Liz Baker Plosser is the founder of Best Case Scenario, a top-100 health and wellness Substack, and the former Editor-in-Chief of Women's Health. She is the author of Own Your Morning: Reset Your A.M. to Unlock Your Potential.
Liz Baker Plosser
I spent more than 20 years as a health journalist working for legacy media outlets like SELF, Cosmopolitan, and Well+Good. I left to go — dum, dum, dum — out on my own on January 1, 2025. Now, I work for myself.
I write. I consult. I pitch editors and negotiate my own contracts and chase the invoice on day 31, which is a thing I never once thought about when someone else's accounting department did it. I build my own decks. I report stories for The New York Times and Vanity Fair. I run a Substack called Best Case Scenario. For seven years before this I was the Editor-in-Chief of Women's Health, where I had a staff of 35 and, I'm not kidding, a research department down the hall I could just walk into.
Now the org chart is me.
You know this if you've built something of your own. We make our own hours, which is incredibly liberating. It’s also the reason I’m writing this on a Saturday afternoon while my family sits in a theater watching the new Spider-Man film. (My three kids promised to tell me how it ends.) Two things can be true, as therapists say.
I've been obsessed with mornings for a long time. I even wrote a book about them, called Own Your Morning. And the thing I believed then and believe even more deeply now is that how you start your day is how you live your day. Those dawn hours are sacred to me. Not in a biohacker, ice-bath, 4:00 AM kind of way. (However, I do love contrast therapy.) Quite the opposite! But mornings are the one and only part day I get to myself. And when I take care of myself during those sunrise hours, I’m better at navigating every twist and turn that my day brings.
You Are the Architect
We all left to build something bigger. The company we'd been sketching on napkins, the dream we dared not say out loud, the thing we kept waiting for someone else to make, the work our passionate little hearts had always wanted to do.
Then we got to the top — at our new job, our own company, whatever it looks like in your world — and some days, a lot of days, it felt like an endless parade of fires to put out. Managing an exploding calendar. Board meetings. Late nights in front of the laptop. The list goes on. And on. And on.
Researchers looked at 273 entrepreneurs to figure out what keeps the emotional demands of the work from turning into full burnout, and loving your job wasn't it. Job satisfaction didn't protect anybody. Control over your own time did.
The first hour of the day is the piece of it you can control before you're being pulled in 17 directions. So protect it, and build the best version of it you can, because you’ll be so much happier and healthier with some intention. Let me take you through some tips you can use starting tomorrow, all of them backed by science.
Get Outside Before You Open Your Laptop
Light first. Research on daytime light exposure shows it sharpens alertness and attention, and morning light is also what tells your body when to release melatonin 16 hours later, so the walk you take today is doing quiet work on tonight's sleep.
Twenty minutes outside to get some sunshine in your eyes. I take Willa, my Bernese mountain dog, into the park. Thirty to 45 minutes after you wake up, your cortisol is climbing about 50% above where it sat overnight. It's called the cortisol awakening response and — poor cortisol, nobody ever says anything nice about it — it delivers energy and focus, free of charge. For most of my adult life, I gave mine to whoever had emailed me overnight. Now it goes to my body, my soul, and my writing.
Move Your Body
I'm a 47-year-old NASM-certified trainer so obviously I want you lifting weights to protect your bone density, build lean muscle mass, boost your heart health, and for a dozen other health benefits that will keep you independent and strong for the long game.
But when I’m exhausted, rubbing my eyes, and “really don’t wanna,” my bone density isn’t getting me to the gym, if I'm honest. I lift because I know it’ll make me feel like superwoman afterward. Working out makes me feel clearer, calmer, and more confident, every single time. Fitness is 90% about my mental and emotional wellbeing. And yes, I'll take the bigger biceps flex, too.
There's also a business argument for movement at the top of the day. In one study in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, people learned new vocabulary 20% faster right after intense running than after sitting still, and their BDNF levels, the protein tied to learning and neuroplasticity, tracked with how well they did.
You’re going to make dozens of decisions every day. Movement makes every single one of them sharper.
