of sport. My gas tank would crash since I only prioritized building muscle without also focusing on cardio.

Now it might seem like I’m being over dramatic since it would seem like getting really jacked is a good thing, right?

Well unless you’re out of shape, bodybuilding doesn’t 100%, directly corelate to having better health because of the high demands that it places onto the body.

And speaking of which, this leads to my second crucial mistake.

Mistake #2 (Not prioritizing sleep or recovery)

I won’t harp on this for too long since I believe that you already get the gist of it.

But the main downside that came with bodybuilding style training was that it came with really high recovery demands.

Back in 2022 to 2024, I trash sleep hours because I would often train at night (From 10:00 to even 1:00 AM at times) due to the work obligations that I had in the afternoon.

But since building muscle was a big priority during this period of my life, I’d make sure that I would complete 1 gym session even if it was at the cost of my sleep and energy for tomorrow.

Any forms of exercise can be tiring, but I found that in my earlier years especially that bodybuilding is very taxing on both the brain and the body.

Weirdly enough more on the brain because if I hit a high intensity lifting session before doing deep work-related task, my brain would be really slow, and I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the task at hand.

And what I found based on the research, hypertrophy training (building muscle) has the most adverse effects on cognitive performance because it heavily strains your CNS (Central Nervous System)

Whenever you do bodybuilding training, your CNS is getting fatigued because it is sending out the neuro adaptations to help your body adapt to lifting the weight.

This is why some athletes will experience CNS fatigue or a fried CNS whenever they train too close to failure without proper recovery and sleep.

One of the main ways that you recover your CNS is through having at least 8 hours of sleep or more though generally athletes usually have to sleep around 9-10 hours because their body has to recover more tissue.

I believe that this is the main reason why I had so many negative health effects that came with building muscle.

I initially thought that it was the bodybuilding training itself that impacted my health, but it was my lack of sleep coupled with several intense training sessions throughout a long period of time that really screwed me over.

So, on top of already having as I mentioned before, stiffness and shortness of breath, my body was in complete disarray since I would find myself not being able to concentrate on tasks as my mind would just drift off.

Mistake #3 (Eating Brain Fog Foods)

Now out of the 3 mistakes that I’ve listed, this one is probably the most controversial in terms of the science and the statistics behind it.

So, without sounding like a conspiracy theorist, let me explain to you why I legitimately think why there some foods are considered “Brain fog” foods and are bad for your overall cognitive performance.

Maybe you haven’t learnt what brain fog actually is what maybe you felt like you’ve experienced it yourself, but brain fog is basically this lethargic, tired feeling that you get whenever you trying to do a cognitively demanding task.

This could be your studies, your work, or in your business, you just can’t seem to work productivity because your brain just feels too fatigued to do good work.

And at the end of this post, I give you a list of foods that I eat now that give me no bad side effects to my brain performance before doing deep work.

This might genuinely be the most important section in this post since I will tell you the advice that the 99% of people won’t say.

Throughout this terrible health period that I was in, I reflected back on it a year later and analyzed which specific actions that caused me to be tired and unproductive.

And while I did realize that I was extremely overtrained, did not sleep enough, there was one thing that stood out amongst the rest.

Which was my shit diet.

It is common for you to look back at a specific bad point in your life and think “Oh yeah, that was kind of stupid for me to do that”.

But, whenever you live inside that moment, you don’t think that what you’re doing is actually bad for you.

And that was the case for me, a bodybuilding obsessed locus that focused on the macros, calories in-calories out instead of having peak health both in brain and body, which should be a goal that everyone could strive for.

But, that a whole different topic for another day. Basically, my diet consisted of foods that were high in macros like protein, carbs, and fats, since I only cared about building the muscle at that time.

Little did I know, the foods that I was eating, was literally the foods that gave me the worst brain fog of my entire life.

The foods that I ate had a shit ton of carbs, (exceeding 80-10g of carbs) and were mostly foods like corndogs, sandwiches, bread spread with peanut butter, and pasta.

Okay so on paper, this diet doesn’t really look too bad or unhealthy, contrary to the junk foods that I could have eaten.

And that was what I thought as well, if it wasn’t junk food then it couldn’t be bad for me right?

Oh boy was I so wrong…

I’m not going to go super scientific with this explanation though I will link a research study at the end of this post if you want more detail on it.

So, I’ll just give you a simplified, no BS, approach to determine which foods classify as brain fog foods and which foods are actually good for brain performance.

Basically, as humans over 1000s, millions of years ago were specifically only hunter-gatherers, meaning that we eat meat from the animals that we’ve killed, and we would gather fruits and berries from time to time.

But we never adapted well to eating carbs as well as we did only eat meat and other fruits from time to time.

So why is it that whenever we have a high carb diet or eat foods that are high in carbs, our brain seems to be a lot less sharp and foggier after eating that meal?

Well, there is a scientific term for it which is carb sensitivity.

Carb sensitivity refers to the inability to digest carbs as well as other sources such as fruit, diary, or meat because our bodies have never evolved to have carbs as a main staple in our diet.

Ok, so you may have some limiting beliefs with this, “Wait if that’s the case, then why have farmers been growing crops that contain carbs for over thousands of years like rice, oat, wheat, or barley?”

Well, that’s a good question because the answer is that it isn’t only about the carbs but the type of carbs that we used to eat.

