Our health, it’s often something we put on the back burner, yet it dictates our ability to work, move, think and feel well. You might be like me, years ago I tried to get away with living an unhealthy lifestyle, masking the symptoms with: drugs, stimulants, crappy food and bad exercise habits. Walking around day to day, feeling good enough to function but not thrive, with a lingering feeling something isn’t “quite right.”
On the surface, we might even look healthy, I was a youthful 21 years of age yet often felt like I was approaching seniority. We can even lie to ourselves as to why we don’t feel well, blaming the burrito we just ate, our caffeine addiction, that last shift at work or how stressful our dog can be.
Eventually, we have to face the facts, we feel like shit and it’s probably time to start making some changes. I’m not saying you need to ship off to some tropical beach, sleep 12 hours a night, harvest all your own food, become a yogi and start meditating (ain’t nobody got time for that.) This is 2016: people are busier, more distracted and our expectations are higher than ever before. Much of the “fun stuff” in life also happens to be not so great for our health and longevity; should these experiences be avoided altogether?
No.
Personally, I do many things that are not optimal for my health: I occasionally push a little too hard in the gym, down one too many coffees and I’ll work through the night when I’m inspired. Ironically, a lot of things that are inherently unhealthy make us feel the most alive; The key is finding a balance.
Since I do not expect this lifestyle to change anytime soon, I think it’s a good idea to emphasize what we can do to in order to get “the best bang for our buck.”
The purpose of this article is to encourage you to try your best to prioritize and start making subtle changes to your lifestyle. You’ll learn what changes matter the most when you trying to live and feel better and might be surprised by some of this counter intuitive advice.
Getting Your Priorities Straight
Here’s an analogy I’m going to take you through: Imagine you’ re a car with a far away destination, once reached we are our strongest, most energetic and highest performing self. Unfortunately, we aren’t quite sure how to get there yet and our car still needs a few additions before embarking on this trip.
1. Sleep Quality: You’ll need a good set wheels
You should think of your Sleep as a good set of wheels, without them our car (you) will never get rolling. Our quality of sleep sets the entire tone for our ability to move, think and recover on a daily basic; it can certainly make or break a healthy lifestyle. Our body regenerates during the night: it repairs our muscle tissue, builds new neural connections and gives our immune system a break. Getting a decent night of sleep has been shown to improve blood sugar levels, increase cognitive functions, enhance athletic performance and improve one’s overall quality of life. On the other hand, the net effect on your health from being chronically sleep deprived is about the equivalent to licking the door knob of your local strip club. Consistently neglecting one’s sleep has been scientifically proven to make you more susceptible to the following Medical ailments:
- Obesity
- High Blood Pressure
- Heart Attack
- Stroke
- Depression & Anxiety Disorders
- Mental Illness
- Injuries
- Poorer Quality of Life in general
Sleep is especially important for athletics, there is plenty of research on this topic and most professional athletes report an average of 7.5-11 hrs of sleep per night. Cognitive performance has been shown to be massively impacted by the quality of our sleep . When sleep is ignored, you will not even have the decision making capability or energy to make healthful decisions. If you have any aspirations to get stronger, work harder or feel better; Sleep Quality should be priority numero uno.
If you are interested in learning more on how not sleeping enough is killing you, check out my post: Health in a wreck? Get better sleep.
2. Stress Management: Know to which roads are safe
Let’s compare life’s stress to the imperfections in our road, there are two major types:
Acute Stress: Caused by short duration of intense trauma or fear of our survival, this type is pretty easy to recognize: the adrenaline rush from a roller coaster, the increased heart rate after sprinting or the sweaty palms we get from looking over a cliff. Surprisingly, infrequent periods of Acute Stress can actually be beneficial, our bodies respond by adapting, learning and becoming more resilient in order to survive. You can think of these experiences as the occasional pothole in our road; we need to be paying attention to the road in order to avoid them. Believe it or not, exercise is actually an acute stress and the benefits we reap are a result of how our bodies respond to it.
