Four years ago, I walked up an icy hill late in the evening while taking my dog for a walk, struggling to catch my breath. My nose was useless. My throat burned from the cold while my mouth gaped open trying to catch a breath – my lungs worked overtime. That moment wrecked me and woke me up. Something was wrong with me. After that walk, however, the “Sharpen Your Edge” Framework was soon to be conceived.
During that walk – at that moment I knew something was broken.
What I didn’t know then was that I’d been breathing wrong for years. And that one problem – how I took air into my lungs – was responsible for my poor sleep, my lackluster workouts, poor energy levels, my poor focus and miserable state of mind. It also explained why I got sick much more often than those around me.
I spent the next year re-learning almost everything I thought I knew about health. Many of my lessons didn’t come from a book, but from my own body. And as I fixed one issue, others started to fall in place. Breathing led to better sleep. Sleep improved my energy levels, metabolism, and mood. More energy meant better workouts. And a clear mind and a better mindset helped motivate me to build habits that finally stuck.
Somewhere along the way, I noticed a pattern. Four pillars kept showing up. They weren’t hacks or shortcuts. They were the structure I needed to rebuild my health—and regain my edge.
I call it the Sharpen Your Edge framework. It’s not a program or a challenge. Not yet. It’s just the way I finally made sense of what it takes to feel strong, focused and energized again. Similar to how I felt in my thirties.
Pillar 1: Better Breathing
I didn’t even know I was a mouth breather. Like millions of others, I thought my stuffy nose and snoring were just inconveniences. But mouth breathing was draining my energy and increasing my stress without me realizing it. Once I switched to nasal breathing, everything started to shift. My energy, my recovery, my motivation—all of it improved.
Hundreds of millions of people worldwide suffer from mouth breathing or partial mouth breathing. Here’s what the data shows:
- Prevalence skyrockets with age, affecting a huge chunk of the population.
- Narrowing nasal passages and congestion make mouth breathing more common over time[x][x].
For me, mastering nasal breathing after that life-changing walk marked the turning point.
Pillar 2: Sleeping Soundly
Before fixing my mouth breathing problem, most nights I thought I was sleeping okay – I was unconscious after all. But I woke up tired and groggy . It wasn’t until I fixed my breathing that my sleep improved. It became deep and restorative. No more did I gasp for air while asleep or wake up dragging myself, almost robotically, through the morning. With greatly improved sleep quality, my focus improved and I had the energy and improved mindset to start working out and making better health choices.
Unfortunately, sleep disorders affect a significant portion of the population:
- 9-21% of women and 24-31% of men experience sleep apnea [x][x].
- Numbers with apnea climb with age as nasal airways naturally narrow, leaving millions with restless sleep
- Snoring is essentially the sound of obstructed breathing during sleep which affects up to 45% of adults [x]
The great thing is, there are strategies that can help you fix your sleep issues that, along with so many other benefits, will give you back your energy and help you feel optimistic and motivated to improve your life and regain your edge.
Pillar 3: Fighting Fat
For years, I walked almost religiously (I can’t drive due to poor eyesight) and tried to cut back on sugar to stay in shape. But I didn’t realize how stress and poor sleep were making fat loss much more difficult. Through better breathing as well as sleeping more soundly my hormones became rebalanced and as a result my metabolism responded. I lost fat and it became easier and more sustainable to do so..
To support this, the stats paint a clear picture:
- Over 42% of U.S. adults battle obesity [x].
- Around 30-40% face stress-related weight struggles [x].
- Too little sleep makes weight loss from dieting less effective because it lowers your metabolism and causes your body to burn less fat, even when you’re eating less.. [x].
For me, the energy and hormone balance from better breathing and sound sleep finally allowed me to lose weight. As a result, this increased my motivation to exercise and get into better shape. This is a pattern you can also follow.
Pillar 4: Making Muscle
I never intended to get jacked. I just wanted to feel strong again with a bit of muscle definition and the confidence I wouldn’t fall apart during the next physical exertion. The problem is I couldn’t build muscle until I had the energy and consistency as well as an improved mindset to train. Better breathing and deeper sleep gave me these. I started small—bodyweight exercises and resistance bands. That was enough to feel and see the difference.
Here’s the breakdown:
- Mouth breathing weakens your musculoskeletal system, cutting the body’s ability to recover and build muscle [x].
- Being stressed with a groggy brain for a good part of your life makes it difficult to change your habits to improve your health [x].
- This issue grows more common as our bodies age and our habits become more ingrained.
I found that my journey led to greater stamina and motivation from better breathing, quality sleep, and fat loss which fueled my muscle growth and helped me regain my edge. Of course changing the way you breathe results in lasting improvement but one other factor kept me on track, without which may have toppled the four Pillars.
Mindset Mastery
The glue that kept it together, without which nothing would have changed, was having the right tools to keep me motivated and on the right track. Of course when I felt better from better breathing that helped change how I thought. I stopped ‘willing’ myself to improve and started building routines and changing my habits. This wasn’t exactly easy but became much more so as I benefited from the results. My confidence returned, and not from motivational quotes but from proven strategies that support positive change.
Here’s the challenge::
- Failure to change, no matter how much effort we feel we put in makes it more difficult to change in the future – after a continuous struggle many end up giving up.
- The lack of mental resilience and absence of the strategies to help change, keep people stuck.
Having strategies to affect change was the glue, but without the right mindset nothing would have stuck. However, like a rock rolling downhill, with a little progress, the end result felt more inevitable.
Conclusion: Moving Forward
I’m not selling you a system. Not yet. But this framework—these four pillars—helped me rebuild my health and my life.
If you see yourself in any part of my story, know this: it’s not too late. There’s nothing wrong with you. You just haven’t found the correct approach – the right foundation to support change.
That’s why I built RegainYourEdge.com. To share the ideas, stories, and tools that helped me the most. I plan to keep this up but focus more on ways to help you finally regain your edge.
Want to start where I did? Start by signing up for my newsletter – The Weekly Edge. This might just spark the change you want and need. Let’s get to work.
Check out How to Regain Your Edge – Its Time!.