If you’re talking about carbs that have been non processed by the sugar industry and don’t contain weird chemicals, then yes there could be a point to make that those types of carbs usually don’t cause brain fog.

But then again, that’s only an if because carb sensitivity is subjective to each person. Someone might be a lot more sensitive to carbs while another person doesn’t have the same brain fog affect even if they eat more carbs.

So how do you know if you are someone who is more sensitive to carbs than others?

Well in my own experience, aside from the brain fog, I’ve also experienced other common side effects with having a high carb diet.

This can include but not limited to:

• Excessive bloating especially in the face and stomach

• Digestive issues

• and energy crashes

This a side point and you might say that this is a coincidence but, being Asian myself, I found that the ethnicities that have a diet high in carbs like east Asians or Indians, they tend to have more bloated faces in comparison to other races.

That’s very strange, isn’t it?

And no, I’m not talking about BTS models since they are a genetic outlier in this situation, but I rarely see any Asians or specifically east Asians that generally have more sculpted facial features.

Again, you could just say that it is a coincidence, but I really don’t think that it is.

I think that the foods that we eat have such a huge impact on our health in ways that we don’t clearly understand just yet.

But there have been new scientists in the space that have recently discussed the benefits of having a keto/carnivore diet and how it affects your brain in comparison to eating “brain fog foods”.

Sure, you could call me a conspiracy theorist, but obviously you should experiment with this diet yourself and see how it affects you personally. This is just the surface level of information since I could get a lot deeper into this topic, but I’ll save that for another time.

A Protocol that you can apply to achieve those same health benefits.

In this section, I’ll tell you what I did to improve my health and then give you a step-by-step protocol on how you can improve your own health based on the solutions that I used myself.

I’ll make this as quick as possible so that you can get the knowledge you need to transform your health today.

Solution #1 (The 80/20 Rule (Pareto’s Principle)

While it can be extremely beneficial to concentrate all of your forces on one pursuit to get the fastest results possible, it does often cause other aspects of your life to start declining without proper maintenance. (Health, wealth, relationships)

So, in order to prioritize what you want to focus on in this season of your life, then you have to adopt pareto’s mindset in how you allocate your time.

Pareto’s Principle focuses on prioritizing what is most important and then leaving the rest for later (The 80/20) By focusing on the 20% that is the most essential that will give you the 80% of results rather than focusing on the 80% of the non-essential (fluff) that will give you 20% of the results.

We can apply this rule to our own routine.

If say that studying was the most important priority in this season of life, you allocate time to the tasks that are most essential. So, for example, you wouldn’t start highlighting with your gay little markers and try to annotate the entire fucking assignment, but rather you would write down the questions, answer them, and then keep repeating those some questions until you have it 100% memorized.

Constant repetition is what you need to get the 80% of results for 20% of effort.

Solution #2 (Shut everything off around your bedtime to prioritize recovery)

Now I will be honest with you, this is the probably the #1 issue that I’m struggling with right now. And like I said in my previous post, it is my ego that prevents me from doing so.

Mostly because I usually have thoughts that I could start writing during this time or doing other random tasks that I should just do tomorrow, I end staying later than what I intended.

In order to sleep earlier during the day, you need to have a dedicated schedule where you shut everything off. Meaning that every task that you were going to do during that time is halted so that you get into the right framework to actually start sleeping earlier.

Because if you’re still restless, thinking about the task that you’ve should have done, then you’re not going to be able to sleep.

That’s why around this time, if you didn’t do the tasks that you were meant to complete, the best thing to do is to just accept it and pay the idiot tax for not doing it tomorrow.

Since if you try to overcompensate that task for the time you should be sleeping, you’re going to end up in this endless cycle.

I have to embrace some humility since I still need to improve on this one or myself.

Solution #3 (Implement a Low carb or Carnivore Diet)

If you experience the side effects that I mentioned earlier or experience frequent brain fog, then I believe that this is the diet for you.

Especially if your work/studies/business is your #1 priority, then having a sharp and high preforming brain is crucial to produce good work.

For in my own experience, I tend to have a higher carb intolerance when I exceed above 250gs of carbs or if my diet consists of a lot of processed carbs.

But non processed carbs, it seems to have a lesser effect on my cognitive performance if I keep it under around 150-200gs or less.

Oat seems to affect me a lot more and gives me a lot of brain fog, while rice is in the middle when it comes to carb sensitivity, with potatoes or sweet potatoes having little to no interference in my brain performance.

So, experiment and test to see which carb sources affect you the most and generally stay away from processed carbs as it can greatly decrease cognitive performance and increase brain fog.

But for the foods that are the main staple in your diet, it can consist of red meat, pork, chicken, or eggs.

Whenever I eat eggs or red meat in specific, my brain tends to feel sharper and less fatigued than if I eat a diet that is high in carbs and low in protein.

I’ll probably go more in depth on this topic in a future post, so feel free to stick around.

Author’s Notes:

As Promised, I went over the 3 mistakes that I’ve made that deteriorated my health and covered the 3 solutions that you can use to improve yours.

If you resonated with what you’ve read, consider subscribing to the Peak Performance Newsletter to receive weekly insights just like this one.

If you would like to receive personalized feedback from me, comment below the current problems that you’re facing, and I’ll be glad to help as best as I can.

Until next time, peace.

-Jason