Sleep. Eat. Exercise.

A short list of what the evidence supports

You do not have time to read a book about your health. This is a short one: about 160 pages on sleep, food and training, what you are usually told set against what the studies show, almost every claim traced to its study and the study graded, with the gaps marked. Where a claim has no source behind it, the book says so on the page.

By Chris Ngoi. Foreword by Dr Daniel Mahadzir. Paperback and ebook, publishing October 2026.

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The cover of Sleep. Eat. Exercise.: three textured circles in blue, green and orange on cream, with the strap line A short list of what the evidence supports, by Chris Ngoi.
The book was written with AI assistance and the cover image was generated with an AI tool; the copyright page says both.

Five promises this book keeps

Nothing you have to buy, nothing to chase, nothing to be perfect at

  • No miracle supplement
  • No glucose panic
  • No anti-aging pill
  • No 30-day fix
  • No perfection required

Who this is for: people with no time, who kept asking the same handful of things. What is the real stuff in all the noise? Where should they start? What can they trust?

The book’s answers turned out to be dull: get enough sleep at a regular time, eat enough protein, lift something twice a week, walk more than you do.

The rest of the book is the evidence behind those four lines, what to do when your week does not cooperate, and the signs that belong in front of a professional.

Why trust a health book at all?

Do not, by default. This one asks to be checked instead

Almost every claim that rests on evidence is traced to its source and carries a grade for that source, printed beside the entry in the source list. Familiar advice and prescribing cautions carry none. The whole source list is public on this site: each source with its grade, the book’s own sentence that rests on it where the page names it in prose (and the Sources line where that is the only mention), and its full citation, with a DOI or PMID wherever one is issued, so you can go and read the paper yourself.

Before publication, more than thirty researchers and clinicians were asked whether the research is cited fairly. Twenty-two of them read the pages that concern them and are thanked by name in the book, beside the author of the foreword. Being thanked says who checked a line, and endorses nothing; the acknowledgments page says so. Where they found the book wrong, it changed, and the corrections that arrive after publication will be public too.

Every source, graded: the whole source list

  • 160pages
  • 147on the four-step scale, Strong to Emerging
  • 4grades, plus two labels
  • 12mapped pathways
How the 192 source entries break down A bar chart of the 192 entries. Strong, 8. Established, 18. Moderate, 57. Emerging, 64. Guidance, 41. Background, 4, ungraded. Strong 8 Established 18 Moderate 57 Emerging 64 Guidance 41 Background 4, ungraded
Strong 8, Established 18, Moderate 57, Emerging 64, Guidance 41, Background 4. The two largest groups are Moderate and Emerging. The rubric is my own. It was informed by how GRADE thinks about certainty, but it rates each source rather than a body of evidence, so it is not GRADE and should not be read as GRADE.
What earns each grade
GradeWhat earns it, and the common misreading
StrongPooled randomized trials, or replication across many laboratories, large enough to settle the direction. Common misreading: That Strong means settled for good. Even these get overturned, just less often.
EstablishedAt least one well-conducted randomized trial, or a direction no longer in dispute. Common misreading: It says how confident I am, and nothing about the size of the effect.
ModerateProspective cohorts, or several small or short trials. Most useful lifestyle evidence sits here. Common misreading: Not a tier to skip.
EmergingMechanistic, cross-sectional or animal work, or one small trial on its own. Dashed on the map. Common misreading: Limited confidence for the stated claim; the evidence may include human studies, and the limitation is in the entry.
BackgroundReading that informs the argument without being a study. No grade. Common misreading: A claim resting on it is marked as such.
GuidanceA clinical body, a regulator or a formulary sets the rule. The entry names which. Common misreading: A kind of source rather than a rung; I have not re-graded what sits behind it.
What is in it

Three pillars, one system

The book treats sleep, food and training as one loop rather than three separate lists. Twelve pathways connect them, and the map says how well each one is evidenced. Then it puts the loop under stress.

The system map from page 11: seven nodes across sleep, nutrition and exercise, joined by twelve numbered pathways, four drawn solid and eight dashed.
Page 11. Twelve pathways across the system. Four of the twelve reach Established or above and are drawn solid, and the other eight are drawn dashed. This is a reading map: an arrowhead marks a tested direction; a line with dots at both ends is an association, or the order of sleep stages, with no direction tested; and none of the lines means that changing one item will reliably improve the other.