Chronic Stress: Since we live in a time were our survival isn’t often threatened, we tend to experience this low level degrading stress more often. Unfortunately, chronic stress stays with us all the time: pressure from high expectations job,emotional burden of a bad relationship, painful experiences we’ve internalized and poor belief systems. This type of stress not only taxes us emotionally, it has effects our physiology and increases our likelyhood of developing conditions like: diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders, heart disease, neurological disorders and mental illness. Imagine this as steering off our road and taking a bumpy unpaved shortcut to our health & happiness; we think we are going to get there faster but probably won’t make it in one piece.
Unless you spend your days practicing yoga on the beach, experiencing some degree of stress is inevitable; the key is to learn how to manage it while keeping life interesting. Everyday we wake up with a Stress Budget, when we experience stress (acute or chronic) we spend a certain percentage of our budget. There are many practices that can increase the size of our budget: taking up yoga, moderate exercise, meditation, spending time in nature and with people you love. Every time we expose ourselves to Acute Stress and properly recover from it, we increase our Stress Tolerance for the days to come. The fuller our Stress Budget and higher our Stress Tolerance, the more often we can take on the stress we want to like: a new business venture, intense gym session or late night of partying.
3. Nutrition: Put the right fuel in the tank
Optimal performance in the gym, at work and with all of ventures requires optimal fueling; you wouldn’t run an Audi R8 on Vegetable oil. Your nutrition can have a huge impact on your lifestyle; your cognition, mood, energy levels and inflammation are all highly dependent on what you feed yourself. Unlike a car, how much you eat as well as the types of food you eat can drastically change the way your body looks and feels. Protein provides us with the building blocks to build and repair tissues, fats promote cell health while maintaining hormonal balance, carbohydrates are our primary source of energy and micronutrients (except during a Ketogenic Diet)
If this sounds like German to you I have good news, the best nutrition tends to be the most simplistic. Generally speaking, the closer to nature your food is the better it is for you. A simple rule of thumb that I personally follow is:
If it can be
Picked from the ground or a tree
Hunted or caught in the sea
This food will be good for me
Focus on whole foods: meats & fish, vegetables & fruit, nuts & seeds with the occasional starch. A good place to start for meals is to fill half of your plate with colorful vegetables, one quarter with free range meat or wild fish and finally a serving of starch or fruit depending on your goals. Serve that up with a cup of green tea, water or coffee and you just surpassed the food quality of 90% of North Americans.
If the likelihood of you eating this way is the same as me quitting my coffee addiction: start with some small habits. Try adding a serving of veggies to lunch, swapping the soda for some sparkling water or cutting the Alcohol back to only once per week. Building little habits like these surprisingly add up and may actually be a better long term approach in reaching your goals. Being the type who used to inhale my food to get on with life, it wasn’t until after when I plugged the nutrition info into a calorie counter did I become aware of how much I was actually consuming. I found the habit of really forcing myself to sit and slow down when I ate, not only made my food choices much better but I actually enjoyed them. Having awareness can make eating a far better experience, just don’t take it too far and start snapping multiple photos of it for your latest Instagram Post.
4. Exercise: It’s time to drive the car
The best way to learn how to drive is to get behind the wheel; exercise is the same way. Exercise can be whatever you want it to be, as long you are moving your body you can still reap many of it’s numerous benefits. That being said, don’t expect your body to get stronger, more flexible and athletic looking simply by running everyday; you wouldn’t learn to drive by going in a straight line. I was guilty of this in my younger years, cardiovascular activity is great for heart health and cognition but it does jack shit for athletic performance and strength. Resistance training is king for improving strength, body composition, bone & joint health, mobility, balance and risk of injury. I highly recommend everybody take up some form of resistance training, whether that be: traditional weightlifting, calisthenics, kettlebells or even crossfit; do something you enjoy.
