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#171 - 1 Nutrition Tip With The Biggest Payoff, 3 Gym Mistakes That Slow Your Progress & More
20 Plays3 days ago
In this Q&A episode, I'm answering five common questions and then sharing simple, practical strategies to help you get better results in a simple, practical way.
- One simple nutrition habit you can start using today to make healthy eating feel easier, help manage hunger, and cut back on overeating.
- The 3 biggest mistakes that hold people back in the gym and 3 practical strategies to avoid them that can make a huge difference in your results.
- Common exercises overlooked for long-term health and why I've completely changed my opinion on these.
- 3 practical insights you can use to stay motivated when progress slows down.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Fit-ish Project
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to the Fit-ish Project with your host Lathan Bass. where We make fitness and health simple for regular people like you and i We got our weekly episode as we always
Call for Reviews and Monthly Q&A Introduction
00:00:12
Speaker
do. Before I hop into this episode, just a reminder to continue to leave reviews if you can and have not done so. Continue to help get this show out to more people who can use this type of information to help people live better lives, healthier lives, happier lives. That is the entire goal of this whole show. so i appreciate your help in making that happen the topic for this week it is time for another q and a like to do these about once a month or so and it has been about a month since we did the last one so we're going to do another one we got five questions that i get from you guys that i have from conversations with people in the gym conversations that i have with some online clients
00:00:51
Speaker
Just general topics that I hear about that I think we can dig a little deeper on in the podcast that I think would be helpful to you guys. So the five questions that we're going to get into for this week.
Key Health and Fitness Questions Overview
00:01:01
Speaker
What's one nutrition habit that gives the biggest return for the least amount of effort?
00:01:06
Speaker
What are some of the biggest mistakes you see people making in the gym that holds them back from seeing results and how can you avoid them? What exercises most people don't do but should probably be doing more of?
00:01:17
Speaker
Some tips to keep going when progress feels slow. And last but not least, what health habits people overlook that can make a big difference in their health? Five really good questions. And so let's get right
Exploration of the 80-20 Diet Rule
00:01:30
Speaker
into it. Question number one, what's one nutrition habit that gives the biggest return for the least amount of effort?
00:01:36
Speaker
I actually really like this question because I think lots of people want to be healthier. I don't think if you asked anybody out there if they could be healthy versus unhealthy, that anybody in their right mind would choose to be unhealthy. But with that comes different circumstances for everybody. Like people have different amounts of time, different amounts of bandwidth to attribute to certain things. And I think oftentimes health gets thrown on the back burner for a lot of people. And I think that if you want to be healthy, you do have to ultimately make this a top priority. It may not be your very top priority all the time, but if it's not up there near the top two, three priorities in your life, it's going to be a struggle to get healthy, to look the way you want to look, to feel better, to have that vitality and live a long life and a happy life and have confidence and all those different things. This isn't to say that you shouldn't just forget about health. I think that it needs to be a priority. But with that being said, I always try to think about what are the highest leverage things that we can do in order to improve our health? Because not everybody wants to spend two hours a day in the gym. Not everybody wants to listen to podcasts and read books and spend endless amount of hours figuring out what's the best things that they need to be doing for their health. And I get that. I understand that. Not everybody is super passionate about this stuff like I am and enjoys reading and learning and putting a bunch of time and effort into these things. And so for that reason, I think it's important that we be able to figure out some of the highest leverage things that you can put your focus and attention and time into so that you can still see a good return and have good health and be able to look good, feel good, all those different things. And so I do actually really like this question. and with that being said,
00:03:13
Speaker
One of the things that I have seen work really well for people and something that I've thought a lot about is the 80-20 rule. And why I think this is so beneficial to people is because when you think about health goals, when you think about your health goals, a lot of times they fall into two different categories. People want to feel better and people want to look better.
00:03:33
Speaker
When people say they want to feel better, they want more energy, they want to not have all the aches and pains, they want to have better confidence, all those different things. When people say they want to look better, typically means they want to lose some fat or at the very least maintain a healthy weight that they're at, maybe build some muscle. And to do these two things, you need to one, eat a high quality diet and two, not overeat tons of calories.
00:03:58
Speaker
The 80 20 rule helps with both of these things. And so by focusing on getting more food, and I guess I should preface this with saying the 80 20 rule is 80% of your diet is focusing on whole minimally processed foods, think of lean proteins, Think of fruits, think of vegetables, think of healthy fats, think of complex carbs, basically single ingredient foods is where you're putting most of your attention on for your diet. So chicken, beef, seafood, eggs, fruits, vegetables, potatoes, rice, oats, different things like that that are single ingredient foods. And then 20% of the time, you're allowing yourself to have some of that other stuff, whatever that may be. So if you think about this in the context of a week, 80% of the time you're focused on that whole foods diet, 20% of the time you're allowing yourself to have some other things in moderation. When we look at the course of a week, if we're eating three meals for each day, that gives us 21 meals in a week. And so when we take 80% of that, that gives us somewhere around like two to four times a week, you're having some of that other stuff in moderation. And then the rest of your meals are focused on whole minimally processed foods.
