21 Days to a Buff Brain

Want to improve your concentration and focus?

Looking to enhance your daily creativity?

Wish you had better memory and could learn faster?

Then I have the training program for you!

Infinity Wellness Partners has designed a 21-day training program dedicated to pumping up your brain and mental performance.

Here is a look our lifestyle and wellness-based Brain Boot Camp:

I have listed 7 exercises that can improve the health, function, and even size of your brain.

Exercise 1: 1/2 Body Weight in Water

Your brain cells are made up of a mammoth 85% water...not coffee, juice, or soda - water! Besides sugar, water is the main fuel for the brain. When the brain is dehydrated it becomes stressed and will send a signal of thirst and hunger simultaneously. Professionals usually grab sugary drinks and snacks by only listening to hunger making matters worse for the brain and stress. Don't have your brain shrivel up like a raisin or prune - give it half your body weight in ounces of water per day.

Exercise #2: 5-Minute Meditation

The amygdala is the stress alarm of the brain. When we perceive a physical, mental, or emotional threat it will sound a brain and body-wide code red alert. This is the stress or flight-or-flight response preparing us for a life-threatening event. Chronic stress can prune and destroy the hippocampus, an area of the brain responsible for memory and learning! This 5-Minute Meditation will not only protect the brain from being fried by stress, but will also increase the brain's gray matter.

Exercise #3: 20-Minutes of Cardio

Exercise, physical activity, and movement is Miracle Grow for your brain. Not only will they increase oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to your brain, lower your stress, and increase your alertness, but it will increase your number of brain cells (neurons)! The book, Spark, discusses how cardiovascular exercise creates new blank brain cells and if we read, study, memorize, or work on challenging projects right after a workout session it can improve our learning and memory capabilities.

Exercise #4: Asleep by 10:30PM

When the sun or any lights are shining onto your eyes or skin, the brain's pineal gland will stimulate the release of cortisol. This stress hormone causes you to be up and alert by suppressing your melatonin (sleep hormone) and growth/repair hormones. Your body goes through physical repair between 10PM and 2AM (photo credit, How to Eat, Move & Be Healthy), but late bedtimes reduce the amount of physical repair you experience. Sleep essentially functions as a shower for your brain by washing away toxins and waste that builds up. Missing sleep and optimal bedtime leads to stress, higher inflammation, depression, and other mental conditions. Aim to be sleeping most nights per week by 10:30pm will maximize the repair of your brain and body.

Exercise #5: Eat Colors & Fats

The book, Your Brain on Nature, shares that many foods consumed cause low-grade inflammation on our brain called smoldering inflammation. Literally these foods light our brain cells on fire! Common workday foods of unhealthy animal fats (non-organic, non- grass fed animal products), processed foods, sugar, refined carbohydrates, and vegetable oils increase the flame on our beautiful brain. Cool off and put out the fire by eating foods high in omega-3 fatty acids and a wide variety of colors. Omega-3 fats help brain health and function while the different colors in food contain antioxidants and phytochemicals to protect the brain again free radical damage and inflammation.

Exercise #6: Get Outside

You live in a box, commute in a box, work in a box, eat out of a box, and entertain yourself by looking at a box. We have to get out of the box! The field of biophilia shows time and time again the physiological connection humans have with the great outdoors and nature. Sunshine, fresh air, trees, rivers, bodies of water, forests, nature sounds, aromatherapy and direct barefoot contact with the Earth can change the brain's chemistry, lower stress hormones, and lower levels of anger and aggression. Notice the difference in how looking at an urban and nature image can make you feel - studies prove that too!

Exercise #7: Create

Creativity is correlated to the right-hemisphere of the brain, but stress causes our brain to become left-hemisphere dominant cramping our creativity. Besides lowering stress through the exercises listed above, the best way to activate the magical side of the brain is to literally create. Create to become creative. Draw, color, build, paint, sing, dance, drum, strum, write, sculpt, snap, and play to enhance your imagination, intuition, and creativity.

21-Day Buff Brain Challenge

Now that you've learned the Infinity Wellness Partners Brain Boot Camp, it's time to take the 21-Day Buff Brain Challenge. Over the next 21 consecutive days, I invite you to do between one and four of these exercises. To enhance your ability to succeed in the challenge I encourage you to take the following three steps:

Circle one to four exercises you will commit to doing each day of the challenge.

Designate a specific time of day you will perform the exercise(s).

Complete the 'I will...' sentences by filling in actions that will help you complete the exercises. For example, 'I will buy markers, colored pencils and paper to support my creative exercise'. 'I will invite my daughter to create with me by alternating turns designing on the paper'. 'I will take out that gifted coloring book that has been collecting dust on my shelf'.