The biggest mistake I see people make is they immediately associate exercise with mindless treadmill jogs and grueling weight lifting sessions. I would make this mistake, work my ass off like a college football player after a long hiatus from the gym, only to burn out and get discouraged. Do something sustainable: that could be a couple days of resistance training combined with the occasional yoga class or run through the park. I’ve found I feel the best when I mix things up: some days I’ll lift weights and mess around on my gymnastics rings, while on others I’ll take it easy and go for a short run with some yoga. It can be nice to throw in a day where you experiment with something completely different: go rock climbing, rent a paddle board, take an Olympic lifting class or hike in the mountains. Not only will adding variation keep things more interesting, it’s an important part of recovering between training sessions and identifying new areas of improvement.
5. Supplementation: The bells & whistles
Supplements are just that, supplemental, don’t fall victim to the marketing; a lot of these products are completely useless. When I first started, I spent loads of money on protein powders, vitamins and pre-workout drinks only to realize I was neglecting everything that actually mattered. It’s like you’re an excited teenager with a new drivers license; you’ll throw a spoiler on a Honda Civic before checking the engine light. Supplements are the same way, you’ll have way better returns by spending that money on whole foods, personal training, nutrition education or a proper a exercise program.
That being said, there are certain supplements I do still take to fill in the gaps that are inherently created by our modern lifestyle. If you’re like me, there are certain things I just do not have access to; like eating quality wild caught fish, a year round supply of sunlight, organically grown vegetables, grass fed meats or the time to cook a balanced meal. This is where supplements like Fish oil, vitamin D, Creatine, Multivitamins and Meal replacements come into play. Think of most supplements like the Toy Hawaiian Girl you stick on your dashboard, if you dial in all of the above priorities you already have more than enough to complete the journey.
Sometimes, supplements are needed for those with special needs: during an injury you might want to throw Curcumin into the mix, if you have a big work push you could utilize Nootropics like L-Theanine & Caffiene or if you decide to go vegan a Vitamin B12 supplement is essential. I’ve struggle with gut issues and food intolerances, in this scenario, implementing a solid Probiotic and Digestive Enzyme to support a well formulated diet is incredibly helpful. Before taking any supplement, I highly suggest you do your own research and consult with a physician.
In my opinion, the best place to go to truly learn unbiased and scientific information about supplements is Examine.com.
Time to get started…?
Hopefully you’re a little but more inspired to take responsibility of your health and wellness. From experience working with others, there seems to be no right or wrong way to go about introducing healthier choices. Here are two methods that I see tend to work based on your personality & history:
A. You’re completely new to this information or just don’t know where to start:
It’s unlikely you’ll completely change your entire routine overnight, don’t have the expectation that you’ll be swapping bowls of Ramen for Kale salads. For most people, small improvements over time tend to create better long term sustainable results. An excellent way to go about doing this is integrating small habits that can eventually develop into massive lifestyle changes. The main goal here is to be consistent, start with something incredibly easy, for example: if you want to exercise more, commit to walking around the block after dinner, maybe after a couple weeks bump that up to a 20 minute walk and so forth.
To learn more about habit formation, check out my article: Habits for Lasting Success.
B. You have some experience and like a challenge:
Personally, I’m more the type to go balls deep into radical lifestyle shifts because I like challenge; the pitfall here is dealing with initial discomfort. If this sounds like your style pick one priority and commit to changing it for a period of time, some examples of this would be: I will remove sugar from my diet for 30 days, for one month I will avoid all electronics after 8:00pm, etc. If you slip up, forgive yourself and continue on with the change, it helps to constantly remind yourself why you started. After this period is complete it should start to feel intuitive and serve as a bit of a reset. If you feel like it’s a battle all the way through to the end, then consider a less drastic change like approach A
The age we live in is beautifully dangerous, the vast amount of information at our fingertips is incomprehensible. This can lead to either more clarity or confusion on a subject, but the only way to truly know is to apply and test the information. Since we are all unique, you’ll quickly learn what does and doesn’t work for you, causing us to filter what information comes in. I encourage you to always have an open mind and be honest with yourself; experimentation is essential for growth.
Thanks for Moving Forward
~Jake Pierce
StrengthCraft 
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