00:05:07
Speaker
When you're able to do that, you get tons of benefits. So by doing this one single thing, you're allowing yourself to get all these benefits. And some of those things include when you focus on eating more whole foods, I think we can all agree, you're probably going to feel better. You're going to have more energy versus if you are eating a highly processed diet, if you're eating packaged foods all the time, if you're eating tons of fast food or takeout, If you're eating things that just aren't in their whole form, like you're just not getting as many fruits and vegetables and lean proteins and things like that, you're probably not going to feel as good as if you were doing those things.
00:05:41
Speaker
For one, you're going to feel better. Your digestion is going to be better. You're going more energy, less blood sugar crashes, all those different things. Second thing is when you're eating more whole foods, you're typically going to be more full and satiated after your meals. So if you're eating chicken and rice and potatoes and vegetables and fruits and healthy fats, you're a lot more full and satiated after eating those meals versus if you're going and eating fast food or eating like highly processed meals. And that's simply because those things are engineered to make you eat a lot. Those things are engineered to taste really good. And when things taste really good, it's very easy to overeat on calories. And with that, a lot of processed things are higher in calories than your whole foods. And so when you're eating things that are very tasty and they're also much higher in calories, it's very easy to start to consume too much to overeat. And then you start to get some of that unwanted weight gain, which also leads to other problems down the line. And so eating more whole foods is a good thing for that reason.
00:06:39
Speaker
Third reason I really like focusing on eating more whole foods is because you naturally will start to notice that it crowds out some of the other stuff naturally without feeling like you're restricting too much. And what I mean by that is a lot of people, when they approach trying to eat healthier, they think of all the different foods that they can't eat anymore. I can't have sugar. I can't have alcohol. i Can't have processed food. I can't have this. I can't have that.
00:07:00
Speaker
And by switching that a little bit and focusing more so on what you can actually eat, 80% of your diet is focused on whole foods. You're going to eat those things and you're still going to make good foods and good meals that you enjoy eating. You're not trying to eat in a way that's boring or bland or trying to eat a bunch of foods that you don't like. You're just finding single ingredient foods. You're mixing those and matching those in different combinations. to make good high quality meals that you actually enjoy eating and while doing that you're going notice that you naturally just have less room to eat some of that other stuff so if you're eating high protein diet if you're eating lots of fiber lots of fruits lots of vegetables you're not going to want to eat or even have a room to eat tons of other highly processed things or eating tons of sugar or tons of desserts or different things like that without actually feeling like you're restricting yourself and when you do this for long enough you actually start to realize again i feel better when i'm eating in this way i'm starting to look better when i eat in this way and so you start to see all the benefits for this but with that being said you still have that 20 of the time where you're able to be a little bit more flexible because
00:08:02
Speaker
If you're thinking about this and you're thinking, okay, if eating more whole foods is better, why don't I just cut out all processed foods, all desserts, all alcohols, never have any of that kind of stuff ever. Just go 100% whole foods. Why don't I just do that?
00:08:15
Speaker
If some is good, more has to be better. Well, in my experience personally, and just with working with lots of different people, that's not very realistic for most people, myself included. I still want to enjoy a few drinks here and there. I still want to have desserts here and there. I still want to go out to a restaurant.
00:08:31
Speaker
maybe even have some takeout or some fast food from time to time and that's not an issue you can do those things and still lose weight or be healthy feel fit as long as you're doing those things in moderation and so having that 20 of the time where you can actually do those things make this much more flexible and sustainable for the long term which i talk about all the time because if you're doing these things but it's not sustainable and it's not something that you can see yourself doing for the long term it's just not going to stick and you're not really going to get a lot of value on it. You're going to fall into those gain and lose weight cycles that yo-yo dieting, all those different things that people tend to fall into over and over and never really get to a result where they can feel good, look good, and still actually have a diet and enjoy a diet that gels with their lifestyle. And so the bottom line is one of the most simple and most practical things that you can do is just start to eat more whole
Consistency in Fitness: Importance and Strategies
00:09:22
Speaker
foods.
