You should track your workouts. But I get it. Who wants more stuff to track? We live in a day and age where we can track everything. Finances, weight, food intake, steps, sleep, whatever. Want to track the health of your lawn? I’m sure there’s an app for that too.
But workouts? They’re already painful enough. Who would want to transcribe them too?
When I first started working out, I didn’t think much of tracking my workouts. I was young and impatient and just wanted to “get jacked!” This served me well in some aspects, like not waiting to craft the “perfect’ workout plan before starting. I just started. But in other areas, like tracking my workouts, a little forethought could have proved valuable.
I don’t remember when or why I finally decided to track my workouts, but eventually I did. And I’ve been doing so in some fashion for over 20 years now.
If you’ve been in the military you recognize this. One of the many notebooks I used to track my workouts.
I’ve tried all sorts of ways to track my workouts. From notebooks, to excel spreadsheets, to word documents, to apps. Like many things, I’ve learned that there’s “more than one way to skin a cat” when it comes to how to track your workouts.
But if you’re like I was, before learning how to track your workouts you’d probably like to know why you should track your workouts.
Back to my original question. Why would you bother to track your workouts?
Why You Should Track Your Workouts
1. To Ensure You’re Making Progress
Whether you’re using the progressive overload training principle, or training for a race, or preparing for a grueling event like a Spartan Race or even some form of military school, if you’re not tracking where you’ve been, where you currently are, and where you’d like to be then there’s no way to make sure you’re making progress.
And if you’re putting in all that work, chances are you are wanting that work to have a payoff. Whether it’s to get stronger, look better, or feel better, whatever your goal is you want to be sure you’re progressing towards that goal.
Let’s take the progressive overload training principle. To grossly oversimplify, this is a training system where each training session you look to lift a little bit more weight in an effort to get stronger.
Lift weights to stress your muscles, they adapt by getting stronger, then lift more weight to further stress your muscles thus creating a new adaptation and getting even stronger. Rinse and repeat.
In this system, each training session builds off of the previous training sessions. If you don’t track what you’ve done, you’ll have no way of knowing what you need to be doing next to get stronger. You may end up just doing a whole bunch of work without ever getting stronger or more muscular.
If you’re not tracking, you’re just spinning your wheels.
Wasted work? No thanks!
While I’ve never trained for a race like a marathon, I imagine it’d be just as important to track your running times during training to ensure you’re getting faster.
If you’re not getting stronger while on a progressive overload program or not getting faster on a running program then what’s really the point of the training program in the first place?
You’d literally just be spinning your wheels!
You’d be exercising and not training. Exercise is just doing work. Training is doing work with purpose. Purpose like getting stronger, more muscular, faster, etc.
If you’re going to be pushing yourself, sweating, and putting in the work, don’t you want there to be a payoff? Don’t you want to get stronger or build more muscle so you can up that confidence and be more comfortable come swimsuit season?
Not to mention it’s fun and motivating to see progress. Seeing progress builds positive momentum and can help ingrain exercise as a habit.
If you want to see these results then learning to track your workouts can play a significant role in achieving them.
2. Tracking Your Workouts Gives Direction and Focus
When I was young and didn’t track my workouts, they often had little structure to them. Like I mentioned above, I was exercising but not necessarily training.
I’d walk into the gym with a vague idea of what I was going to do and just wing it. There was no big-picture goal I was aiming for. I just had some idea that I wanted to be bigger and stronger so I walked into the gym with that mindset and just rolled.
What ended up happening is I would walk around the gym and do this or that and waste a lot of time. I’d leave having usually gotten an okay, but not great, workout.
The workouts weren’t efficient and they weren’t the most effective either.
Once I learned to track my workouts that changed significantly. The workouts became focused and efficient. I had to know ahead of time what I was going to do in order to properly track the workouts. This required forethought and planning.
I had to have an idea of whatever big-picture goal I was trying to accomplish while also having planned the daily workouts needed to achieve that goal.
I had to have a macro and micro view of my training.
The macro was the big picture. For example, while preparing to join the Marine Corps I knew that pull ups would be important so I made it a macro goal to be able to do 25 dead hang pull-ups.
The micro piece of that macro goal was the specific daily pull up workouts that I scheduled to achieve that goal. I would write out the daily pull up workouts and track them to ensure I was improving and ultimately making progress toward the goal of 25 dead hang pull-ups.
Tracking my workouts gave them focus and direction. I no longer wandered into the gym ready to wing it. I came in with a plan and focus. This made it so I was training and not just exercising. It maximized my time in the gym and helped me get more work done in less time.
Isn’t that what we all want?!?!
More results in less time? Of course we do!
That’s why we’re suckers for all sorts of gimmicks and “get rich quick” schemes. But in this case, it actually works! It’s not a gimmick and it’s not immediate results. Consistency and time are still required.
Tracking your workouts is not some gimmick.
But if you learn to track your workouts you’ll be focused and moving in the right direction on a path to achieve your goals.
What to Track in Your Workouts
Before you can learn how to track your workouts, you need to know what to track. The core of what I track consists of the following.
exercises
This is pretty straight forward. It consists of the exercises I’m doing. Squats, deadlifts, sprints, pull ups, CrossFit workout, etc.
repetitions (aka reps)
This is how many repetitions of each exercise I’m completing. Sometimes I’m doing 10 reps of squats and other times I’m doing 3. It depends on what my overall goal is. Regardless of the goal, I plan the number of reps I’m going to attempt to do and then track what I actually do.
sets
This is how many sets of each exercise I’m going to do. For instance, if the exercise I’m going to do is squats and I plan on doing 5 reps then the number of sets will be how many times I do 5 reps of squats.
For example, I might program 3 sets of squats with 5 repetitions each set.
This would be written as: Squats – 3 x 5 (3 sets of 5 repetitions each).
I would do my first set of 5 squats and then I’d put the bar back and rest. I usually wait around 2-4 minutes between each set. This depends on what exercise I’m doing and how much time I have to workout.
After doing my first set of 5 squats and resting for 2-4 minutes I’d then do my second set of 5 squats. Once again after a sufficient amount of rest I’d then do my 3rd and final set of 5 squats.
All in all I did 3 sets of 5 squats.
weight
For weighted exercises, you need to track how much weight you are lifting. If you don’t know how much weight you are lifting, you won’t know whether or not you are lifting more weight the next time you do the same exercise. And if you don’t know if you’re lifting more weight you won’t know if you’re creating the stimulus necessary to make your body adapt and get stronger and more muscular.
In my example above about sets, if I wrote out that I was going to do 3 sets of squats with 5 reps each set, then on the day I do that actual workout I’d note somewhere how much weight I was squatting for each set.
This would ensure that the next time I was doing 3 sets of 5 squats (Squats- 3 x 5) I’d add a little more weight, if I felt like it was possible, so I could further stress my muscles and subsequently get stronger.
times
If you are tracking exercises that don’t involve resistance training like running or CrossFit-style workouts, you are often focused on the time to complete the exercise. For these you’d want to track the time to complete the prescribed exercise.
For example, let’s say you programmed four 400m sprints with a five minute rest between each sprint for your workout. Your goal is to run each 400m sprint as fast as possible versus pacing them to a specific time.
You might write that out in your workout journal/log as follows:
Sprint 400m/Rest 5 minutes x 4 1. 2. 3. 4.
During the workout, you’d time each of your 400m sprints and fill in the times in the allotted 1-4 spaces.
Another example where you would track time would come if you program a CrossFit-style workout that is “for time.” Fran, a famous CrossFit workout “for time”, would be an example. The theory is that the faster you can complete Fran, the more fit you are.
So if you programmed “Fran” for your workout one day you’d want to track the amount of total time it took you to complete Fran.
Pretty simple.
intangibles
The items mentioned above are the foundations of what I track in my workouts. I like to keep things simple. The more I track, the more work there is to do, and the more likely it is that I might throw in the towel and say, “forget this.”
With that said, there are a few times where I might track some other things such as:
Bodyweight
I don’t track this too often, but occasionally I do. If I were actively trying to gain or lose weight then I would track this more often.
Pain/Aches
I often write things down in my workout journal like, “back was sore today so backed off my deadlift.”
Or, “tweaked my leg doing lunges so stopped my workout early.”
How I’m Feeling that Day
Sometimes you feel like crap and it’s reflected in your workout. That’s ok. It happens to the best of us. So I’ll often jot things down if I’m not feeling it that day.
I’ve written things like, “tired today so wasn’t able to lift prescribed amount of weight.”
I do this so the next time I’m doing that exercise I’ll know to look back at the past few times I had done that exercise to get a better representation of what I should be doing that day since I felt bad the last time I did it.
Distractions
I work out from home and I have kids. I’m not saying my kids are a distraction, but they are a distraction. But certainly a WELCOME distraction. Well, most of the time.
I’ve literally tracked things like, “kids outside with me, wasn’t able to finish these sets.”
I’m honestly not sure why I track stuff like that. Maybe it’s important for context or maybe I just know someday when my kids are grown and gone if I ever look back at these I’ll smile and remember the days when I was in the garage working out and my kiddos were out there running around with me.
In the end, I’d caution against tracking too much. I’ve seen some folks who create some elaborate tracking spreadsheets and databases. I suppose that works for some people, but for most, I’d bet simpler is better. I know it is for me. If I make it too time-consuming and difficult it’s more likely I’ll eventually say, “forget it.”
Also, there can sometimes be diminishing returns with too much data. Nassim Taleb discusses this in Antifragile. If there is too much data it can become noise. And the more noise there is the harder it is to decipher the true signals.
Noise is the nonsense. Waist trainers. “Get shredded fast” pills. “Toning exercises.” Fad diets. Gimmicks.
Signals are the tried-and-true methods. The things that work. Calories-in-calories-out. Resistance training. Consistency.
Signals get you where you want to go. Noise distracts you and takes you off course.
Noise is thinking you have to spend hundreds of dollars on supplements to get the body you want. Signals are learning how to do a proper squat, how to properly program that squat into an effective and safe workout regimen, and eating enough quality protein to get those legs strong.
Track the basics. Maybe track a few personal things that make sense to you. Try not to overdo it.
The simpler it is, the more likely you’ll be able to maintain the habit.
What I Use To Track My Workout
Get ready for some truly mind-blowing content here. This is the type of truly astonishing insight that can only be gained from this website. Buckle up!
To track my workouts I use a notebook and pencil.
WOW! Truly astonishing. I know.
That’s the kind of staggering wisdom 20+ years of experience gets you.
I always say to keep it simple. And I’m not sure it gets much simpler than a pencil and a piece of paper.
Sometimes I use an actual notebook, and sometimes I write my workouts on a piece of paper.
benefits of using pencil & Paper to track your workouts
1. Simplicity – It’s easy.
2. Flexible – It’s easy to adjust on the fly with a pencil and paper. If I tweak something and have to adjust my workout I can easily do that. Just cross out whatever I was planning on doing and write in what I’ve changed. Easy.
3. Personalized – It’s easy to personalize my workouts this way. When I talked about how I sometimes track how I feel or unique situations that come up during a workout like my kids having me stop to play sports with them, I can easily track all this. Just add a hand-written note in the column and I’m good to go.
