"Earn your Dopamine" - Matt Chenard

I’ve been following Matt Chenard on social media for a while.  He’s a fitness guy, wellness guy, mindset guy, do hard things kind of guy.  I think he’s great!  I’m sure you will too.  If you haven’t seen him set check him out on instagram 

@mattchenard. 

Matt’s been doing the ice bath thing for I think about 6 years.  If I’m not wrong for the past 3 years he’s recorded his daily ice bath and put it on his Instagram.  I actually love it when people are so consistent in something for so long…..and they can prove it.  There’s no way to fake that.  I’m so inspired by his deliberate intention of doing a hard thing, like and ice bath, everyday for 3 plus years.  He’s one of the OG's as far as I’m concerned in the social media world of ice baths.  

Matt has a saying that I love that he ends his videos with. “EARN YOUR DOPAMINE.”

EARN YOUR DOPAMINE

EARN IT 

We live in a world of quick mindless dopamine hits.  Here’s just a few to chew on:

Sugary highly processed foods

Social media

Netflix

Cell phone notifications 

Amazon

We want to earn our dopamine.  Meaning it costs us something to get there.  Here’s some ways earn dopamine:

Take a cold shower or ice bath

Work out

Do a meditation practice 

Hug someone 

Practice an instrument

You see easily earned dopamine wears off quick and you need to repeat the habit more and more often to get more dopamine.  Easily earned dopamine isn’t satiating. Easily earned dopamine does’t actually feel very good because you didn’t have to work to get it.  It leaves you quickly and when it’s gone you feel empty.  

Now Earning dopamine through something as like a cold shower or ice bath has a lasting affect.  The dopamine response is about a 2.5 time increase and the dopamine will last in your system for a few hours afterwards.  

Dr. Andrew Huberman has a couple videos on this.  The general scientific consensus is that doing 2-3 minute sessions to add up to a total of 11 minutes per week is the best bang for your buck.  How cold?  Uncomfortably cold that’s all.  Uncomfortable but safe.  Don’t be like me and good to level 1000 right off the bat.  It’s fine to ease into it.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XecbuI-9QE&t=6s

Things that this accomplishes doing and ice bath?  Well I’m glad you asked. 

Increases your resting metabolism 

Increases your brown fat which is a good fat you want 

Increases your insulin management. 

A few notes to follow.   There’s the whole point of it’s hard and you never actually want to do it.  That part is what I would say is one of the most powerful of all the benefits. Doing something like getting cold regularly intentionally increases your ability to override limbic friction.  Overcoming limbic friction adds deposits to a bank that proves to yourself that you are someone who can do hard things.  Doing ice baths and cold showers is hard and doing hard things consistently over a period of time tend to carry over to other areas of your life. 

In short.  Get uncomfortably cold, get uncomfortably cold often and you will become a different person both physically and mentally.  

Check out Matt Chenard if you’re interested in some tips and to see how a pro does it. 

Check out Andrew Huberman as well, he’s a leader in this field for sure. 

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Darren