00:09:22
Speaker
You will feel better. You will eat less calories. you will be able to still enjoy some of those other things that you want you'll still be able to have a diet that you actually enjoy and look forward to and all those things are going to make this much more sustainable question number two what's the biggest mistakes people make in the gym that holds them back from results this is a great question when i thought about this question i came up with three really big ones that i see over and over again i've been in gyms for a really long time now i've been a trainer for over 10 years i've been lifting weights for over 17 years myself i've been a personal trainer for a while i've helped sports teams i've done online training i've done in-person training i've just been around training a lot i've been in thousands of hours of different training sessions with training people and just being around gyms and around people working out and different things like that And there's some common trends that you start to notice when you're around that stuff for long enough.
00:10:15
Speaker
The number one thing, and it probably is not going to come as a surprise to anybody, is just consistency. It's very hard to make good solid progress when you're not in the gym consistently. And this means different things for different people. I think a very good baseline that pretty much everybody can do is to get in the gym at least twice a week.
00:10:36
Speaker
You can still make pretty good progress if you are in the gym twice a week and you're pushing it, you're really coming into those workouts with a good program and you're really coming in with a goal and pushing the intensity, pushing the effort, challenging yourself, getting stronger, all those different things. You can make good progress over time if you're consistent two times per week, but you're in there pretty much every single week.
00:10:57
Speaker
I think eventually working up to three to four times a week, people see a little bit better progress. They're able to see a little bit faster progress, but at a minimum getting in to the gym, getting two really good solid workouts in per week is a bare minimum standard that you want to be trying to shoot for.
00:11:13
Speaker
Lots of people train, they just don't train consistently throughout the year. So we're not just talking about like normal time off either, because this isn't the talk about like, you can never take a day off, no days off, that sort of thing, because you should take days off, there should be days where you are recovering, there should be even weeks where maybe you're taking a deload, or maybe you're just going on vacation, you're doing different things that take you away from the gym for a little bit. That kind of stuff is perfectly okay. But when you look back on this last month, did you get at least two high quality sessions in every single week? So for the last four weeks, did you work out and hit hard workouts at least twice a week? That's eight sessions.
00:11:52
Speaker
Over the course of a month, that is really not that much. But if you're doing those things, if you're hitting it hard for those eight sessions, you can still see really good progress. And when you put this into perspective, two hours of training out of 168 in your week is your entire week. That leaves almost of your time.
00:12:14
Speaker
to do whatever else you want. If you can dedicate just 1.2% of your week to good solid training, you can have all those benefits that we all want. We all want to look better, feel better, live longer, have muscle, have all those benefits that come from working out both physically and mentally. And if you're just giving yourself a couple hours a week, you can have those things. And So when you think about those things, am I being consistent for the last month? Okay, you look at the last month, I've been pretty consistent for the last month. Well, when we look up at the last three months, have you gotten in at least two hard training sessions and for the last 12 weeks? What about the last six months?
00:12:49
Speaker
And I think when you start to look at those things, you can be really honest with yourself and look at it and take a broader look at the whole picture to see if you're actually being consistent enough to hit the goals that you want to have. Because so many times people will say things like, oh, I've been really consistent I've consistent. I feel like I'm working really hard, but I'm not really seeing the progress. But when you look back far enough, when you look at the broad picture, people just aren't being as consistent as they think they are. And so giving yourself that goal to be in the gym at least twice a week and then maybe even working up to that three to four times a week and then looking at a month, three months, six months, if you're being consistent in that way, you're going to see progress. It's just a matter of time. As long as you're pushing yourself, as long as you're getting in there and you're really like putting in the effort, you're going to see progress. It's just going to happen.
00:13:39
Speaker
James Clear has this quote and he's the author of Atomic Habits, one of my favorite books of all time. And he has some quote where he talks about basically you can make a ton of progress in very little time, but the key is you just can't miss a lot of days. And that couldn't be more true with fitness. Lots of people overestimate how important intensity is. And of course, intensity is important. and I'm actually going get into that in a second. But being consistent is the baseline of all of it. If you're continually showing up, if you're working out most weeks, getting your work in, if you are getting your steps in daily, if you are eating mostly whole foods, if you are eating a high protein diet, if you are getting good amounts of sleep most of the time, you're going to be pretty healthy. You're going to feel pretty good. You're going to look pretty good. You're going to be able to make progress and feel good about these things. But I think too many times people just aren't as consistent as they need to be. And then with that, with that consistency, you also need to understand that patience is also very important with this because lots of people have just skewed expectations about what this is actually going to look like. And so just because you've been in the gym for a month, that doesn't mean you're going to look like a bodybuilder. after a month or three months or six months. But if you're in the gym, you're working on building some muscle, getting strong, you're really pushing yourself in the gym. After a month, you'll start to see some strength gains. You'll start to see those numbers go up. You're probably going to start to feel better physically. You're going to feel stronger. You're probably going to also start to notice some mental benefits as well.