4. It makes it feel like a journal – I’ve started hearing a lot over the last few years about the importance of journaling. I’m sure it’s a great practice and something I should do. But I don’t. At least not consistently.
I did journal once for a year. I used The Daily Stoic Journal and it was great. I should do it more but that’s for another day.
So I guess sometimes tracking my workouts can double as a form of journaling for me.
5. It keeps me off my phone – There are a lot of apps that track workouts. I’ll get to more on that later. But I think looking at a phone during a workout is distracting. It’s easy to pick up your phone, start scrolling, and next thing you know the workout has stalled.
Tracking on paper solves that for me.
If I don’t pick up my phone to track anything there’s no risk of being distracted by my phone.
I’m sure many people have the willpower where they could track on their phone and not get distracted by apps. I don’t though. The allure is too strong! So I just remove it altogether.
why i don’t use apps to track workouts
There are a million apps you could use to track your workout. Personally, I’ve never felt like they were the best option for me for a number of reasons.
While I’ve tried many of them, they’ve never been able to replace my good ol’ pencil and paper for a number of reasons.
First, I find the ones I’ve tried inflexible. As I mentioned earlier, if I want to adjust my workout on the fly I can easily do that when I’m using a pencil and paper to track my workout. I just mark through some things, or erase, and write in the adjustment and just like that, I’m done.
I don’t feel like that’s as easy to do with apps.
Second, I find a lot of the apps inflexible to different styles of workouts. They often seem to specialize in one style of exercise whether it’s power lifting, body building, CrossFit, etc.
However, I, and many other folks, tend to do all sorts of styles of workouts. On any given day I may do a CrossFit workout or a power lifting workout, or a bodybuilding-style workout. Sometimes I may just be running sprints and others I may plan to go on a long walk with a weight vest.
The bottom line is, I’m mixing in all different styles of workouts and movements on a weekly basis and using just a pencil/pen and paper to track those workouts makes it much easier to do since I’m not specializing in one particular method and thus needing a tracking app to also specialize in some specific method.
If you are specializing in one style of working out then maybe an app would work for you. There was a time where I was strictly trying to get stronger overall. I was focusing on power lifting. I used an app called strong lifts to track this and it was great!
I loved it!
However, now that I’m back to doing a lot of different styles I’ve gone back to the pencil and paper method to track my workouts.
how i track my workouts
I think of my workouts from a macro and micro point of view.
Macro is the big picture. What I’m trying to accomplish overall.
Do I want to get stronger? Am I looking to get “fitter” from a CrossFit standpoint? Am I wanting to increase my 1 rep max on the snatch and clean and jerk? Do I just want to look better?
These are the macro-level things I’m thinking about. Some might call them mesocycles. To me, it’s just the macro view. Where do I want to be from a “health and fitness” perspective.
The micro is the daily workouts. This is what we are focusing on when determining the daily activities needed to hit those macro-level goals.
These are the daily activities. These are what I’m tracking when I’m discussing, “How to track your workouts.”
Here are the specific steps for how to track your workout:
Drumroll Please!
1. Decide your macro vision. 2. Once a week, I do this on Sunday, write out the daily workouts for the upcoming week that will lead you to your macro vision. 3. During the workout, track your reps, weights, exercises, etc.
Let’s break this down using a real-world example.
Let’s say I’ve decided that I want to increase my overall general fitness. I’m not trying to grow my arms as big as possible or increase my one-rep max deadlift. I am trying to stay as strong as I am now while focusing on my overall conditioning.
The macro focus would be, “increasing overall metabolic conditioning during an 8-week macro cycle while maintaining strength.”
Now it’s Sunday and I sit down to write out the daily workouts, the micro, for the first week of the macro cycle.
At the top of the page I write out the macro focus so I remember what my overall focus is.
Next I write, “MONDAY” and I write out that workout. I’ll do this for all of the days of the week, including any rest days. I’ll write the exercises and the sets I’m doing for each. I’ll often write what weight I’ll be planning to use based off of the progressive overload principle and what weight I had used the previous time I had done that exercise.
This is what we think of when we talk about how to track your workouts.
Next Sunday I’ll do it all over again. I’ll refer to the previous week to help me plan out the current week in regards to the weight I’ll be using and the reps I’ll be shooting for. I’ll also see if there were any notes I had made that might impact my planning for next week’s workouts.
Pretty simple. No need to overcomplicate it.
what to do with your old workout entries
You’ve learned how to track your workouts and more importantly, you’ve tracked some workouts. Now what?
There’s lots of things you can do with your old workout logs but only one thing you have to do.
So what is the one thing you have to do?
REFER TO THEM!
The point of tracking your workouts is to see what you did previously and to try to do more. That’s how you progress. To be able to do that you have to refer back to what you previously did.
What did I do last week? Now let’s plan to do a little more this week. Again, progressive overload.
Simple!
tracking benchmarks
Up until now, when discussing how to track your workouts I’ve been referring to daily workouts. This is what most people are referring to when they talk about tracking workouts.
However, for me, I’ve found that in addition to tracking my daily workouts, tracking benchmarks has also been beneficial for my progress over the years.
First off, what are benchmarks?
Benchmark is defined as, “a standard or point of reference against which things may be compared or assessed.”
In relation to working out, fitness, and health, these are the things that I’ve determined are big-picture measuring points of my progress in these areas. They also give a snapshot of where I currently am in regards to these goals.
For me personally, they consist of things like my bench, squat, and deadlift one-rep maxes. They also include my times on a number of CrossFit workouts like “Fran” and “Helen.” There are also some random things like my max number of burpees I can complete in one minute.
To me, each of these benchmarks represent a measuring stick to my goals.
If my goal is to get stronger, which it always is, I’m going to measure that against some of my more strength-oriented benchmarks. Specifically, my bench, squat and deadlift one-rep max.
I know those numbers because they are benchmarks I’ve tracked. I have them written on a board in my garage.
Every so often I’ll test myself and see if I can lift heavier than those numbers on the board. If I can, great! I’m getting stronger. If not, I either need to mix up my programming or just keep grinding.
When I was in the Marine Corps, despite hating running I knew I had to complete a yearly Physical Fitness Test, known as the PFT, which consisted of a 3 mile run amongst a couple of other things.
Even though I hated running, my 3-mile run time became a benchmark I measured myself against. I knew my best 3-mile time during all of my preparation for the Marines and during my entire time in the Marines. I was always trying to exceed that time and thus create a new personal best and a new measuring stick for myself.
Boy was I happy when I got out of the Marine Corps and could drop this as a benchmark for myself. No more long, slow running for me! Not to say that kind of exercise isn’t beneficial. I’m sure it is! It’s just not something I like to do often.
I track my benchmarks SEPARATELY from my daily workout tracking. I like these benchmarks clearly visible at all times. I use a whiteboard I’ve hung up in my garage so I can see them at all times. And if I ever improve on a benchmark, I can easily make the change to the benchmark white board.
An old shot of my benchmark workout tracking board hanging in my garage.
As you can see, there’s no one way to track these benchmarks. I filled out the board in a way that made sense to me.
If I worked out at a gym and didn’t have my own personal whiteboard to track my benchmarks on, I’d probably use the first page of my workout journal to mark these entries. Each time I got a new workout journal I’d rewrite all the benchmark information.
Summary
Getting fit, healthy, and strong is a grind!
It’s rooted in consistency. Day in and day out of doing the same foundational things over, and over, and over.
It’s not always glamorous. It’s not always fun. But it is effective and it’ll enhance your life more than any hack, pill, injection, or supplement will.
An absolutely critical component of making this grind effective is to learn how to track your workouts. It’s a must. Without this step your workouts will be less effective. And if you’re going to spend that effort and grind for months and years at a time, don’t you want the payoff?
Don’t you want to be healthy? Strong? To feel good about yourself in a swimsuit? Don’t you want to set a good example for your kids? Or keep those bones strong and that testosterone high?
Of course you want to do and feel all of these things! I know I do. And that’s why I track my workouts and why I think you should track your workouts too.
Nassim Taleb says in Antifragile that the best way to spot a charlatan, someone like a consultant or a stockbroker, is to look for someone who tells you what to do instead of what not to do. That certainly applies to the “health and fitness” gurus out there.
Since most of my posts so far are about what to do, or at least what I do, it got me thinking, “am I a charlatan?!?!”
I sure hope not!
But it’s probably something I should ponder to keep me humble. I certainly don’t know it all. Reflecting on this can keep me, and any other so-called “expert”, from becoming closed-minded.
Before I begin, I have to say that I don’t love using the term “fit and healthy” or “health and fitness.” If one really dials that down, what is the definition of those terms? Outside of Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, I don’t know if I’ve come across too many people trying to define these terms.
These terms can also vary for everyone. But here, I’m using those phrases interchangeably to mean what I think most people would first think of when picturing “fit and healthy” or “health and fitness.”
Traits such as strong, agile, flexible and “in shape” come to mind. Healthy blood markers and blood pressure too. Intangibles such as feeling healthy and full of energy. The ability to fall asleep definitely comes to mind. And of course being confident, looking good, and liking what you see in the mirror fall in there as well.
Real world applications of health and fitness could be reflected in the ability to hike up five flights of stairs without having to stop and catch your breath. Being able to go out in the yard for two hours of yardwork and still feel energetic the rest of the day. Or the ability to pick up a heavy object or get on the ground to play with your kids or grandkids.
Being able to work in the yard for a few hours and still feel energetic might be someone’s idea of being healthy and fit.
This certainly doesn’t cover all the ways one could feel fit and healthy but I think you get the picture of what I mean when I use that term.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the things not to do for health and fitness. In fact, there could be thousands of things that could fill a list like this. Many of them would be personal to each individual.
But these are the ones I’ve struggled with or tried to steer clear of throughout the years. And these are the things I’ve focused on not doing that have simplified things most along the way. These are also what I see as some of the biggest barriers to being fit and healthy. And finally, these are some of the things I think aren’t just applicable to me but to others as well.
1. Don’t Get Paralysis by Analysis
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when thinking about how to get in shape. There’s so much information that you could spend a lifetime on research in the health and fitness space.
And let’s be honest, “research” is often just procrastination. Stephen Pressfield talks about this in Do the Work. Research can often be a form of resistance keeping us from doing the actual work.
Who among us hasn’t researched for a day, or even months, only to never put any of that “research” into action?
I know I have!
You set out to change your life. You’re going to go on this health and fitness journey. You’ve finally committed to getting in shape or getting out of debt or starting that company. “I got this!” your inner self proclaims. Or who knows, maybe your outer self does too with a post announcing it to the world.
So you set out to “research” how to make these wholesale changes. Next thing you know ten years have passed and you still haven’t started because you’re still working on the “research” so you can form the perfect plan.
Scientist, or me “researching” if I need to eat 100% grass-fed beef to be healthy?
And guess what? The perfect plan doesn’t exist!
Some good plans definitely exist. Like this one for getting stronger or this one for meal prep. But these plans, or any plans, only work if you ACTUALLY DO THEM!
