Many of the lifestyle and dietary problems the western world is faced with are because of a miserably sedentary lifestyle.
The north american condition of doing almost no physical activity and eating an excess of calorie dense food is the reason so many people are overweight, chronically inflamed and dying prematurely from lifestyle disorders like CVD and diabetes.
Unless you have a highly active job and you live with very active people the proverbial deck is really stacked against you, and all of us.
All the fancy diet advice in the world is not going to compensate for this ‘obesogenic’ society. This is why we struggle with dieting, and force ourselves to go to the gym, and continually fall off the wagon and have to get back up again.
Before you even start thinking of messing around with macronutrient ratios, or reading about good and bad foods, maybe the first step is to start moving around more.
The common recommendations are also pathetically low. 30 mins of low intensity exercise (such as walking) 3-4 times per week was as little as people were being recommended for health improvements! This is more a statement of how sedentary people are and not about how much exercise we should be doing.
The sad part is many people can’t even get this little amount of exercise done on a regular basis.
A more realistic amount of activity is more along the line of 1-2 hours per day of mixed high and low intensity movement. That is only 7-14 hours of your entire week dedicated to movement…doesn’t sound like much, and for many people this commitment will be the difference between a shortened life with chronic complications of lifestyle disorders vs a longer vibrant life.
So before you even start thinking of tweaking your workout program for the exact ratio of sets and reps, or your diet for the exact ratio of macro nutrients and meal timing etc, the first step should be getting up to a real beneficial level of weekly activity.
If there was one habit worth developing the habit of daily movement would be it, and once you do this you’ll likely find that taking care of your diet will also become a much easier challenge to overcome.
John