00:15:03
Speaker
After three months, you might actually start to notice some muscle being put onto your frame. You maybe have dropped 5, 10, 15, 20 pounds. You start to see some differences in your progress pictures. Maybe you start to get some comments from people asking if you've lost weight or if you're working out or you look great, different things like that.
00:15:21
Speaker
After six months, you can look and feel almost like a totally new person. Now, I'm not saying that you're going to have your dream body in six months because that would just be a lie. it takes multiple years of working hard, getting tons of workouts and paying attention to your nutrition, those sorts of things to really build like your dream body. But in six months, I think people sometimes underestimate just how far they can be when they are at a high level and of consistency, both inside and outside the gym. And so the main message with this is just to understand consistency is the foundation of all this, but you also need to be realistic and you also need to flex that patience muscle because both those things are
Avoiding Pitfalls in Fitness Programs
00:15:57
Speaker
super important. When you get those things right, you have a really good foundation that you can build on.
00:16:02
Speaker
Mistake number two would be not following a good program or constantly switching programs. Lots of people try to chase the next best thing and social media has made this very difficult for a lot of people because everybody has an opinion on what the best program is or you need to be doing this exercise or you need to be doing this many reps versus that many reps. You need to be doing your exercise in this way versus that way. This is the best split you should be following. Everybody has an opinion on this different type of stuff. And so oftentimes I've seen this lead to people never actually picking a good solid program and giving it time.
00:16:38
Speaker
They're not consistent. They just hop from the next program to the next program and they're never able to actually see good progress because if you're constantly changing programs or changing exercise, it's really hard to measure your progress or to actually see good progress. So really good rule of thumb is if you're following some certain program, you really don't need to be changing your workouts at a minimum for four weeks, you can do the same exact exercises for a good solid four weeks. That way, you can actually measure your progress and see if you are making improvements, getting stronger, all those different things that we want to see in order to actually
00:17:12
Speaker
get the changes that we want to see because your muscles don't need tons of variety. i think sometimes people think that they need to be doing all this different variety and they need to be changing things up and they need to chase the soreness or be really tired.
00:17:25
Speaker
Those things don't guarantee that you're making good progress and actually going to see the results that you want to see. Your muscle needs a strong stimulus and you just need to push the intensity really hard. And oftentimes you can use the same exercise for weeks and months on end and just continue to get stronger at those things and as long as you're seeing progress you're going to see changes but too often people just want to switch programs or hop to a different thing or try this next thing or try this workout program or this workout or this thing that i saw on social media that my favorite influencer does and
00:17:55
Speaker
The reality is you just don't need to do all that stuff. You need a good solid program that's focused on progressive overload and just get stronger with those things, be consistent, be patient, and you'll see good progress over time. A good program done with good consistency, with patience, and with good intensity is going to give you better results than having the perfect plan on paper, but it's a plan that you don't actually like. So you don't actually push yourself. You're not as consistent. and you're just not really seeing the results that you want to see. So don't try to chase the perfect plan or continue to try to tweak different things or hop from this plan to this plan because that just stalls your results.
Progressive Overload and Overcoming Plateaus
00:18:34
Speaker
And for a lot of people, it gets them frustrated and they're not able to actually see any meaningful change. And then they fall off. So get a good program. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, but get a good program that you actually enjoy, that you like, that you're going to work hard at and do it consistently four weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks. And you will see progress over time. It doesn't have to be super complex. You don't have to chase the new shiny thing. You don't have to jump from this trend to this trend. Just find a good program and be consistent with that program.
00:19:01
Speaker
The last thing that I would say, the third mistake that I see super often is people just simply not training hard enough. So if you're being consistent, if you're following you get a good program and being patient with it and you're still not seeing results after a month, two months, three months, you're just not seeing much changes, meaning that you're not really either seeing physical changes or you're not really getting stronger, you're not really getting fitter, those sorts of things, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough.
00:19:26
Speaker
Progressive overload is the principle that we need when it comes to pretty much all our fitness goals. And all that means is that you just need to be giving your body a reason to change. If you're coming in the gym and you're lifting the same weights all the time, you're not really pushing yourself, maybe you're just coming in and going through the motions, you're not really giving your body a reason to adapt and change and see those results. And so you need to be doing those things. When you look at lifting, are you lifting more weight for more reps with better technique over time?