Trust me. I know. I’m the king of “making plans” and doing endless research. But I haven’t always been that way.
I was lucky when I started working out. I was 14 years old and my brain didn’t operate like it does now. I didn’t overthink things. I just got started and figured it out from there.
That’s one of the great things about youth!
It was pretty simple. I wanted big biceps like my friend had so I started going to the gym with him.
My 14-year old self: “Oh man, look at those biceps! I want some like that.”
And that’s all it took. I was probably at the gym the next day doing atrocious-looking exercises. But I had started! That’s what mattered.
It took that start to get to where I’m at today. I’m thankful I didn’t spend the next 28 years after seeing my friend’s biceps researching the “perfect” plan.
That’s just the mindset we have when we’re kids. We just did stuff. We didn’t overthink every-single-freaking-thing!
I miss that.
Why do our brains evolve to this mind-numbing level of overthinking as we get older?
I know all the married people will relate to this. My wife and I overthink EVERYTHING! My goodness, we go out to eat and you should hear us talking about what we should order. Honestly, if someone actually did hear us, I’d be pretty embarrassed.
Me: “What are you going to order?” Wife: “I don’t know. How about you?” Me: “I don’t know either. Do we want to order our own meals or order some things to share?” Wife: “I’m not sure. I like the idea of sharing so we can try different things but I’m not sure we’re going to agree on what to share?” Me: “Good point. So are you saying you don’t want to share?” Wife: “I’m not sure what I’m saying.”
It’s so absurd!
But for some reason that’s how our minds work as we get older. Every single decision can be agonizing if we allow it to be.
Kids don’t operate like that. They live in the moment.
We need to operate like that as adults. Let out our inner child. It was there once so just summons him or her back to the present.
Decide on a plan, without overthinking it, and do the work!
How’s that saying go? Perfection is the enemy of progress. That couldn’t be more true.
Don’t overanalyze.
Don’t do “research” for years.
Don’t get paralysis by analysis.
Just get started!
2. Don’t Overcomplicate Things
Lots of so called “experts” make things too complicated. I’ve been pretty in tune with the “health and fitness” industry for a LONG time. I’ve spent hundreds of hours reading on the topic and more importantly, thousands of hours actually being a practitioner in the field.
Don’t get me wrong, that DOESN’T mean I know it all. I don’t! But I know enough that if a “health and fitness” blog, idea, or method is so complicated that I can’t make sense of it, then I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably overdone and too complicated.
Some of these exercise or nutrition programs are like understanding organic chemistry or advanced physics!
You shouldn’t need a PHD to understand a health and fitness “expert.”
Why would “health and fitness” experts put out such complex information?
Is complexity key to being fit and healthy?
Absolutely not! In fact, I’d say that for most, myself included, simplicity is key.
So then why do so many make it seem so complicated? I think they do it to make themselves look smarter or to convince people that they need them and their complex ways to reach their goals.
Who knows.
The reality is that for the majority of people, myself included again, being fit and healthy is pretty simple. Eat quality, nutrient-dense food, centered around protein. Get plenty of sleep. Resistance train a few times a week to stay or get strong. Go for lots of walks. Get out in nature and soak up some of the sun, without getting sunburned. Surround yourself with good people. And try to manage your stress, which these other items can help with immensely.
If you do all those things, you’ll be in a great spot. And then maybe you can add in some more complexity, if you’d like. But it wouldn’t be necessary.
Know that simplicity is key. Don’t overcomplicate things. And stay out of the weeds.
3. Don’t Program Hop
This is crucial. This is one of the main points of what not to do to be fit and healthy!
There’s a saying that people overestimate what they can do in a week but underestimate what they can do in a year.
How many times have you heard someone say, “You think I can lose five pounds by next Tuesday?” And next Tuesday is like five days away!
Of course you can’t!
And even if you could, it would most likely be unhealthy, unsustainable, and wouldn’t even consist of actual body fat lost. Who cares if you lose five pounds of water weight?!
When it comes to being consistent over the course of months and years people lose hope. They get impatient and move onto the next thing before their current thing has a chance to bear fruit.
They have no idea what they can accomplish if they give themselves the time to do so.
You have to find a good program and stick to it. And continue to stick to it. And continue continuing to stick to it.
It can be tough not to program hop with so many fads, offerings, and gimmicks out there. The allure of the next great thing is strong. From pills to boot camps to “toning” exercises, there’s no shortage of people trying to pull those dollars from your wallet in the name of “fitness.”
They make all sorts of promises they can’t back up. In fact, often the ripped people selling those products or services didn’t even use those actual products or services to look the way they currently do.
Zero chance this dude got jacked using a shake weight.
I understand how easy it is to get frustrated when you feel like you’re not seeing the results you’d like. It’s easy to think, “I’ve been busting my butt for a month and I’m not getting anywhere.” And then some buff person says that you could look like them and it’d be easy if you only bought whatever they’re selling.
“That sounds great,” you say.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
In the end, whatever you choose you have to give it time to work. Building muscle and losing body fat (NOT water weight) take time. They take consistency.
They take “the grind.”
Day in and day out. Week in and week out. Year in and year out.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t victories along the way or you have to wait a year to see any kind of results. It just means you have to be patient.
Pick a good program. Give it some time. And never underestimate what you can do in a year!
As they say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
4. Don’t Set Yourself up for Failure
I love enthusiasm. And I love seeing motivated people.
I also love thinking big and having dreams and big goals.
But I’ve learned over the years that when I’m putting the processes, i.e. actions, in place to achieve those goals I have to make sure the process is achievable. If it’s too far out there then it’s too easy to become frustrated and give up.
There’s a fine line between pushing yourself/stretching your limits and unrealistic expectations.
So what does setting yourself up for failure look like?
Let’s paint a picture.
It’s been 10 years since you’ve worked out. You struggle just to climb a few flights of stairs and your stomach sticks out when you tighten your belt. Both above the belt and the dreaded below the belt bulge too.
So you decide you’ve had enough. It’s time to do something about it.
FANTASTIC!
You go and get yourself a gym membership and decide that you’re going all in. You’re going to go to the gym before work at 5:30am M-F and once on the weekend.
Even though you currently struggle to get up at 7:30am you tell yourself that jumping into 5:30am workouts five days a week will be NO PROBLEM!
From zero to six workouts per week. You’re feeling pretty excited about your new plan.
You also decide that you’re going to eat nothing but chicken breast and broccoli even though you don’t even really like chicken breast and broccoli. But hey, no pain no gain you tell yourself!
As healthy as broccoli is, who’d want to have it EVERY meal!?!?
Week one comes and you “only” work out three days. You also decide to eat some cake at your child’s birthday party. Otherwise, you had a great week
But even though you had a much better week than you’d had in years, you feel like you failed because you didn’t reach your goal of working out six times and you feel guilty for that piece of cake you ate.
You feel like a failure. You start with the negative self talk. In the end, even though you had a better week than you’d had in years you are so dejected because you didn’t meet this audacious plan that you just give up.
That is setting yourself up for failure.
Dream big! Get after it! Go watch some Jocko videos to fire yourself up. I love that stuff! But when you build out your plan to achieve your vision, make sure you’re setting yourself up for success and not failure.
So what would setting yourself up for success look like? Let’s go back to the example above.
Instead of committing to six days a week with five of them being at 5:30am you commit to two days in the gym and a 10-15 minute walk every single day after dinner. Of these two days in the gym you plan one on the weekend so that leaves you with only one workout you have to plan around your work.
Maybe you decide to do that one day before work at 5:30am or maybe since it’s just one day you decide you can do it after work and get home a little later.
For eating, instead of overhauling your entire diet you commit to focusing on one meal the first few weeks. Since lunchtime at work often leads to your worst food choices you decide that you’re going to meal prep four lunches on the weekend for the week ahead. Here’s how you could plan that.
You leave Friday open in case you want to eat with your co-workers and the rest of the day, breakfast and dinner, you aren’t focused on…for now.
After a few weeks of success you then decide to add another day in the gym and extend your walks to thirty minutes. And along with prepping four lunches for the week, you decide to also focus on having a quality breakfast everyday to go along with these healthy pre-made lunches.
Start small. Accumulate some wins. Build some momentum.
That feels good. And that good feeling will beget more choices that will reinforce those feelings.
It’s a positive cycle.
Don’t set yourself up for failure. Set yourself up for success instead.
5. Don’t Get Too in the Weeds
I get questions all the time about supplements or some obscure exercise. Not to sound pretentious, but those are the wrong questions to ask. I imagine it’d be like someone asking Warren Buffet how to incorporate bonds or gold or crypto into their investing strategy when they haven’t even invested in an IRA or 401k yet.
I don’t blame people though for asking those types of questions.
It’s because of all the BS the “health and fitness” industry pushes on them. This industry wants you to think you need all these intricate, super-secret health products to get fit. They want you to get in the weeds because they can sell you lots of products and services in those weeds.
But we don’t want to get in the weeds for many reasons. First off, it’s not necessary to being healthy and fit. In fact, it’s often counter to doing so.
Second, when we get in those weeds, especially on topics we may not be too knowledgeable about, it’s easy to stagnate because it’s too dense. It becomes complex, confusing, and scary. It becomes too much to process.
So we say, “screw it,” and give up.
I saw a perfect example of this on Instagram recently. It was posted by James Smith who’s a fitness influencer I really like. He tells it like it is. He was talking about how he posted a picture of him flexing his biceps. I guess one of his biceps was slightly larger than the other and he got a lot of questions about that “muscle imbalance” and how to fix it.
It was a perfect snapshot of getting too in the weeds. The dude is strong and fit so WHO CARES IF ONE BICEP IS SLIGHTLY LARGER THAN THE OTHER! Like he said in his video on this, unless you’re a professional bodybuilder it doesn’t matter.
And like he also said, he’s certainly not going to go to the gym to train one bicep so it won’t be slightly smaller than the other. What a waste of time!
What’s the best pre-workout supplement? Should I point my toes forward or have them slightly pointed out during the squat. Should I rest for 90 or 120 seconds between sets. Should I eat 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight or 1 gram per pound of lean body mass? Should I have a protein drink or just eat some protein. Should I eat 100% grass-fed beef or just eat beef? Must I rush to get protein in within 20 minutes of my workout? Should I eat 3 meals a day or 5?
It’s enough to make anyone go crazy!
These are not bad questions. They just are questions on the periphery. They’re in the weeds. There’s certainly a time and place for them and I admit I sometimes enjoy thinking about these types of questions.
But they aren’t necessary to being fit and healthy!
They are not the foundation of health and fitness. And they’re certainly not what the focus of a beginner should be on.
There is so much “health and fitness” information out there. Lots of it is garbage. You can do yourself a big favor by focusing on the big picture and not sweating the small stuff. At least not until you have a good handle on the basics.
Focusing on the basics and staying out of the weeds will not only be good for your physical health and fitness, but it’ll also be good for your mental health because trying to process too much information on any subject can be overwhelming and demoralizing.
Not to mention physical and mental health are connected so what’s good for one is good for the other.
It can be tempting to go down a million different rabbit holes. Who hasn’t lost three hours of your life on YouTube when you only wanted to watch a 2-minute video?
