What Will YOU Do About Your Body?
Forget the "Rules" You've heard, make up your own.
The diet and fitness industry is hardly at a loss for words. Browsing the interwebs (or is it the world wide net…) will bring up thousands of pages of information, tips, and endless ‘must do’ and ‘never do’ lists.
Within 5 minutes of searching you could easily come up with dozens of ‘rules‘ of fitness and ways to live a ‘healthy’ lifestyle.
Almost all of them revolve around some sort of dietary intervention like changing the timing of a meal, or the composition of that meal.
After that you’ll get extensive lists of good and bad foods, supplements you should be taking, specific ways to workout, and specific times of day to workout etc…
At no point is the practicality of these recommendations considered, the story you hear is preached like a gospel and you may start feeling lousy about yourself if you can’t follow every recommendation you’ve heard.
The stress and guilt you might start feeling for not following these ‘rules’ could easily erase any health benefits you’re getting from doing what you can.
This is hardly a way to approach health and fitness.
Every little bit counts, and whatever you can do and whatever fits with your current lifestyle is just fine.
If you’ve heard that ‘cardio’ in the morning is best, but you can only do it in the evening, that’s just fine. Don’t let some magazine or website steal the positive emotional boost you get from exercising by telling you that you’re doing it at the wrong time of day.
If you lift weights but you don’t have the money or time for a post workout protein shake then don’t worry about it, you’re still going to build muscle and strength no matter what the web-o-sphere of self proclaimed experts say.
Protect what gets into your brain, because it's going to be hard to get it out.
The moral of today’s post is to be careful what you read and what you let get into your brain.
If you’re reading this blog you probably already do lots of healthy and positive things for your body on a daily basis, but if you read too much ‘info’ out there you might just end up forgetting what you’ve done that was good and stress about all the ‘rules’ of fitness you’re still not following.
Instead of following everyone else’s rules try making up a few things for yourself.
Try to do one exercise ‘thing’ per day for your fitness, and one ‘nutrition/food’ thing per day.
Make it up just for you and it’s gotta fit your life.
I’d like to hear what you’re planning on doing if you don’t mind putting it in the comments section.
John
6 Responses to “What Will YOU Do About Your Body?”
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August 19th, 2010 at 10:14 am
Stress less about food i.e. eat whatever I feel like within my BMR of course,fast twice a week(on non training days),weight train 3X/week & just live life the rest of the time….Bliss & peace!!
Thanks & good job John & Brad you gave me my life back.Wish I knew what I know now 65lbs ago…10 more to go!!
Eargerly waiting for the Venus Index…When may I ask?
August 19th, 2010 at 10:20 am
Very true, John.
I just got an email from Men’s Health that talked about how mayonnaise causes inflammation, which leads to poor recovery. But what they didn’t state was that, as you’ve always mentioned in the AL podcast, overeating causes inflammation and that’s where excess mayonnaise or big macs are really going to hurt your recovery big time compared to vegetables or fruits. But if you overeat on vegetables and fruits, you will also suffer from inflammation and other health conditions! But no, mayonnaise has become the bad food, just because it has a low pH and “inflammatory tendencies”. It’s never been proven as yet that inflammation is caused by eating “unhealthy” foods. Correct me if I’m wrong.
What I do know and have seen solid research on is that caloric restriction has been shown to decrease inflammation and improve bodily functions and fasting has been shown to increase fat burning and hGH; sleep and good recovery methods like foam rolling improve recovery! So why do we need cardio to burn fat? And I’ll keep my lunch of a tuna sandwich with a tablespoon of mayonnaise, thank you very much, and eat at a weekly caloric intake of BMR x 7.
My goals:
1) unsubscribe from all newsletters that just distract me from my goals (2nd rant: they’re telling me to bulk! I don’t want to eat like a pig. I like my body lean at 130Ibs, thanks)
2) Lift weights 3x per week. Go heavy, balls-to-the-wall. This is where I want to gain muscle with.
3) Eat less, stress less about cardio compensation or protein guilt
4) Don’t let exercise consume my life like before. If I have a soccer game or outing, I will re-schedule my training.
August 19th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
I love the idea of making your own rules, and figuring out something that fits with one’s preferences, personality, schedule, etc. I’ve been off my diet for about a month, so I’ve been thinking about what I want to do next. Probably thinking too much about it, but that’s another issue! lol. One idea that I think would work for me is eating low-cal foods during the day, like fruits, veggies, homemade popcorn, fish, etc. And then getting in my protein, starches, dessert, etc. for dinner. I don’t know if I want to be quite as aggressive as I was before. This might be a better balance.
August 19th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
I just figure out what’s true and what’s false. After a while, you develop a good B.S. detector and know what matters. And you realize at that point that 99% of what you read and hear not only doesn’t matter, but is straight up B.S. That leaves you with a much simpler method of staying “healthy and fit.”
August 19th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I try my best to make logical instead of emotional decisions. The danger with the latter is that you adopt whatever rules that appeals to you the most, whether it has any real benefit (or worse, actually negatively impacts you). If the logical decisions end up being more complex and less convenient, so be it. We’re just lucky it’s the other way around.
August 19th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
You are a wise man
, I’ve often wondered about all the rules. If I don’t want to fast on my training days because its compromising my intensity, that’s my choice, isn’t it? Thanx for reminding us that every bit counts! Also in great anticipation for the Venus index!