00:19:52
Speaker
If you are, that's a good sign. You're getting stronger, you're building muscle. If you maybe have a running goal, you're trying to get better at running over the weeks, over the months, are you getting faster? Are your paces improving? Are you able to run longer distances? Are you getting in better shape? Are your runs starting to feel easier? With any fitness goal that you have, you have to give your body a reason to change. And I think one of the things that people fall into is that when you first get into any goal, Pretty much anything that you do when you start, you're going to see good improvements. You're going to make progress because you're just so new to everything. You're at a point where anything that you do is going to give you progress because you're at that newbie game stage. And it's really nice when you're there because every time you come in the gym, every time you go on a run, every time you do this activity, you feel like you're getting better. And then after a certain period of time, time
00:20:40
Speaker
it takes more to actually see change. So you don't start to have those results quite as quickly. So once you've been in the gym for a while, you understand that it takes more than a couple workouts to increase your bench press or your squat or your deadlift. You may go a month or two months without seeing tons of change. It may take you couple months just to add 10 pounds onto your bench c press, or it may take you a month or two to get faster in your runs. And so understanding that going in will help you to not get discouraged when things do start to slow down, but also just give you that insight into how all this works and just understand that as long as you're putting in the work, as long as you're doing the things that you need to do, as long as you're pushing yourself and making sure that you're giving good effort, you're going to see progress over time. That doesn't mean every single workout needs to be a PR. That doesn't mean every time you want to run, you're trying to break a new record because just like the way in sports, you don't go into a practice and every single practice is a hard practice.
00:21:37
Speaker
You'd burn out if you did that. You have certain practices or certain phases where you're working really hard and then you have lighter practices or Before a game where you're not really practicing super hard or after a game where maybe you're taking a little bit easy, training is the same way. You should have some workouts that are just kind of average and then you should have some workouts where like you're really pushing it. You're trying to break records or throughout a workout, maybe every single set isn't pushed balls to the walls unless you're trying to train to build the most absolute maximum muscle possible or like your power lifter or an athlete or something like that.
00:22:11
Speaker
Not every set needs to be taken to that extreme. But when you're thinking about this on like a scale, you want to be pushing yourself, hitting like an eight or nine out of 10 on most of your sets, going into a workout and really pushing yourself, going on a run and really challenging yourself, those sorts of things. are going to facilitate the change that you wanna see. So the bottom line is, show up consistently at least two times per week, maybe working up to that three or four times per week. Make sure you're following a good program that's actually aligned with your goal so that you can see the results that you wanna see. And then third, making sure that you're just pushing that intensity, making sure that you are really giving good effort so that you can see that change over time.
Incorporating Cardio and Essential Exercises
00:22:49
Speaker
Question number three, I think this is what are a few exercises you think more people should be doing? Question number three, what are a few exercises you think people should be doing more of.
00:23:03
Speaker
The first thing that came to mind when I read this question was actually cardio. it wasn't a specific exercise, it was a type of exercise and that was cardio. Cardio used to be one of those things that I thought was just like an optional thing, like you didn't really have to do it. And I think the reason for me and I think for a lot of people that they think that is because in order to look a certain way, which is a big reason that a lot of people work out and a lot of people exercise, you don't necessarily have to do any cardio at all. As long as your nutrition is dialed in, as long as you're lifting weights and maybe getting some steps in, you can get to a pretty good physique where you look really good and you look the way that you want to look without ever doing any cardio. And so I think that cardio for fat loss and cardio for the strict reason of burning more calories is overrated. I think that cardio in general, just for your health is underrated. And the reason being is because cardio is one of the strongest metrics that we have for your long-term health and being able to predict if you're going to live a longer life.
00:24:01
Speaker
So just to throw some stats at you, going from below average with your cardio health to above average reduces your all cause mortality by almost 30%.
00:24:13
Speaker
When they looked at these people, they were comparing different factors in how big of a deal that these things can make in their health and how big of a risk that they were. And having a low level of cardio fitness was comparable to smoking and comparable to diabetes when they compare these different things. And so I think a lot of times People think that being fit is like something that's just like a nice to have, or if you have time, you should work out, do some cardio, different things like that.
00:24:43
Speaker
But when you really understand just how beneficial that a good level of fitness can be, being physically fit reduces your chances of dying by 30%. That's not something that is, seems like it should be an optional thing. It should be something that we want to take advantage of because it's one of the most accessible things that we have access to, to directly improve our health. And so many people just look at it as like a bonus or it's just kind of a nice to have.
00:25:07
Speaker
But when we're talking about some of the highest leverage things that you can do, like I mentioned earlier in the podcast, getting in good shape and specifically adding in some cardio and getting into good cardio shape is one of the highest leverage things that you can do.