Keep it simple. Focus on the activities that give you the biggest bang for your buck.
Leave the nuance and intricate details for further down the road. Or leave them forever if you’d like.
Stay on the highway and stay out of the weeds.
6. Don’t Rely on Motivation
A lot of us are sitting around waiting to be struck by motivation. We want that motivation to finally get us off our butts!
“I just need something to get me motivated,” we tell ourselves. The problem isn’t us, it’s that nothing external has ignited our internal fire.
I know I’m guilty of that.
But here’s the thing I’ve found in my own experience. Sure, some days I find myself feeling motivated. But that unexpected burst of motivation is fleeting. And it doesn’t happen too often.
Mostly, motivation follows work. Get started on something and the motivation comes AFTERWARD.
Me writing right now is a great example of this. I didn’t want to start writing today and I went through a hundred reasons why I shouldn’t and procrastinated another 100 times today not to.
I told myself that I wasn’t motivated and I delayed starting while waiting for this inspiration to strike me. But it never happened. I reluctantly just started hitting the keyboard. I got started. And within a few minutes the ideas starting flowing and the motivation to write more started to hit me.
The motivation came to me after I got to work!
It’s almost like the motivation made me prove I was worth it bestowing itself on me. Once I got to work it said, “ok, let’s visit and grace him with a little motivation…he’s earned it.”
Steven Pressfield talks a lot about this in his books Turning Pro and Do the Work. He calls it the “muse.”
Even when we have motivation, it doesn’t last. It fades. Often quickly.
The trick is to learn to act despite not having motivation. That happens through building habits and systems.
I don’t need to be motivated to work out. It’s not because I have an iron will and monk-like discipline. I’ve just built a habit to work out so I don’t really think about it too much. I just go do it. Like brushing my teeth.
If only I could do that in other areas of my life!
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with some good motivational content. I love a good Jocko or David Goggins speech to fire me up. I’ve read countless self-help, motivational books. But I know in the end those speeches and books won’t do work for me. Consuming them won’t get you fit and healthy.
As motivating as this is, it won’t do the work for you.
If you are waiting for some external piece of motivation to sweep in and get you moving you’ll be waiting a long time.
The conventional wisdom is backwards. Get motivated and get to work. That doesn’t work.
The real equation is: Get to work and THEN get motivated!
7. Don’t Identify Too Much With One Idealogy
Whether it’s a type of workout or a way of eating, I’ve found it’s not beneficial to wrap my identity around too specific an ideology or philosophy. Doing so in the past has led me to almost a dogmatic thinking on the topics. It’s closed my eyes to new ideas on the subject.
Let’s add some nuance to this. I do think it’s good to form an identity. As someone who’s identity is shaped around movement and healthy eating it helps me keep those activities in my life and makes me less likely to abandon them altogether.
I’m also less likely to come home after work and sit on the couch every single day and eat a bag of chips while drinking a six pack of beer. I have no moral judgment for those that do want to do this, but it just doesn’t mesh with my identity.
I’d rather have a good snack and go for a walk or lift some heavy weights. I’ll save the booze for the specific times where it makes sense. Like on a date with my wife or watching college football with our neighbors.
Time for a little more nuance. Unfortunately, not everything is so simple. After extolling the benefits of using an identity to help on the health and fitness journey, it’s important that one recognizes there can be some harm when one identifies too much with a specific workout or nutritional philosophy.
So you say it’s good for health and fitness if you identify with healthy activities but it can also be bad?
Yes. I’ll explain.
I’ve mentioned how I identify as someone who is physically active and eats healthy. I know that “eats healthy” is broad and vague but when I apply it to myself I’m able to define it as I see fit.
For me, that’s quality protein, healthy fats, and moderate carbs from fruits, vegetables potatoes, rice, etc. I eat like this most of the time but not all of the time.
By identifying this way it helps me keep my habits in line with those principles.
I prepped my lunches for the week because I enjoy eating healthy. I worked out today because I am an active person.
But this can easily go too far. It’s happened to me before. And it’s certainly impacted my physical and mental health over the years.
I love CrossFit. I’ve been doing CrossFit since 2009. I used to identify NOT as someone who is physically active but as a “CrossFitter.” I was proud of that and really got wrapped up in the CrossFit culture. And it’s a GREAT culture.
But I took it a little too far. I thought that if I wasn’t going all out in every one of my workouts, finishing in a pool of sweat barely able to breath after a workout then I was a slacker.
If I wasn’t lying on the floor in a pool of sweat, I used to think my workout didn’t count.
This thinking was so entrenched in me that it blinded me from all sorts of other great physical activities.
Like going for walks!
Even though I’m confident Greg Glassman would probably say going for walks is great, at the time when I identified as a “CrossFitter” I didn’t think they were intense enough. They didn’t fit into the narrow identity I had formed.
Now though, going for walks is one of my favorite activities. Do they get me ripped? No. Are they intense? Nope. But my identity is around being physically active and walks certainly fit that bill.
And the great thing about my identity not being tied to any one ideology is that I can still do CrossFit. And I do! But I also go for walks. Walks and CrossFit…they both fit my ideology now that I stopped identifying too much with one specific ideology.
I’ve also gone too far with my nutrition identity in the past. For years I identified as “Paleo.” I think paleo is great. You focus on nutritionally-dense foods that have shelf lives.
Sounds like a great way of eating right? Sure is, if it makes sense for you. However, the issue was that I would feel massive guilt if I ate something not considered paleo. I’m not just talking about things like cookies or ice cream. I’d feel guilty if I had rice or even some white potatoes.
Rice with my lunch?! The “old me” would not eat this because rice isn’t “paleo.”
While I’m no nutritional scientist with a PHD like this guy, I’m confident that white potatoes and white rice aren’t going to kill me now.
And the good thing now is that I can still eat in a paleo manner, which I often do, but I can also eat some white rice, which I often do as well, without feeling guilty. It’s because I don’t over identify as “paleo.” I just identify as someone who likes to eat healthy foods.
As I reflected on these strict identities for myself I learned a few things.
One, there’s nothing wrong with white rice and white potatoes. At least for me.
Two, if my identity is so closely tied to one way of eating like paleo or keto that I feel guilty when I eat something not “approved” then I’ve gone too far.
Eating healthy is supposed to enhance the quality of my life. Not be a source of anxiety and guilt.
Anxiety and guilt are certainly not traits of health and fitness. In fact, a healthy lifestyle should help mitigate one’s anxiety, not add to it.
In the end, I think it’s a positive thing to identify with certain behaviors that are in line with being fit and healthy if that is what you want to be. But keep them broad and don’t get too obsessed with one specific subset. That way you’ll continue to be open to learning new things and growing.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that no matter how sure I think I am on a topic I never know it all. And chances are my views on health and fitness with evolve and change over time.
I’d rather keep myself open to new perspectives than blinded by my identity.
8. Don’t Rely on a Biohack, Supplement, or Pill
I could have titled this, “don’t rely on any shortcut.” Or, “don’t rely on any quick fix.” Surgery, injections, waist trainers…there’s a whole load of things that could be included.
It seems like the health and fitness industry is really just a market for pills, injections, schemes and biohacks.
Up until a few years ago I had never heard of the word biohack. Now it seems like it’s all I hear about. What does it even really mean? I’m not sure. I guess it’s a shortcut? Is resistance training, outdoor walks, a diet focused on quality protein consumption a biohack? If not, why? Because it’s not about efficacy but more about length of time?
I just looked it up and it sounds like it’s something like human enhancement through testing on yourself. Seems fishy.
Anyway, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a supplement, pill, or testing new things on yourself, aka biohacking. There’s certainly times where surgery makes sense. But it’s the expectation that these will be a cure-all or will replace foundational practices like proper exercise, nutrition and quality sleep where the problem lies.
They can give false hope.
No pill will magically make you fit and healthy.
Supplements are called supplements for a reason. They are not called primaries. They supplement the basics and they should be used to add value at the margins.
For me it’s not about biohacks, pills or supplements. I focus on quality food, resistance training, sleep, good relationships, and managing stress. I try to get sunlight often, without burning, and go for walks in nature. That accounts for probably 99% of my health and fitness.
Yes, I use some biohacks, supplements and pills, but only to fill in those tiny gaps that I may be missing with my basics.
Whey protein is one example. It’s one supplement that I include almost daily. It helps me reach my protein goal of around 1 gram per pound of body weight per day. I use it for practical purposes. Life is busy and this helps me manage that.
But I know that whey protein is not necessary for me to be fit and healthy. If I had the time I could certainly trade that daily protein shake for some real food and my results would be the same.
In the end, no biohack, supplement, or pill is going to make you fit and healthy. Yes, they could add some value. But it’ll never be near the value that the basics offer.
So master the basics. Make the basics the foundation of your health and fitness. Then worry about biohacks, supplements, and pills if you want to. It’s certainly not necessary most of the time.
Maybe this is counter to what many health and fitness “experts” say on the topic. But most of those “experts” probably have some biohack or pill or supplement to sell you.
9. Don’t Let a Bad Week Turn Into a Bad Year
One of the things I often stress is to not let a bad week turn into a bad month or a bad year.
Life gets in the way. It always will. And it should at times. No routine should be too rigid that you can’t adjust it when life calls. Otherwise you are working for the routine instead of the routine working for you.
Maybe you get sick and are out of commission for a week. Or maybe you go on vacation for a week and decide to spend all that time with your family and don’t stress about trying to fit in a workout everyday.
Life happens.
Our health and fitness doesn’t occur in a vacuum sealed off from the rest of our life. For it to be effective, and sustainable, it has to be able to fit in with our entire life. It’s certainly easier said than done.
When I was younger, often a week off would lead to a month off. At that point it was alway so much harder to get back into the routine. And the longer I waited the harder it became. It’d be like I was starting over. It happened all the time.
Things would be humming along. I’d be making some solid gains and feeling pretty good about myself. My eating would be good. My training would be good. My confidence would be good.
And then BOOM!
Life would happen and something would come up. Next thing I’d know it was six months later and I’d be wondering what the hell happened.
That’s why it’s so important that when you get off track to get back on track as soon as possible. It doesn’t have to be perfect either.
If I’m out of the gym for a week my next few workouts back usually suck. But I understand the purpose of those workouts back after a break aren’t to get me fitter and stronger. Their purpose is to get me back in the routine!
After a vacation of eating crappy food the first thing I do when I get home is to go to the grocery store. I had my fun. I ate everything in sight and I made memories and I don’t regret it. But now it’s time to get back on track and to do it quickly.
I know if I come home and say, “I’ll just wing it this week since I’m tired from vacation,” it would make getting back in the routine way more difficult then just buckling down and doing it now. That extra week off could easily turn into a month or two.
It has happened many times to me in the past.
We all fall off track sometimes. It’s okay. It’s life. Don’t beat yourself up.
Ge back up. Get back on track. And don’t let that bad week turn into a bad year.
10. Don’t Skimp on Sleep
The older I get the more I recognize the value of sleep. I could write a book on it’s importance but I’m not sure that’s necessary. Do a google search on the effects of sleep deprivation and it won’t take long to see why you don’t want to skimp on sleep.