View the map larger (opens the drawing on its own; use your browser’s zoom)

The twelve pathways, as numbered on the map

  1. Pathway 1. Nutrients → Fitness. Food and protein fuel training. Established or above, solid line.
  2. Pathway 2. Sleep ↔ Recovery. The overnight growth-hormone pulse comes with sleep. Emerging, dashed line.
  3. Pathway 3. Nutrients → Gut. Food shapes the gut: fiber and fermented foods. Emerging, dashed line.
  4. Pathway 4. Sleep → Nutrients. Longer total sleep lowered daily energy intake. Established or above, solid line.
  5. Pathway 5. The day’s practice → Stable·N2. A movement practiced by day is filed in stable sleep. Emerging, dashed line.
  6. Pathway 6. Deep ↔ Stable·N2. Deep and stable sleep couple through the night. Emerging, dashed line.
  7. Pathway 7. Fitness → Deep sleep. Training modestly deepens sleep. Established or above, solid line.
  8. Pathway 8. Nutrients ↔ Deep sleep. Higher fiber intake is associated with more deep sleep. Emerging, dashed line.
  9. Pathway 9. Sleep ↔ Gut. Sleep measures and gut diversity track together. Emerging, dashed line.
  10. Pathway 10. Fitness → Gut. Exercise shifts the gut toward fiber-eating bacteria. Emerging, dashed line.
  11. Pathway 11. Stable·N2 ↔ Nutrients. Stable sleep tracks with next-day glucose control, a marker rather than intake. Emerging, dashed line.
  12. Pathway 12. REM back-loading. REM is back-loaded, so cutting the end of a night mostly cuts REM. Established or above, solid line.

An arrowhead marks a tested direction. A line with dots at both ends is an association, or the order of sleep stages, with no direction tested.

  • Sleep. Where to start

    A fixed wake time, morning light, caffeine and alcohol timing, and what each stage of the night does. Pages 23 to 42.

  • Eat. The fuel

    Protein and plants, the six nutrition decisions that matter, and the gut as something you feed rather than test. Pages 43 to 60.

  • Exercise. The engine

    Strength, an easy aerobic base, a little hard work, balance, and where recovery happens. Pages 61 to 78.

The situations, pages 97 to 122

Twelve situations where the loop breaks, each with one thing to do this week and a place to write your own. The people in them are invented.

  1. The 2am racing mind
  2. The crunch week
  3. The 3pm crash
  4. The reset
  5. Red-eyes, nights and time zones
  6. The dinner circuit
  7. Should I take X?
  8. Burnout
  9. The annual check
  10. The clock is not yours
  11. Staying independent
  12. The new-parent crunch

Then the back matter: what the book does not try to solve, when to get it looked at (thresholds sourced to WHO, NICE and the AASM), where you differ by sex and life stage, a glossary and index, and the sources, graded.

The shape of the book across 160 pages Eight parts drawn to scale along the length of the book. Front matter, with Do this first, pages 1 to 22. Sleep, 23 to 42. Eat, 43 to 60. Exercise, 61 to 78. Data and support, 79 to 88. Making it stick, 89 to 96. The situations, 97 to 122. The back matter, 123 to 160. Front matter 1 to 22 Sleep 23 to 42 Eat 43 to 60 Exercise 61 to 78 Data and support 79 to 88 Making it stick 89 to 96 The situations 97 to 122 Back matter 123 to 160 Warning signs, page 126. Sources, from page 137.
Each bar sits where that part sits in the book and is drawn to its true length. Front matter, with Do this first, 1 to 22, Sleep 23 to 42, Eat 43 to 60, Exercise 61 to 78, Data and support 79 to 88, Making it stick 89 to 96, The situations 97 to 122, the back matter 123 to 160. The system map is on page 11, the grade rubric on page 14, the warning signs on page 126, and the source list runs from page 137.
Where I sit

Who wrote this, and the conflict to know about

I am Chris Ngoi. I am not a doctor and I am not a researcher. The book is my best-effort reading of the reviews, guidance and primary studies I could find, to help people like me navigate how to sleep, eat and exercise better.

I am in the wellness industry, and you should not have to take my word for what that means: I co-founded a business that sells sleep supplements, which overlaps directly with the supplement pages in this book. The book was not written to sell or endorse any product, the author’s included.

The book recommends no brand or company, and sells no product. In the chapters, a real name is a source being cited or a method being compared, and a medicine’s label is sometimes the only source there is. The support chapter is short, ranks the extras below the pillars and gives a four-question screen for the rest, and wherever a free basic does the job, the book says to do that instead. Read all of it knowing where I sit.

If a grade looks generous to you, let me know and I will look into it.

When it is wrong

Corrections are public

Some of what is in the book will not survive. Studies conflict, good ones get overturned by better ones, and a finding that looks solid at one sample size can shrink or vanish at a larger one. When a reader or a cited author shows me a line is wrong about the evidence, the correction goes on the corrections page with the date, and into the next printing. Write to [email protected].

Before you use any of it

This is information, not medical advice

Nothing in the book or on this site was written about you, because I do not know your history, your medicines or your conditions. It is not a substitute for a doctor, a pharmacist or a nurse, and reading it does not put you in anyone’s care.

Do not start, stop or change a medicine because of anything here. Where the book says something needs adjusting, that is a question to put to whoever prescribes for you. If anything here contradicts what your own clinician has told you, take the difference to them, and do not change a treatment on the strength of this book alone.

Do not delay care because of anything you read. If something worries you, get it looked at. Thresholds, doses, what is available on prescription and what you are obliged to report all differ by country, so use the figure that applies where you live. The book is written for adults, and the disclaimer that governs every page is on page 5.

The full terms, and how this site handles your data.