00:25:19
Speaker
And I think sometimes we... get into this headspace where we're worrying about so many different things when it comes to our health. And I get it because like, if you hop on social media and start to look around at different things, everybody's telling you all these different things that you need to be focused on, all these things that you should be avoiding, all these different health protocols that you should be doing. But the fact of the matter is, if you can get fit, if you can get in really good shape, a lot of those things that people are telling you to worry about or be cautious of, they don't matter nearly as much as doing something like getting in really good shape. When people are stressing over like the certain chemical in food or they're stressing out over this certain soap that I'm putting on my body or this other little thing that I'm not supposed to be eating and it's going to make me have all these health issues.
00:26:03
Speaker
Think about your level of fitness. Can you run a mile in a decent time? Can you go on a brisk walk for an hour without stopping? Can you make it through a 45 minute workout without feeling like you're about to keel over and die? If the answer is no, then there's so many things that you probably shouldn't be worried about before actually getting into good physical shape. And I know it's a message that probably some people don't want to hear. But if you're focused on all these little things, if you're worrying about stepping over these dollars to pick up pennies, you're worried about the wrong things. We want to put our time and effort into things that are actually going to make the most amount of difference. And getting into really good shape is one of the best things that you can do, especially since it's really not that difficult. Like it doesn't take tons of time to get into pretty good cardio shape. And we're not talking about becoming like some elite marathoner. We're not talking about doing Ironmans. We're not talking about spending hours and hours of cardio every single day and to get into really good shape. But just going from below average to even average or slightly above average has that huge effect on your long-term health. For people just thinking about getting into some cardio, like if you can get some cardio in two to three times a week, get your heart rate up, get out of breath a little bit, I think an easy structure for people to follow is to do something hard.
00:27:15
Speaker
once a week short. Think of like five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. This could be like hill sprints. This could be like some HIIT training. This could be like some sprints, some circuits, maybe a little high rocks or CrossFit style of workout. 10, 15 minutes doesn't have to be anything too crazy, but you're really pushing it. You're getting your heart rate up really high, short, intense burst of exercise. You're checking that box off.
00:27:35
Speaker
Do something that's somewhat moderate. So maybe like 20 to 45 minutes. This could be like slower jog. This could be like playing a sport, maybe basketball, maybe like some racquetball or pickleball or something like that. And then do something that's easy, but a little bit longer duration. So longer than 45 minutes, maybe an hour, maybe in a little longer, this could be like a nice hike. This could be a bike. This could be some brisk walking or a rook, anything like that. And if you're checking those three boxes, you're hitting those different areas of cardio that we have because we have different systems when it comes to our cardio. But if you're doing something that's hard for shorter distances, You're doing something that's more like medium for a little bit longer distance. And then you're doing something that's easy. You're checking all those boxes. And now again, you're not going to be at the top of VO2 max or be able to go in
00:28:22
Speaker
run marathons or anything like that by following that structure. But I think that's very doable for most people. And that's something that you'll start to get a lot of benefit from. I think people, again, overlook the amount that you get from going from doing very little cardio to doing even some cardio is a lot. You get most of those benefits from that initial going from not doing much at all to doing even something. versus like when you're way down the line and you're going from doing a lot of cardio to even more cardio, you're not getting nearly as many benefits as you do in that first section. And that goes for a lot of different health things. And so a lot of times people think that, well, if I can't be at the top, top of this level, if I can't eat perfect, if I can't work out five times a week, if I can't,
00:29:05
Speaker
get in tons of cardio then it's not really worth doing but that's not true at all especially when it comes to fitness doing something is always going to be better than nothing if you're not doing any cardio then doing some cardio is going to help you out tremendously if you're eating a completely crappy diet adding in some fruits vegetables lean proteins even some of the time is going to help if you're not lifting weights at all going from zero lifting to lifting once or twice a week is going to have tons of benefits So that should be motivation to start adding in some of these things because you see such a beneficial outcome from doing some of these things.
00:29:37
Speaker
Outside of just cardio, like thinking about specific exercises, let's say like in the gym, it's really hard to say because different people have different goals and different people exercise for different reasons. But I think in general,
00:29:49
Speaker
I think a good goal to have is just to be pretty balanced and not to neglect certain movements or certain parts of your body. And so when you think about the basic human movements, we have push, pull, hinge, squat, carry. So your training should have some sort of those things with those five human movements. As long as you're checking those boxes, like you're doing some squats, you're doing some bench presses or shoulder presses, you're doing some RDLs, you're doing some lunges or some squats, you're doing some carries or some core work, you're going to be in pretty good shape.