I used to have the mentality that I’ll sleep when I die. But I’ve realized that I can’t really thrive in life if I’m always sleep deprived.
You can’t thrive in life walking around like this all day.
Sometimes you don’t have a choice. As I talked about earlier, life can sometimes get in the way of our best made plans. Sometimes that includes getting in the way of my sleep. But just like when my workouts get thrown off track, I try to get back on track as soon as I can when it happens to my sleep.
Whether we like it or not, we need it. We need if for our mental health and we need it for our physical health.
When it comes to what not to do to be fit and healthy there might not be a more important step than this. Lack of sleep is not a badge of honor. It’s not something to brag about. First off, nobody cares. But more importantly, it’s detrimental to your health.
You can’t thrive if you’re sleep deprived. So hit the rack at a decent hour and wake up feeling refreshed.
11. Don’t Eat Too Much
If you’re gaining weight you’re eating too much. It’s that simple.
Most of us eat way more than we need to. It’s understandable why.
It’s hard not to eat too much with so much hyper palatable food at our fingertips.
Food is designed to be hyper palatable. Companies are spending millions of dollars to convince us to eat their food and to make us not want to stop eating their food once we start. It’s a battle and we’re up against the odds with these food companies.
I understand that saying, “don’t eat too much,” while accurate and important, is not a helpful piece of advice. The same way telling someone in football to score more points than the other team wouldn’t be helpful. The proper response in both cases would be, “no kidding.”
The question is how? How do I not eat too much?
That deserves it’s own post. If I had to try and boil it down as simple as I could I’d say to get a food tracker and track how many calories enter your body daily. If you are gaining weight eat fewer calories. Continue to do this until you stop gaining weight and then you’ll know around how many calories you can eat daily and still maintain your weight.
Even if you’re not trying to lose weight, it’s a good exercise for everyone to track what they eat at least a few times to really get a sense of how many calories they’re eating on a daily basis and how many calories are truly in the foods they’re eating.
I’ve done this some and I was astonished at how many more calories I was eating than I thought.
I have a smoothie I make all the time and I would have guessed that it has around 3oo calories. But when I put it into a tracker once and it had over 600 calories I was shocked!
Another time I got a sandwich from one of my favorite places. I would have guessed it had around 600-700 calories. Nope, I wish that was all it had! I tracked it and it had OVER ONE THOUSAND CALORIES!!! Holy cow! It wasn’t even some super-jumbo-sized sandwich either. It looked pretty normal size.
There are a lot of experts on this topic who know far more than I do. My favorite person for all things nutrition-related is Layne Norton. He’s a great follow for anyone looking to understand nutrition and how to eat to lose, gain, or maintain your weight.
Stan Efferding and Mike Dolce are two other experts who I think are great resources on this topic.
Don’t eat too much. Simple in theory, but not always simple in practice. But it is a key to longevity, good health, and a thriving lifestyle.
12. Don’t Believe Everything I Say
Let’s be real. You don’t know me from Adam.
I hope I’ve built up some trust in you but at the end of the day I’m just some guy on the internet. I’ll also admit that I don’t know it all. I rely on a lot of other experts and am continually learning and adjusting my fitness and nutrition practices around the edges. The foundations are the foundation and those don’t vary much.
I also could have titled this section, “Continually Question What you Know.”
Things change. Ideas evolve. We change so therefore our needs can change over time. Just know that you don’t have it all figured out. And that’s okay. It’s a good mentality to have because it keeps yourself open to learning.
Have some healthy skepticism. Find a good group of “experts” to lean on. Find people that are not selling you gimmicks or fads. Selling is fine. People have to make a living. But try and find genuine, authentic people and not snake-oil salesmen.
Look for people who are practitioners themselves. They practice what they preach. Meaning they are not selling some “system” it’s obvious they never used themselves.
You want to lean on people who got to where they are by using the ideas and methods they preach.
Having a solid group of people you follow on a subject allows you to, “trust, but verify.”
Don’t believe everything I say. Not because I’m not being authentic. And not because these might not be good things to adhere to. But more so to foster a mindset of healthy skepticism and to foster a mindset of growth, openness, and evolving.
Summary
When compiling this list of what not to do for health and fitness, I realized that it could stretch on forever. I could essentially put anything on the list.
Don’t look at social media during workouts.
Don’t compare yourself to others. Especially on social media.
Don’t drink too much alcohol.
Don’t eat donuts everyday.
Don’t max out your deadlift when you’re tired and not feeling it that day.
And on and on and on.
The reality is that while there are things most people should NOT do for health and fitness, many things are personal to the individual.
For some, drinking alcohol can be a part of their healthy lifestyle. For others, not so much.
For Barney, don’t drink any alcohol would probably be wise. For Homer, who’s to say?!
The “dont’s” I wrote about above are major ones that have had a profound impact on my health and fitness over the years and the ones that I thought would be more applicable to others than some of the more personalized ones of mine.
I often talk of not overcomplicating things. There is so much information out there that it can be a challenge to filter through the noise and arrive at the signals. Eliminating and cutting out things is a good way to quickly filter the amount of noise flooding your senses. The more noise you can quickly filter out, the easier it’ll be to find the signals.
If there are 100 things coming at me and I can quickly eliminate 70 of them, I’ve immediately made the situation more manageable.
For me, this list of what not to do to be fit and healthy has simplified the process of getting “healthy.” It helps me cut down on the noise hitting me from the “health and fitness” industry.
It’s like wiping off your sunglasses after a day at the pool. The lenses are grimy. Caked in sun screen and sweat. It makes the world look blurry. But once you wipe them off on your shirt, remove the grime and junk, suddenly the view becomes crystal clear.
Get a crystal clear view through some freshly cleaned lenses.
What not do do to be fit and healthy has been addition by subtraction for me. It’s helped clear up what my “health and fitness” journey looks like.
It’s allowed me to see it through some freshly cleaned sunglasses!
If it’s so easy to get in the habit of scrolling through Facebook, why can’t it be just as easy to make exercise a habit?
Why is it such a life-long struggle for most people to develop and stick to some form of consistent exercise/movement program?
As humans, didn’t we evolve to move around all day? We descend from hunter-gatherers who literally had to spend their days running around hunting wild prey, walking miles to gather food and water, ALL WHILE TRYING NOT TO GET KILLED BY WILD ANIMALS!
Thank goodness we don’t have to run from wild animals every time we want some food or water anymore.
With this lineage, shouldn’t a desire to exercise just be in our blood?
Well, it turns out we also evolved to value rest. All that hunting and gathering while trying not to get killed required a lot of energy. So when the time came to hunt that bison or run from that lion, we had to make sure we had the energy to do so. Otherwise it was game over!
So saving energy, aka rest, became stamped in our DNA as well. The only difference now is that we aren’t really storing up that energy for any life-saving activities. If we get hungry we don’t have to chase down a bison while avoiding getting eaten by a tiger. We just have to walk to the fridge or swing through a drive-thru.
No work needed and no danger to avoid. Fantastic for us! But on the flip side, no calories burned either like our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
We’ve essentially saved up a bunch of calories for nothing!
So don’t be so hard on yourself. Turns out we are hard wired to be lazy…I mean rest.
But even if we understand our hard wiring a little better, the question still remains, why is it so hard to form GOOD habits?
Habits form no matter what. It’s just that without thought or intention, the ones that form are usually bad.
Drinking too much alcohol, watching too much television, scrolling through our phones too much or eating too much junk food. For many, these are habits.
We don’t generally set out to form these bad habits. Rather, we live our lives and look up at some point and realize we have formed a litany of bad habits.
I know it’s happened to me. Phones are addicting. I know this. Everyone knows this at this point. I also know that staring at a little screen all the time is not good for my health. Mental or physical health.
Yet even knowing this, I get these weekly updates telling me how much time I spent on my phone the previous week and they always leave me astonished.
“I spent over five hours per day last week on my phone?!?!”
Just like that, without even consciously thinking about it, I’ve formed a bad habit of picking up my phone and scrolling through it any time I get bored.
Why are good habits so HARD to form but bad habits are so EASY?
Bad habits seem to form unconsciously while good habits only seem to form consciously.
Bad habits are easy to form. Good habits are hard to form.
But why?
Why can’t we ever fall ass-backwards into some great habit like we do with bad ones?
For me, it’s a matter of delayed vs. instant gratification. I’d imagine it’s the same for others as well.
BAD HABITS = INSTANT GRATIFICATION
Eating a box of donuts feels good immediately. Scrolling through social media feels good in the moment.
GOOD HABITS = DELAYED GRATIFICATION
Working out feels hard in the moment. But afterwards you feel great. Eating healthy is often challenging in the moment. It requires planning and more work than pulling through a McDonald’s drive thru. But afterwards you feel strong and energetic which is in stark contrast to how we usually feel after a Big Mac, fries, and a soda.
And the truly great gratification from working out; more muscle, abs, better health markers, etc., is really delayed. These benefits take months, sometimes years, to show up.
Bad habits feel good now. Good habits feel good later. One thing to add though is that while bad habits feel good now, they often make you feel bad later.
Donuts are good now. Donuts over time, year after year, not so good.
None of this means that forming good habits is impossible. Doing so just requires more forethought and intention than forming bad habits.
Motivation vs. Habits
Motivation can get you started along a path, but it’s habits that keep you going down the path.
It seems nowadays many people bash motivation. Like it’s a complete waste. “It doesn’t get you where you need to go.” “It doesn’t last.” I get where they are coming from, but I don’t see motivation as totally worthless.
I love some good motivation. Watching a Jocko Willink clip or a David Goggins post gets me fired up. I love it!
How could this not motive you?!
I also understand that motivation has its place. It ALWAYS fades and cannot be counted on to be the driving factor in any large positive change. Only habits can drive that.
The New Year is a prime example of this. There’s no time of year where motivation runs as high. We are fired up to make positive changes. “This year is going to be the year,” we tell ourselves. I love this! I think this kind of positive thinking is great. But it doesn’t last.
The motivation to work out that we have at the beginning of the year is not going to be there seven months later when it’s the middle of August, it’s 100 degrees outside, and you’re finishing up a crappy day at work and feel exhausted and just want to go home and flop down on the couch.
Whether or not you workout that day won’t be due to motivation. It’ll depend on whether or not working out is a habit you’ve formed prior to that moment.
If it’s a habit then you’ll work out even though New Year’s is a long-ago afterthought, it’s hot as hell outside, you just finished up with a long day of work, and you’re feeling exhausted. If it’s not, then you probably won’t.
That’s the power that habits can have. So why not use that power in our favor?
Let’s leverage the power of habits.
My History with Exercise
I started lifting weights when I was 14 years old. I’ll never forget a buddy of mine who I hadn’t seen in months stopped by my house. He had started lifting weights and showed me his guns and I was literally amazed. I couldn’t believe he had been able to make that physical change in his body.
I immediately got a membership to his gym and started learning from him and the rest was history. Well, it wasn’t that easy. It became a habit and that is how it became history.
