Behaviors

If trying to quit drinking, remove alcohol from your home or give it away so access is behaviorally harder; make drinking require extra effort, such as having to go to a liquor store.

Practice practical skills for handling social interactions without drinking, figure out what to do for fun without the substance, and learn how to explain your recovery boundaries to friends who still drink.

Recovery strategy from AA: focus only on not drinking today rather than trying to quit forever all at once; pair daily abstinence with going to a meeting today for immediate reinforcement.

Recommended for homeless people with addiction; combines housing with a recovery culture where residents contribute to rent and abstain from substances and violence.

Suggested as a sensible social norm to reduce compulsive social media use, including not using social media at the dinner table or in restaurants.

Referenced as an established social norm that should remain in place.

Described in successful recovery examples of young men who needed to stop video games or YouTube for a substantial period to recapture attention and agency.

General principle illustrated by replacing alcohol and cannabis with gym training; one example given was going to the gym instead of going to meetings.

Advice given to his sons because counterfeit pills may contain fentanyl; if you did not personally acquire it, you cannot know what it is.

Maximum-control strategy: if you never use a substance, you will never get addicted to it.

Use power walking as a way to get heart rate up for cardio-related brain benefits.

Use spin class as a cardio modality; the cited protocol used 45-minute sessions with a 5-minute warmup and 5-minute cooldown.

Exercise method combining kickboxing, dance, yoga, and martial arts movements with positive spoken affirmations; described as a sweaty workout that combines affirmation-related mood benefits with exercise-related brain and affect benefits.

Use sufficient intensity to reach real muscular failure safely; do a couple of warm-up sets first, maintain strict form as the set gets hard, and if the first hard set did not truly hit the target muscle, do another. Beginners should first learn technique and muscle contraction with light, controlled sets for a couple of weeks before pushing to failure.

Do not do more work than necessary to stimulate adaptation, because extra volume makes recovery harder.

Do not return to the gym for the same muscle or system before the recovery and adaptation process has occurred.

A practical protocol used for an overweight, diabetic client was training three times per week for about 45 minutes.

Longer-duration cardio can also be included if enjoyed; Dorian mentions biking in the mountains.

Explore how far you can go with food, training, sleep, and basic supplements before considering hormone replacement or anabolics; for young people, get as far as possible naturally first.

Before training, review what you did last week and define what you want to do today.

Used alongside Pilates and yoga to improve posture, movement quality, and overall function.

For longevity and injury management, use resistance training to maintain muscle rather than aggressively build more; current approach is a couple of sessions per week with moderate weights.

Current maintenance approach is generally one upper-body session per week and one lower-body session per week.

He intentionally reduced body weight from 250 to 230 for health reasons, believing carrying too much weight in older age is not ideal even if muscular.

He rejects 'toning' as a separate concept; the way to look firmer is to build muscle and reduce body fat.

Women may choose to add extra glute work if that is a priority area.

Hard work and effort are central; he emphasizes sweat and pushing yourself rather than seeking complexity.

Seek help when trauma is affecting mood, anxiety, behavior, sleep, or physical health. This can include talking to a professional to get to the root of the trauma when symptoms are significant.

Continually challenge the brain with novel activities that are frustrating but achievable; once you get good at something, switch to something you are not good at to keep driving plasticity.

As a young person into the early teens and beyond, engage in a variety of physical and cognitive activities rather than specializing too early.