00:30:18
Speaker
And then when you think about things that you don't necessarily like to do, that's typically where people want to maybe put a little bit more effort into doing those things, because it's really easy to do the things that we want to do. And everybody has certain body parts that they enjoy working out more than others, or certain exercises that they like to work out more than others but the things that you don't want to do those are typically the things that we avoid so if you like lifting upper body but you don't necessarily like doing lower body it's probably a good chance that maybe adding in a little bit more lower body or training with a little bit more intensity with lower body it's probably going to be beneficial if you really like lifting lower body but you hate doing upper body it's probably good chance that maybe putting a little bit more emphasis on some upper body stuff is going to be more beneficial to you so think about the things that you don't necessarily love doing and that's probably usually a good place to start with things that you want to add a little bit more of.
Maintaining Motivation and Tracking Progress
00:31:08
Speaker
Question number four, I've been working on my health for over six months now. I've seen some progress, but it's slowed down a bit. I'm a little discouraged and struggle to stay consistent as I need to be. How do you stay patient and consistent when progress slows down or takes longer than you want?
00:31:24
Speaker
This is a really good question because I think we all experience this at different times or another. I think the first thing to think about is you need to change your expectations to match reality. As I mentioned before we're in one of the previous questions, lots of times people's expectations about how long this is going to take, what it's actually going be like, the things that you have to do, they just don't match. And that's fine because you a lot of these things that you are doing, they're new and you're trying to figure this out as you go. But starting to actually match your expectations with what reality looks like is going to help you a ton. Because if you have the right expectations going into something, it's a lot easier to manage as things are maybe taking longer than you want or maybe aren't going as smoothly as you thought or You're able to deal with difficult things. And that's so much of the reason why I do this podcast is because I want to give you a behind the scenes look so that you actually have realistic expectations along with some practical things to do going in with this. That's why I try to never sugarcoat any of this stuff and really give it to you straight because this stuff takes time. Progress, we want it to happen faster than it actually does, but it starts to slow down as you start to get into some of these goals. So when it comes to lifting, when you first get in the gym, you see really good progress and then it starts to slow down a little bit. When you first get into weight loss, for most people, they lose weight very quickly and then as they get close to their goal, it starts to slow down.
00:32:37
Speaker
When you first get into running or building muscle or chasing some other performance goal, you usually see quite a bit of progress at the beginning and then things start to slow down. That's just a natural progression of how progress happens.
00:32:49
Speaker
Once you get to that messy middle part is what I call it. This is when like the real journey starts. You feel like you're doing all the things, but you're not making nearly as much progress as you did when you started. That is completely normal. And this is a huge separator for the people that actually see it through and end up getting to their goals and seeing the progress that they want to see versus the people who fall off.
00:33:08
Speaker
It's like, can you continue to show up even when things aren't going as well as you wanted them to, even when things are sometimes a struggle, even when you feel like things aren't working? Can you continue to keep going along that path and doing all the things that you want to do?
00:33:22
Speaker
The second thing I would tell you to think about is what's the alternative if you stop? The time is going to pass regardless. Where do you wanna be in the next six months? If you quit, nothing changes. And in fact, you're probably going to go backwards and things are going to get worse. If you keep going, you get better, you see progress. Even if it's slower, you're still going to be in a better spot.
00:33:42
Speaker
If you're focusing on your health, it's rarely a bad thing to prioritize your fitness or your health. If you exercise, if you walk a lot, if you eat better foods, if you focus on other good healthy habits, are you really going to look back and regret that? Or are you going to be in a better spot in the next six months?
00:33:58
Speaker
And then the thing that I would caveat with that is making sure that you know exactly the targets that you need to hit in order to see progress can give you a peace of mind when you're chasing some of these goals. And what I mean by that is One of the reasons that I'm such a big proponent of tracking things is because when you're tracking things, you know, for certain, if I'm hitting these targets, I'm moving in the right direction and I'm going to see progress. Even when that stuff isn't showing up on the scale, or you don't feel like you're getting stronger in your workouts, or you feel like you're not really making much progress. If you're hitting those targets over time, that progress has to show up. So when we think about some of our common goals, if I want to build muscle, if I'm lifting three times per week, if I'm focusing on progressive overload, and if I'm eating at least 0.7 grams per pound of protein, I know that I'm going to build muscle over time. It just, it may take longer than I want, but I know that I'm going to build muscle. If my goal is to lose weight, if I'm hitting my calorie deficit, if I'm eating enough protein, if I'm working out three times a week, I know that I'm going to lose weight over time.
00:34:59
Speaker
Again, it may take longer than I want, but I know I'm going to hit those goals and I'm going to continue to make progress. If I want to get better at running, I know that if I'm getting my two easy runs in per week, I'm getting one hard run in per week and I'm getting a long run in per week, I'm going to get better at running over time.