But even saying, “and that is how it became history” is over-simplifying things. The truth is that it took many years for it to be as consistent as it is today. Initially I would work out for months but then life would get in the way and I’d skip a few days here and there and next thing you’d know a few months would pass.
But over time I learned to fight through the resistance, the procrastination, and the slate of external circumstances life threw at me and eventually exercise became a habit that I do day after day, week after week, year after year.
Whenever I run into people I haven’t seen in years they’ll always ask me, “are you still working out?” They are always amazed when I say yes. They act like I have some iron will power.
I assure you I do not!
There are many areas of my life where I haven’t formed the right habits. It’s just that for some reason or another exercise is an area where I did make it a habit.
I don’t really think about it every day. I don’t wake up dreading having to workout later on. I just kind of do it. Just like I just brush my teeth without thinking about it. It’s just a habit and has become a part of who I am.
I need to take this lesson and apply it to other areas of my life. But for now, here’s how I managed to make exercise a habit.
While these are the steps I’ve taken, I’m sure they could work for you as well.
Steps to Make Exercise a Habit
1. Set Goals
I’ve always been a goal-oriented person. I mean, over the years I’ve probably sat down and made a thousand huge proclamations about how my life was going to change because I had written out some new goals.
But the majority of those goals faded away. Time passed and I never achieved them. On many of them, I never really even made much progress.
The reason is because when I made the goals, I never put much thought into how I was actually going to achieve them. I had no plan.
That wasn’t the goals fault. And it doesn’t mean goals are worthless either. They serve their purpose as long as the right actions are built around them.
The thing with goals is all they really do is provide direction. They are a starting point.
Just like motivation, they are a launching point.
Goals give direction. Habits get you to the destination.
Goals are the compass. Habits are the ship that takes you there.
For example, I set a goal for myself a few years back that I wanted to accomplish a one-minute, free-standing handstand. But if I had stopped there, I never would have accomplished the goal. I had to build some habits that would ultimately lead me to accomplishing that goal.
To achieve my handstand goal, I created a system of habits that was two-fold.
First, I wrote handstand exercises into my workout routines.
Second, I did something that James Clear calls habit stacking. James defines habit stacking as, “one of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top.”
Here’s how I used habit stacking to help me get that one-minute handstand:
Even before the pandemic I often worked from home. When I’m working from home I drink a lot of coffee. I mean a LOT! With lots of coffee comes lots of morning trips to the restroom.
Drinking coffee and using the restroom were habits I already had. Wanting a one-minute handstand was a goal so practicing handstands was a habit I wanted.
So I stacked practicing my handstands onto my coffee drinking and subsequent restroom-break habits. Every time I got back from a restroom break while working in my office I did one max effort handstand. I simply propped myself up against the wall in a handstand position, kicked my feet off the wall until I was doing a free-standing handstand, and held it for as long as I could. Then I was back at my desk working.
While each handstand probably lasted a few seconds to maybe half a minute, over the years this has added up to hours of handstand practice.
The point of all that was to show that goals can have a purpose if planned properly. I set a goal to complete a one-minute freestanding handstand. I built systems to accomplish that goal. I eventually accomplished the goal.
But I do want to give a disclaimer on goals. It’s important to make them realistic. If they aren’t they can often have the opposite of their intended effect.
For example, let’s say someone made a goal to lose 20 pounds in a week (NOT realistic). After a week they ended up losing two pounds (realistic AND fantastic!). But because their goal was an unrealistic 20 pounds lost, this person may give up because they see their two pounds lost as a failure.
Of course losing two pounds in a week is not a failure! But with an unrealistic goal it could be felt that way by some folks.
In the end, remember, the goal is the compass. It provides you direction. Set ones that are clear, specific, and measurable. And just as important, make sure you set the processes around them so you know HOW you will ultimately achieve them.
2. Have awareness for all signs of progress
This step is tied somewhat into the setting of goals. But it’s been such a valuable tool for me in making exercise a habit over the years that I feel it’s important to talk about it separately.
One of the potential downsides of setting goals is that they can sometimes place blinders on us to all the signs of progress along the way to accomplishing the goal.
It’s often, “goal or bust!” Either I hit my goal or not.
As Ricky Bobby said, “if you ain’t first, you’re last.”
Talk about pressure! I like confidence and holding yourself accountable, but if your mentality is, “goal or bust” then the journey will be long, miserable, and often unsustainable.
Over the years, it became important for me to practice awareness along the way. As I worked to make exercise a habit I began to recognize and be aware of all the signs of progress.
Some of the signs of progress will tie directly to your goal. When I wanted to hit that one-minute handstand, I remember being pumped when I hit the 15, 30, and 45 second marks.
It took a LONG time to finally hit that one-minute mark. If I hadn’t recognized progress at the 15, 30, and 45-second marks I’m not sure I would have stuck it out to get to the end goal.
It’s also important to recognize all the other indicators of progress as you work towards your goals and making exercise a habit. Even if these indicators are not tied directly to your specific goal.
For example, for many folks they start exercising with a goal to gain more muscle or to lose a certain amount of weight.
But there are so many ancillary benefits to exercise as well. Like improved health markers (blood pressure, blood work, etc.), improved mood, improved sleep, more energy, etc.
Those ancillary benefits have PROFOUND positive impacts on your quality of life.
Recognize that connection between those benefits and your exercise goals. Recognize how your exercise goal may be having positive impacts you never imagined on your life. Be aware when you realize you’re starting to sleep better, or you suddenly have so much more energy throughout the day.
If you recognize ALL the signs of progress, it’ll help you keep the blinders off from your goal.
It’ll help you enjoy the journey.
It’ll help make the journey more sustainable which will help make exercise a habit.
I know it had that effect on me. When I started recognizing all the benefits exercise was having on my life, not just whether I was hitting whatever goal I had set or not, it made me that much more motivated to keep on doing it.
Keep those eyes open to all the signs of progress along the way. Have a sense of awareness so you are open to all those signs. Enjoy the journey.
3. Perfection is the enemy of progress
I remember when I first started working out, I had this idea that every single workout had to be perfect. I had to be “feeling it” and “in the zone” or it was a waste of time.
If I had an off day where I felt weak and was just going through the motions I’d feel like a failure that day.
That feeling often left me feeling de-motivated. It often led me to skip a few days and fall off the exercise wagon.
How counterintuitive is that? You’re too hard on yourself and ultimately sabotage your own ultimate goal?
Over the years I learned to remind myself that perfection is the enemy of progress.
Sometimes just getting to the gym is a win. Sometimes just “going through the motions” is enough. You don’t have to set a PR (personal record) every time you workout.
By learning to accept just okay days in the gym and to recognize that progress sometimes means just showing up, I learned to be much easier on myself which has been instrumental in me sticking to my exercise habit even on those days, and sometimes even weeks, when I’m just not really feeling it.
So take advantage of those days when you feel like you could run through a brick wall. But also remind yourself that showing up is a win on those days where you felt exhausted and the last thing you want to do is workout.
While just showing up may not make you fitter, it’ll definitely not make you less fit. And it will keep you from regressing, losing all those previously hard-earned gains.
In the end, if you’re progressing often, and not regressing on those down days, you’ll be on an upward trajectory.
Remember, progress, not perfection.
4. Don’t let one missed workout lead to one year of missed workouts
For the first few years that I started working out it seemed like it was a series of peaks and valleys. I’d go months being consistent and disciplined. But then, inevitably, I’d fall out of the routine for a few weeks, sometimes even months, and the cycle would perpetuate.
For years, my workout routine was a series of peaks and valleys.
It was all or nothing it seemed. Feast or famine.
What I realized was happening was that I’d encounter some life event that would prevent me from working out for a few days or even sometimes a week. Maybe I’d get sick or when I was in school it might be a week of finals. But it seemed like some life event would always come up.
But that’s the thing with life events. Everyone has them and they never stop occurring. Things come up, we move on. But I didn’t move on.
For some reason, those few days off would lead to a few weeks off and sometimes even a few months off.
One workout missed for a legitimate reason would lead to many workouts missed for no real reason.
It happened over and over through the years. And because I’d take so much time off it was like the habit was gone. Getting back to working out was all of a sudden so hard.
It was like I was starting from scratch every time I went through this cycle.
I started to be acutely aware when I felt this cycle beginning. And somewhere along the way I made a rule with myself.
Never let a missed workout lead to a year of missed workouts.
If I was sick and had to miss a few workouts I told myself not to sweat it. But the moment I felt better I’d get back into the gym. Even if it was the worst workout ever, I’d get my butt back in there and do something. In fact, the actual workout I did wasn’t even important. What was important was getting back into the habit as quickly as possible.
I just needed to get back into the gym and do something.
The sooner the better!
Some people call this rule the, “never miss two in a row” rule. I call it the, “never let a missed workout lead to a year of missed workouts.”
Whatever you want to call it, the point is to throw out this “all or nothing” mentality. If you fall off the horse, get right back on it. Make that a steadfast rule.
All these years later, this maxim has been one of the most influential in keeping exercise and movement a habit for me. If the holidays hit and I miss a few workouts I don’t stress over it. If I get sick and am down for the count for a week, no big deal. I know the day I can get back at it I will. And even if it’s a terrible workout, just doing something will stem the tide of those missed workouts and get me back on track.
5. Meal Prep
I’ve said it over and over, but for me, as my meal prep goes, so goes my week. Meal prep is what I consider the habit that leads to all the other habits that make exercise a habit for me. I hope you can follow that sentence because I just used habit way too many times.
It’s what James Clear calls a “gateway habit” in his book Atomic Habits. A “gateway habit” is a habit that, “naturally leads you down a more productive path.”
Every Sunday I prep my lunches for the week. Doing this sets me up for success while at work which is probably the most difficult time to eat a healthy diet for a number of factors.
Another successful meal prep! Now lunch for the week is ready and I don’t have to think about it.
So even if your goal is to exercise, and not necessarily centered around nutrition, I can promise you that if you eat better it’ll help achieve this goal.
Eating nutritious foods makes you feel better which ultimately gives you the energy to make exercise a habit.
6. Have a plan
Planning my workouts has been incredibly important in making exercise a habit.
Just like with my eating, if I don’t have a plan for my workouts they tend to suffer. Once every few months I’ll sit down and write out a big picture plan for what I want my workouts to look like over the next few months. This focuses on my goals and general structure of my training. It’s the macro view of my training.
And then every Sunday I’ll sit down and write out the actual specific plan for the upcoming week. It’s the micro view of my training. This takes thinking about the workouts on a daily basis out of the equation. All I have to do is show up at the gym and do what has been already written out.
Macro workout plan every few months + micro workout plan every week.
I can promise this, showing up to the gym with no idea of what to do is a recipe for disaster. Well, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but it’s certainly not conducive to making exercise a sustainable habit.
I understand that everyone might not be able to write their own exercise programs. That’s okay. You can find many online. In fact, you can probably find too many online. Since paralysis by analysis is a real thing, here’s a few sources for some quality programming:
Be sure to have a plan. A micro plan and a macro plan. What you’re going to do that week and what you’re aiming to do over a few months time block. Armed with this plan, it’ll ease the cognitive load substantially as all you have to do is show up and just do what’s written down.