I used to hit the gym before the sun rose. I was very proud of my consistency and ability to sweat before most people woke up. But on this working-for-myself adventure I’m on? I’ve learned that my best writing happens in the wee hours of morning before the kids wake up. It felt like an identity crisis to wait until mid-morning, but I’ve made peace with my new schedule of walking my youngest to elementary school, then hitting my local YMCA to swing kettlebells. I’m home, showered and ready to get after the day by 10:00 AM.
I hope sharing that confession nudges you to audit your morning routine at least every season. (Great timing as fall arrives!) And definitely do it again when you change paths professionally or personally.
Those 60 minutes matter more than anything else on my calendar. When a deadline or a flight makes them impossible — and that happens more than I'd like it to — I do mobility work in the living room and feel grateful for each minute.
Pick whatever type of movement lights you up. And add music. There's research showing it lifts your mood and makes hard effort feel easier, which tracks, because I have never once regretted a playlist. Make one tonight.
Eat a Real Breakfast, With 30 Grams of Protein
Most of us run on coffee and adrenaline till noon and then act surprised when the afternoon falls apart.
Thirty grams of protein at breakfast is my number. Eggs or Greek yogurt will do it. Protein digests slowly and keeps you full, which is the difference between focus that holds through a morning of calls and the 2:00 PM dip you try to fix with more caffeine. I also recently upped my morning dose of creatine from 5 to 10 grams, mixed with water, because of the exciting emerging research on its brain benefits.
When you're the whole company, a crash at two costs you a decision you can't unmake.
Practice the Calm Before You Need It
There are dozens of studies about the benefits of mediation. And I aspire to have a regular practice, but until then, the exhale is where serious magic happens.
Slow breathing pushes you toward the parasympathetic side of things by way of the vagus nerve, and a systematic review and meta-analysis found that voluntary slow breathing reliably raises heart rate variability, which is the standard marker for that rest-and-recover state. It's the long exhales doing the work.
I do two inhales through the nose, the second one short and stacked on the first, then a long slow exhale out the mouth. (For fellow aspiring-meditators, a month-long Stanford trial found five minutes a day of intentional breathing beat mindfulness meditation for improved mood.)
Learn it on a calm Tuesday. You are not going to pick up a new nervous-system skill 90 seconds before a call where you have to explain a number you hate. Do it tomorrow morning, and come back to it when your adrenaline spikes during the day.
Look Out for Your Future Self
Every good morning I've ever had began the night before. Workout clothes out. Coffee prepped. Kitchen counter cleared so that tomorrow's version of me doesn't walk into a mess made by tonight's.
I also “wash the day away” every night with a hot shower. It’s a metaphorical way to clear the sticky energy — bad or good — from my psyche. There are evidence-based, sleep-improving reasons to do it, too. A meta-analysis of bathing studies found that warming yourself that way helps you fall asleep faster, because your core temperature is lower. Then: lights down, room cool.
Then, set the alarm on purpose. I always wake up to a seven because that’s my lucky number. I also choose a ringtone that makes me happy. Zero science there. Just better than a blaring alarm.
Pick tomorrow's outfit while you're at it. Steve Jobs had his black turtleneck and jeans for a reason. You've got a few hundred judgment calls coming tomorrow. Don't burn your brain power rummaging through your closet.
Make Yourself a Mantra
Everything routes through you when you’re a leader. Which brand to say yes to, which client to keep, whether to pick up on a Sunday, how to deal with a sensitive situation. You need a filter or the sheer volume of small calls will grind you down.
So pick a tagline, a question, or a rallying cry and say it out loud or in your head before you commit to anything.
Mine this year: Is there a softer, gentler way? I'm not fooling myself about the long nights or the 3 AM wake-ups or the 14 trips across the world I've taken this year so far. Those are going to keep happening, and I’m grateful for each opportunity. But I'm at least looking for the easier road now instead of automatically taking the hard one, and I say that as a woman with a high pain threshold.
You don't have to become a morning person. I wasn't one for most of my life. But you do get to decide what happens in the hour nobody else has claimed yet. And when you're the whole company, that might be the most important thing on your calendar.