00:35:17
Speaker
If I want to get fitter, if I'm working out three or four times a week, I'm doing my cardio a couple of times a week. I'm walking 10,000 steps a day. There's no doubt that if I do that for six months and I hit those daily targets, I will be in better shape after six months. So when you know those targets that you need to be hitting, you can break it down into small little chunks, hit those targets, and you will see progress over time. It's just a matter of time. And so understanding You're not always going to see that progress in the day to day, sometimes not even in the week to week, but over the months you will see progress. So keep at it, keep hitting those targets and you're going to see those changes that you want. And then the last thing I would say is just remember to go back to the reason why you started this whole thing in the beginning. Know what your why is Think back to
00:36:01
Speaker
The reason that you wanted to start all this stuff, because the stronger why that you have, the easier it is to keep pushing. A lot of people, when it comes to fitness goals, when they have bigger whys, it's much easier to make this a priority, especially when things get hard. And to give you a few examples, like when I'm working with different people, having different conversations and asking people about What's the whole reason that they wanted to get in this? When you really start to dig to that root thing that people are doing this all for, the people that have really strong wives, those are the people that see the best progress. So for a lot of people, they get in the gym and they want to be fit because they have kids and they want to be around for their kids' entire life. They don't want to miss out on their experiences. They want to set a good example. For some people, it's they finally want to feel confident in their own skin. For other people, they had a parent who had a severe health thing go on and they don't want that to be them. So when you have one of these big whys that you can refer back to, it makes it much easier to keep going.
00:36:55
Speaker
In our last question of the day, what's one health habit almost everybody overlooks?
Overlooked Health Habits and Overall Well-being
00:37:01
Speaker
When I read this question, the first thing that came to mind was sleep, but I've talked about sleep tons of different times on different podcasts. so I'm not going to answer this question and talk a ton about sleep. Sleep makes pretty much everything in your life easier if you're getting good sleep. And if you're not getting good sleep, it makes pretty much everything in your life harder in every facet from weight loss, from fitness, from being productive at work, from your relationships, from managing your emotions, from Everything, literally everything gets easier when you have good sleep and everything gets harder when you have bad sleep. So making sleep a priority is important. I think we all know that.
00:37:34
Speaker
I think people know a lot of the good things that they should be doing to get better sleep. So I'm not going to harp on that one too much. The second thing that I thought of was relationships, which I think when people think about health, they don't necessarily think about relationships. They probably think about exercise or they think about dieting.
00:37:51
Speaker
Relationships is one of the most influential factors on your health. And there's a one hundred year study that's been going on for quite a while now done at Harvard. And they wanted to look at the people that lived the longest, happiest lives. What were some of the trends that they found with these people? And at the top of that list was good relationships.
00:38:10
Speaker
You need community to really thrive and you need to have good relationships in order to have good health. having a lack of relationships or stressful relationships or just not good relationships in place affects not only your mental health which i think we would all get but it also starts to affect your physical health because all this stuff is connected and so you see worse health outcomes or bigger risks for health issues when people don't have good relationships on top of that you start to become like the people you spend time around so you need to pick the people that you're around wisely. I know that's not always the case. You can't always just pick who you're around. But the more that you can find people who help you to be the version of yourself that you want to be, the more likely you're actually going to be healthy. Because people's habits, as well as the way they think, their perspectives, all those things start to rub off on you, the more time that you spend around those people. So you're not just spending time around those people, you're also starting to pick up the things that they eat, you're more likely to eat those things, what time you go to bed, your exercise habits, how you spend your free time,
00:39:13
Speaker
how much alcohol you drink, how you think about fitness, how you think about health, all those different things start to get affected by those people that you spend the most time around. And so finding some good people to spend time around is really beneficial to your health. you know You can find a good gym, you can find an online community that you can spend time around, you can listen to podcasts, you can read books, you can do different things to get around people, even if you don't have those people in your immediate circle, there's different ways that you can get creative to help you get around like-minded people a little bit easier. But really trying to put some effort into those in-person relationships is going to be helpful with just your overall general health, how you feel, all those different things.
00:39:52
Speaker
Putting some effort into relationships is definitely an underrated thing. And I think... something that more people could put some emphasis on would see better health outcomes and just feel better in general, right? Like we all feel better when we have good friendships and we have good family relationships and we have good community, all those different things. We know we feel better when we have those things, but I think it's really easy to let those things
Episode Wrap-up and Coaching Reminder
00:40:13
Speaker
slip. And so when it comes to health, don't forget how important your relationships are.
00:40:18
Speaker
And with that being said, that is the episode for this week. I appreciate you listening as always. The one-on-one coaching link is in the show notes. If you have some goals that you would like some help with, want some accountability, want somebody to help guide you through those things, that is what that link is there for. But I appreciate you listening as always, and we will see you next week.