7. remove obstacles/make it as easy as possible
A key to forming good habits comes from removing as many of the obstacles as possible.
The easier it is, the more likely we’ll be to do it.
Remove the friction. Remove the obstacles.
I set myself up for success by removing as many obstacles to working out as possible and creating an environment that makes exercise as easy as possible.
There are a lot of ways I’ve done this over the years. I mentioned two of the big ones above; meal prep and planning my workouts. Doing those two things removed so many obstacles throughout the week and made eating nutritious foods and exercising daily so much easier.
But there have also been a lot of smaller habits that set me up for success on a daily basis.
Pack a bag – While I don’t have an office job anymore or go to a gym facility (I work mostly from home and use my garage as my gym) for years I was either going to school or going to an office and working out afterwards.
I always packed my gym bag the night before and would throw it in my car so the next day I didn’t have to think about it. I just took off for work or school and my workout bag was ready to go in the car.
Packing my bag the night before removed the obstacle of having to do it in the morning while rushing for work or school.
Go straight from the office or school to the gym – After a long day I knew that if I went home for any reason before heading to the gym my odds of flopping down on the couch and skipping my workout increased dramatically.
By going straight from the office or school to the gym I took this hurdle out of the equation.
This was another example of James Clear’s habit stacking. I had the existing habit of driving home from work everyday. So I just added the habit of working out onto that. Get in the car to leave work and drive straight to the gym.
Think about all the obstacles in your way of working out. Is it time, energy, or even something like money? Maybe you can’t completely remove the obstacle, but think of ways to lessen the impact of the obstacle. And think of ways to make exercise as easy as possible.
For example, let’s say you have three kids all involved in sports. Between your job and their sports schedules you feel like you have no time to exercise. One way to not necessarily remove the obstacle, but to work within its confines, might revolve around their sports practices. If they practice for an hour twice a week, instead of driving them to their practice and sitting in your car or driving home and back to pick them up you could make it a habit to exercise while they are at practice.
Maybe you drop them off and go for a walk or run for an hour and stop every so often and do a set of push ups. You’ve essentially removed the obstacle of not having enough time.
And to make it easier to do, you could have some workout clothes laid out the night before and the moment you return from work you immediately change into them so when it’s time to take them to practice, and get your workout in, you’re already all ready to go.
8. Have a Workout/Accountability Partner
Having a workout partner is like having an accountability partner. They push you and can help keep you motivated. It’s also a lot harder to skip a workout when you know someone is waiting for you. On top of all that a workout partner is usually a friend which makes the workouts more enjoyable.
Now that I’m over 40 with kids, and the same goes for my friends, and work out from home, I unfortunately haven’t had a workout partner in years. It sucks and there’s no doubt that it negatively impacts my training.
However, for the first 15 years of training I did have a workout partner and luckily this was enough time for exercise to become a habit.
I will say that even though I can’t have a workout partner in person, in today’s virtual world I could easily still have one.
For a few years a buddy of mine and myself were virtual workout partners. He lived in California and I lived in Houston. We had the same workout routine and would text each other every day talking about our times, lifts, etc.
It wasn’t as good as working out together in person, but it definitely was better than going at it completely solo.
Find someone to work out with you in person. If you can’t find some someone in person, look for a class. Folks usually attend the same class so over time you’ll form relationships with many of the people in the class who can become your workout/accountability partners.
9. Don’t negotiate with that inner resistant voice
There’s a great book by Steven Pressfield called The War of Art. In it he calls resistance the “most toxic force on the planet,” and defines it as the “force that stands between the life we live and the unlived life within us that we wish we were living.”
Resistance comes in many forms such as procrastination, trouble, self-dramatization, to name a few. I highly recommend reading the entire book for more insight on resistance and how to beat it.
But one thing I’ve done in regards to exercise is make a firm commitment to do it. Making this commitment and really meaning it helps me NOT negotiate with that inner resistant voice.
I know that sounds overly simplistic, but hear me out.
Have you ever woken up and had something you were supposed to do later that day but immediately your mind started providing all sorts reasons why you shouldn’t do so?
We all do that!
We start negotiating with that resistant internal voice. “You know what, it’s actually better that I start that next week.” Or, “I’m a little sore from the last workout so I’d better take an extra day of rest.”
It’s mentally exhausting!
If you’re like me, we often spend more energy negotiating with that inner resistant voice than it would take to actually just do whatever it is we are supposed to do!
When it comes to exercising I refuse to negotiate with that inner resistant voice. Even though exercise is a habit, that voice still creeps in ALL THE TIME. When I find myself slipping and internally having a dialog with the voice I tell myself, “stop, the decision to exercise is made so stop negotiating.” I just shut it down.
Again, I know that sounds overly simplistic but I think the real take away is to be AWARE when those internal negotiations start occurring. If you’re aware when they start you can quickly shut them down.
I’ve found that the longer they are allowed to go on, the more persuasive they become.
So the sooner you can shut down that inner resistant voice and refuse to negotiate with it, the better!
10. Have something you like to listen to
This is easy. Make some solid playlists or have some downloaded podcasts ready to go. Find something that will help make the time enjoyable and pass by faster.
11. Do what you like
I struggled with whether or not to include this one because I feel it can be somewhat misleading. But then I remembered that I write about what I’ve done and what works for me and this has been a principle I’ve relied on for years.
But this point has some caveats. First off, exercise by nature is supposed to be somewhat uncomfortable. Most exercise is intended to produce some sort of physical change and change does not come without discomfort. So when I say to do something you like, I do not mean to do what is easiest.
The second caveat is that your exercise plan should align with your goals. If you want to build more muscle but only like going for long, leisurely walks, then those actions and that goal don’t align.
No matter how beneficial walking is (check out the chapter Take a Walk in Ryan Holiday’s great book Stillness is the Keyfor more details on the benefits of walking) it’s never going to be an activity that builds muscle.
While walking has many benefits, building muscle is probably not one of them.
So if your goal were to build muscle you’d want to find the activity that you most like but that also builds muscle like lifting weights.
For me, I love CrossFit, walking, lifting weights, and gymnastics. For over 25 years my exercise routine has centered around these activities.
Conversely, I HATE long-distance running. That may be a self-fulfilling prophecy because I tell myself that often. But regardless, I don’t like doing it. So outside of when I was training to join the Marines and while still in the Marines, I generally don’t do much long-distance, slow cardio. Instead of going for long runs, I’d much prefer to do sprints so that is what I do.
Long-distance running is NOT for me!
12. Track your progress
Unfortunately, we often lie to ourselves. That might be a little harsh but it’s true.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool
Richard Feynman
I used to think my wife and I were very disciplined in our spending habits. The thing is, we never really looked too in depth or tracked our spending. When we finally started meeting weekly to look at every expense from the previous week and to plan our budget moving forward, we quickly learned that we were never as disciplined as we had thought. In fact, we were WAY off!
It took tracking our spending to really get it in check. The first year we did that consistently we saved way more money than previous years and we never felt like we were missing out. The simple act of tracking our expenses had a profound impact on the results.
The same goes for exercising. I knew very early on that if I wanted to get bigger muscles and get stronger then I had to lift more and more weights.
If you lift the same weight for 10 years at some point your body is going to adapt to that weight and it won’t produce any more stimulus and thus any more strength or muscle gains. You’d just be going through the motions.
So I’ve always tracked my workouts. For years I carried a little notebook around and I’d write down my numbers from that day’s workout. It allowed me to always check what I did the last time so I could be sure to push myself and to continue to lift more weights so I’d get stronger.
An entry in my workout log from December of 2011.
(Side note, when I’d sit down on the weekends to write my weekly workout plan I’d write it in these notebooks so when the day of that workout came I already had it all written out which made tracking easy because I could just write my weights and times right there.)
I didn’t just track numbers, I’d also track intangible things like how I felt that day. There are pages from years ago that have things written like, “couldn’t perform this set because I tweaked my back playing golf yesterday.”
One note from years ago says, “workout took FOREVER because the kids kept coming out and driving me crazy.” When I go back and look at some of these workout logs it’s almost like reading a journal.
Over 20 years later and I still track my progress. I currently have a large white board in my garage that I track everything on. It’s big and visible so I always know where I’ve been, where I currently am, and where I need to go.
Be sure to track your progress. Earlier when I spoke about having a plan, it’s as simple as making sure that plan is written out. Then bring it with you and have a pen or pencil and track your workouts on the plan.
13. Focus on the process, not the results
A lot of times when folks don’t see immediate results they get frustrated and give up. But here’s the thing, it takes time to get results. I know that’s not what a lot of people want to hear, but it’s the truth.
There’s a maxim that goes something like this:
Most people tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and underestimate what can be done in five or ten years.
People think they can move mountains in a day but couldn’t do so in years. It often doesn’t follow sound logic.
But we’re humans and what goes on in our heads often isn’t very sound!
I’ve seen this happen all too often. Someone will set a goal to lose ten pounds in one week (not possible) and at the same time think they’ll never be able to achieve a sustainable, lean, muscular body (VERY possible over time).
To get the results you have to have a good process and do it consistently. Day in and day out, year after year. If you do that, the results will take care of themselves.
That may seem daunting…thinking about exercising day in and day out for years, but that’s why it has to become a habit. So you DON’T have to obsessively think about it daily.
Going back to the teeth-brushing example, nobody thinks doing that for the foreseeable future is daunting. It’s a habit that you just do. If exercise becomes a habit the same holds true for it. It’ll just be something you do.
Trust me, it’s possible.
And unlike brushing your teeth, over time you’ll actually begin to love the process. That may seem far-fetched to some but think of everyone you know who has exercised consistently for years. Do they hate it? No! More than likely, it’s obvious to all that they love it. In fact, they probably like it so much they never shut up about it!
14. reward yourself
In the interest of transparency, as a practitioner who writes about what I’ve done, I have to say that this is a step I never really implemented. Sure, I’ve felt rewarded from exercise, but I’ve never set up a system where I reward myself with something specific in an effort to make exercise a habit.
But I read about its importance in Atomic Habits and I’ve seen first-hand its effectiveness in my wife’s effort to make exercise a habit for her.
As I said earlier, it’s no secret that good habits are more difficult to form than bad habits. A main cause of this is that good habits have long-term rewards versus bad habits which have short-term rewards. And let’s be honest, for most of us, it’s a lot more tempting to get those immediate rewards.
Short-term rewards are enticing. We like them. We want them! So why not use that carrot to our advantage? Why not find a way to get some short-term benefits from exercise along with all the long-term ones?
That’s what this step is designed to do. Reward yourself with something more immediate than a long-term goal in an effort to help make exercise a habit.
To do this, find something you like to do and don’t allow yourself to do it until after you exercise. It’s that simple!
It can be something immediate like scrolling through Facebook. Maybe you love to come home from work and sit on the couch and scroll through Facebook. You could make a rule that you can’t do that until you’ve exercised. For you, once you finish your exercise you get that immediate payoff of getting to get on Facebook.
Maybe it’s something a little less immediate, but definitely not long-term. For my wife, she LOVES massages. So she set up a system where if she worked out a certain number of times per month she’d earn a massage for that month.
