What Portugal Taught Me That No Supplement Ever Could

I didn't move for the weather. I moved to stop working against myself.

Part 3 of 3 — New here? Start with The Diagnosis That Changed Everything

People started telling me I looked happier.

Not in the polite way people usually say it. They were trying to solve a puzzle.

What changed? For five years I’d worked on my health: better food, more exercise, better sleep. All of it mattered. What surprised me was how quickly things improved once I stopped working against myself.

The first thing a major life change gives you isn't something new. It's what disappears. I started noticing how many habits and obligations quietly accumulated over the years. It happens slowly enough that I stopped noticing it.

For years I went to Europe to relax because I couldn’t get called into work even if they needed me. I moved there because I wanted a different way to live. When I arrived, there was finally space for myself, space to create. For the first time in years, my mind felt clear. I was present. I wasn’t cramming in a yoga session just to disconnect. I started noticing the world around me again. I listened to a dog barking, a couple of ladies laughing, and how good the breeze felt. The dog was just happy to be running free in the park.

Years in high-pressure environments made stress feel normal. Then slowly it started leaving my body before I fully noticed it. I started sleeping better and waking up with more energy. All the inflammation I’d been trying to suppress for years started easing with far less effort.

Now my mornings look like this.

I wake up without an alarm. I get my mind ready for the day rather than it being taken from me before it started. Then I have a little ritual where I make coffee. My coffee got smaller because I no longer needed it the same way. This moment is for me to enjoy. Coffee is no longer a bridge carrying my tired body to more intensity.

Sometimes it’s a social moment shared with friends. Either way, we take our time. No more rushing. No more to-go cups. Understanding this difference was enormous.

It’s something that I didn’t know until I lived it. I stopped reaching for my phone every time it buzzed. The constant feeling that something needed me began to fade. I was no longer trying to compress a week into a single day off.

The same shift happened with food. I had spent 25 years working with exceptional ingredients. I understood sourcing, the seasonality of foods, and how to choose the best quality. This was my profession. Living it is completely different.

Portugal has a very different relationship with food. You buy what’s in season because that’s what’s available and that’s what’s good. You visit the market run by the next generation of the same family that’s operated it for years. You build meals around what looks good that day instead of forcing ingredients into a plan that you already created. Sometimes dinner changes because you walk past something too good to leave behind.

That way of eating changes more than the meal itself.

After eating, you simply feel good here. That sounds obvious until you realize how many years I spent eating things that immediately made me feel worse. I had become used to eating standing up, missing a meal because of a meeting, or having Uber deliver food to my house after work so I could call it breakfast. Here, meals are something I make time to savor.

What I’m suggesting is that your environment is a legitimate health intervention. Where you live and how you begin your day, whether your meal is rushed or enjoyed. Whether your attention belongs to you or someone else.

I’m not telling you to move to Portugal. I’m telling you to stop treating your environment as something separate from your health.

For me, no supplement protocol changed my health the way changing my environment did.

Live well,

Nathan

Every two weeks, I examine the changes that matter most and the evidence behind them.

This is Part 3 of a three-part series. Start at the beginning:

Read Part 1 — The Diagnosis That Changed Everything
Read Part 2 — Endurance Is Not Health

What in your environment is quietly working against you and what would it take to change it?

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