Making significant improvements to your health and fitness can seem like an overwhelming task. However, biohacking is all about improving your well being through simple tweaks to your habits. These are simple habit modifications you can implement without making massive changes to your fitness or diet plan. We’re laying out our best biohacking tips for women for weight loss and overall health.
What is ‘Biohacking’?
Biohacking is do-it-yourself biology that consists of making small, incremental changes to your diet or lifestyle to make improvements in your health, weight loss and overall well being. Biohacking your health integrates your physiology, nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, will power, stress tolerance and psychology. There are small changes you can make to your daily routine that have a big impact on your overall lifestyle.
What Are the Benefits of Biohacking?
- Healthy weight loss
- Improved cognitive function
- Enhanced mental health
- Prevents health problems you’re genetically predisposed to (for example, following a low carb diet to reduce your risk of obesity and heart disease)
- Improved physical, mental and emotional well being
- Better skin
- Improved gut health
- Better sleep hygiene
How to Get Started with Biohacking
Working on your body and health is a great place to get started with biohacking. Make healthy changes to your diet and consider trying out a new eating plan, such as intermittent fasting. Add healthy yet easy-to-incorporate regimes to your daily routine such as getting outside for a walk every morning and adding proper hydration to your workouts. Start using a fitness tracker if you don’t use one already to help you stick to regular physical activity and boost your confidence in your ability to lead a healthier lifestyle.
8 Biohacking Tips for Women
1. Try an Elimination Diet
An elimination diet is a meal plan where you remove certain foods or ingredients and then slowly introduce them about two weeks later to see how they affect your body. The goal is to find foods you may be sensitive or allergic to. During the re-introduction phase, look out for symptoms such as rashes, stomach pain, fatigue, diarrhea, constipation and other abnormal symptoms. Any of these may mean you’re allergic to these foods and should probably take them out of your rotation.
2. Get Into Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is a great way to reduce stress, anxiety, depression and pain. This can improve your mental and physical well being, making you feel better all around. If you’re just starting out, try short, guided meditations through an app like Headspace. You may eventually move on to self-guided meditation or you may choose to continue to use an app. High stress increases your cortisol levels, which has been linked with increased weight gain and food cravings. Meditation is a great way to reduce cortisol and increase mindfulness.
3. Add Hydration to Your Workout
Water is super important to drink before, during and after your workouts, but there are some other drinks that help with biohacking your fitness. Drinking watermelon water before you work out increases oxygen to your muscles, and drinking tart cherry juice after you work out stimulates recovery. Watermelon has been found to increase nitric acid in the body, opening the blood vessels more. The more blood that flows to the muscles, the more oxygen, which means a better workout. The anti-inflammatory properties in tart cherry juice have been found to speed up muscle recovery.
4. Use a Fitness Tracker
If you want to make improvements in your fitness, measuring it is a great place to start. Fitness trackers like a Fitbit or Apple Watch allow you to track your steps and record your workouts and burned calories. Self-tracking will help you stick to a healthier diet, exercise more and sleep better. Many of the trackers also have a community feature, where you can share goals and accountability with friends. This has been found to be key in making lasting changes.
5. Consider Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is when you alternate between eating and fasting to cut back on calories in the short term. It involves only eating during certain times then fasting for an extended period. For example, only eating between the hours of noon and 8 PM, then fasting from 8 PM until noon the next day. The belief is that your body becomes satisfied by smaller portions, while reducing your cravings for unhealthy snacks. As long as you maintain a healthy diet, of course. Check out this post for intermittent tips and hacks for beginners.
6. Get Outside
There are numerous biohacking benefits of getting outside into nature. Breathing in natural air is super rejuvenating and energizing. It’s much better than the moldy air in our homes. Fill your lungs by breathing deeply through your diaphragm so you absorb oxygen most effectively. Another benefit of going outside is natural sunlight. It boosts your vitamin D, improves your mood and helps with sleep.
7. Steer Clear of Too-Tight Clothing
Women have more digestive problems than men, and your gut health is a big part of biohacking your overall health. Wearing tight clothing will not make your gut happy. It squeezes your body into an unnatural shape, compresses your internal organs and keeps your digestive tract from functioning properly. The compression can lead to heartburn, indigestion and acid reflux. Wear light, loose clothing when you eat and steer clear of shape wear like Spanx.
8. Incorporate Bulletproof Coffee Into Your Morning Routine
Bulletproof coffee is a high calorie coffee drink intended to replace a carb-heavy breakfast. It contains compounds such as medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) oil, which is known to boost energy and weight loss. Due to its high fat content, you may feel full for longer and experience fewer food cravings throughout the morning. If you have underlying health conditions, be sure to talk to your doctor first before adding bulletproof coffee to the mix.
Are you ready to get started with biohacking your weight loss and health? Use our tips to start making small changes today!