A massage is a great reward to motivate yourself to exercise.
Over the course of the year since she implemented this I’ve heard her state countless times that the only thing getting her to go workout that day was the desire to earn that massage at the end of the month.
So go out there and leverage the power of instant gratification! Use it to your advantage to help make exercise a habit for yourself.
15. Identify as someone who exercises, who is a mover, who is a physical person
The more you exercise, the more it’ll become a part of who you are. And if it’s who you are, you’ll be more likely to do it.
While I identify as many things, one of the top ones after few others is that I identify as a physical person who moves. It’s become just part of who I am. I can’t quantify how much this has contributed to exercise becoming a habit for me over the years but I know it has contributed greatly.
Exercise Becoming Part of Your Identity
I thought the aspect of identity and exercise warranted more discussion.
When I read James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, I was struck when he started to speak to our personal identities. He says in regards to it:
“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this. The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it.”
This was so true for me. I’ve been exercising for so long that I absolutely identify as someone who is physically active. I certainly take pride in that. I enjoy when others ask my opinions on topics related to the subject because that means they trust what I have to say.
For exercise, or anything else for that matter, to become a part of someone’s identity takes time. I didn’t go lift weights one day and immediately say afterwards, “I’m an active person!” It took time. It was organic. It was something that I almost had to prove first to myself in order for it to feel authentic.
A contrary example was when I ran a CrossFit gym out of my garage for a few years many years ago. Technically, I was an entrepreneur. But I was so new to it and deep down it felt more like a hobby that I was never comfortable identifying as an entrepreneur. It felt fake and inauthentic saying it. I had not proved to myself that I truly was an entrepreneur.
Back in the days when I ran a CrossFit gym and was an “entrepreneur.”
I can honestly say that because being physically active is so ingrained in me and has become a part of my identity, I feel like I’ll always be someone who continues to exercise. It has been the final nail that has cemented exercise as a lifelong habit for myself.
Over time, anyone can reach that point.
Cautions on Identity
I feel like there are some potential downsides of OVERIDENTIFYING as an exerciser. Like anything, too much can be detrimental. If exercise were the only thing I identified as it would negatively impact other areas of my life. And at times, it has.
There have been times where life got in the way and I knew I was going to miss a workout and it stressed me out and caused me great anxiety. I would get in a bad mood and those around me would notice. I learned that that is not healthy!
While I identify as someone who is physically active and strong, I’ve reached a healthy place where I know where it ranks among my other identities/priorities. It has its place and is prioritized correctly. My family, friends, mental well-being, etc. all place higher in regards to their importance to me.
The point of movement is to enhance the quality of our life. It’s to make our time on this earth more enjoyable. It’s so we can live better lives. If missing one workout were to cause so much anxiety it put you in a bad mood, then it would not be serving it’s true purpose. In fact, it would be counter to the very thing it was supposed to accomplish.
I also have felt like for me, it’s important not to identify with too specific of a type of workout. You’ll notice I say I identify as someone who is physically active. Someone who is a mover.
Even though I love CrossFit and lifting weights I don’t say “I’m a crossfitter” or “I’m a weightlifter.” I feel like if I were to do that it would narrow my focus too much and I might miss out on other great physical endeavors.
I want to keep an open mind so I don’t get too attached to any one exercise philosophy.
It’s the same with eating for me. I’ve done Paleo, Keto, etc. But I don’t identify as any of those. I do identify as someone who likes to eat nutritious food. Food that makes me feel good both because it tastes great and also because it fuels me in a positive way. But I don’t identify as keto or paleo or any other type of diet.
Conclusion
I always remind myself to trust the process. The process for me living my best life includes, among many other things, being physically active and exercising. So I’ve done my best over the years to make it a habit.
I know for many maintaining a consistent exercise routine is extremely difficult. I feel this same pain in many other areas of my life. I look at others who are locked in in areas I am not and think to myself how I wish I was on their level.
But when it comes to exercise, I can confidently say it is an entrenched part of my life. It is a habit that is on auto pilot. I don’t think about it, I just do it.
And the steps above are what made exercise a habit for me. And I’m sure they could get you there too!
If you have any specific questions, feel free to reach out to me at james@afitnesspractitioner.com.
There’s a torrential downpour of information being dumped on us. It’s coming 24/7 from all directions. Whether it’s politics or in this case how to get stronger, it’s hard to decipher the signal from the noise.
Nassim Taleb talks about this topic in Antifragile. It’s important for us to be able to sift through all that noise, and to find the signals that we should be paying attention to.
I don’t know if there’s one way to do this. For myself, in terms of how to get stronger, it has mostly happened through trial and error. I suppose as a practitioner, someone who actually does things as opposed to being all talk, there’s no other way to do it. At least as you start out initially on your journey.
Gather information from sources you trust. Try stuff out. Keep what works and toss the rest.
I’ve read it all and tried it all over the years. And while I can’t say I know it all, I’ve definitely filtered out much of the noise and found the signals for how to get stronger.
Those signals have provided the foundation for how I get stronger. I presume they could provide a solid foundation as well for others who are looking for the same.
And like most things, I’ve found what works most often lies in the simplistic solutions; timeless practices that often get overlooked due to their lack of complexity.
As Naval Ravikant says, “ancient problems have ancient solutions.”
And I’d say how to get stronger is a problem as old as man.
Benefits of Being Stronger
Getting stronger is, in my opinion, the holy grail of anti-aging.
We pump our bodies full of chemicals, inject botox into our faces, plump our lips with chemicals, have surgeons suck fat out of our bodies and give them cute names like mommy makeovers, spend an hour each night on our skin routines, spend billions of dollars on supplements that may or may not work (spoiler…most fall under the may not category) all in an effort to age “gracefully,” and look good.
But what most of us fail to do, and what is unquestionably the most beneficial thing we could be doing, is to get stronger.
Build muscle, get stronger. Live life happier.
This…
Is better than this…
It’s the one of the best things we can do physically for our long term-health. And it’s not just for the internal stuff like strong bones and increased metabolism. It’s also for the superficial side of things as well, like looking good in a swimsuit.
I mean, do we still want to look good when we’re 40, 50, and beyond? Being strong will have a MUCH greater impact on that than lip injections and skin detoxers. It’s not even close.
As Mark Rippetoe says in Starting Strength, “our strength, more than any other thing we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies.”
We only live once and these bodies are our vehicle for this life. Why not take care of them? We often don’t realize how important they are until they fail us.
If we take care of our bodies they can do amazing things and serve us well. But if we neglect them and let them decline and decay they control us through pain and afflictions.
It doesn’t take long trying to navigate normal, everyday activities with a lower back injury to quickly gain an appreciation for a strong, healthy body.
But this is all abstract. Let’s talk specifics.
Specifically, the benefits of being stronger are:
Combats Sarcopenia – Sarcopenia is simply muscle loss associated with aging. As a society we seem to have just accepted muscle loss with aging. While this may have some inevitability to it, we can have a profound impact on the rate of muscle loss and keep more of it for much, much longer than we think.
Sarcopenia (muscle loss with aging) leads to frailty which ultimately increases the likelihood of falls and fractures as we age. The reason it leads to fractures is that without strength training, not only do muscles weaken but so do bones. Bones are antifragile. They require stress to maintain density and strength. With no stress applied, they get brittle and fracture easily.
Sarcopenia is one of the biggest contributors to age-related decline.
Gaining and maintaining muscle mass and strength combats sarcopenia! It may not have you looking like you did when you were 20 at age 70, but it can combat the deleterious effects of sarcopenia and keep you looking pretty dang good at any age.
You generally look better when you are stronger. There are a few factors that physically allow us to be stronger. One of them is larger muscles. And for the most part, the more muscle we have the better we look. Maybe that’s vain, but there’s nothing wrong with taking pride in looking healthy and fit!
Mental benefits – For me, the stronger I am the better I feel mentally. I’m not sure if there is something physiologically going on where muscles increase our happiness, or if it’s the act of working to get stronger, i.e. exercising and being physically active, that releases endorphins which leads to more happiness. And to be honest, I don’t really care what the cause is. All I know is that throughout my life, as I’ve gotten stronger I’ve noticed a profound positive impact on my mental health.
You are more Antifragile – If you don’t know about being antifragile, read this. Have you ever heard, “the stronger you are the harder you are to kill.” Generally speaking, I think this is true.
Muscle mass has been shown to correlate with a decrease in all-cause mortality. That means that more muscle correlates to less risk of dying from a chronic disease than your peers have. It’s also been shown that with more muscle mass one generally recovers from injury and surgery faster.
It just feels good – walking around feeling strong and fit just feels good!
Being strong helps you navigate this world better – Need to move some heavy objects around the house, pick up your kids, or pull yourself up off the floor? All of these things benefit from you being stronger. Think about how you interact with your environment on a day-to-day basis and how you move through this life. There’s almost nothing that being stronger wouldn’t help in this regard.
How Our Bodies Get Stronger
Before I dive into the how to get stronger, let’s take a big-picture look at how our bodies get stronger.
Muscles are antifragile. Simply, when stress is applied to them, they get stronger. As Nassim Taleb said in his book Antifragile, “complex systems are weakened, even killed, when deprived of stressors.” This happens to muscles. When they receive no stress, they atrophy.
With that being the case, muscles get stronger through this process:
Stress –> Recover –> Adapt –> Get Stronger
Stress your muscles -> allow proper recovery -> the muscles adapt to that stress-> and they ultimately get stronger.
And remember what I said earlier, simple does not equal easy. The concept is simple. The application can be hard.
How to Get Stronger
1. Progressive Overload
We can lift weights and not get stronger. There has to be some intentionality to it. A process through which the weight lifting or resistance works in making us stronger. That process is through progressive overload.
John Welbourn said it best in his blog that, “progressive overload involves doing more over time.” We are literally overloading our muscles through weightlifting and resistance training and doing it in a way that progresses over time.
Simple.
In a more detailed definition, progressive overload is a deliberate and calculated process whereby you introduce a continual, gradual, and manageable, stress or stimuli on your muscles. It’s a gradual increase in stress on your body over time. i.e. doing more over time.
In the case of how to get stronger, that stressor is resistance training. By resistance training I mean lifting weights or bodyweight training.
More weight. More reps. More Sets. More Volume.
By introducing this stressor to your body, it adapts by getting better at handling that stress. How exactly is it getting better at handling it? Through a number of ways:
-Increased neuromuscular coordination – We simply get better, more coordinated, at the movement.
-Increased bone and muscle mass – Our bones get stronger and our muscles get larger.
-Improvement in Connective Tissue
-Increased lactic acid tolerance
Why is this overloading necessary?
Why do we need to continually increase the stress we are placing on our muscles?
If we don’t continually increase the stress on our body, it will eventually adapt to whatever stress we have put on it. Once we’ve adapted to that stress, if we don’t introduce a new stress, our body would no longer have to get stronger.
We have to constantly keep increasing that stress once adaptation has occurred. Stress the body, body adapts. Stress the body more, body adapts. Stress the body more again, body adapts again. And on and on to get stronger and stronger.
This is progressive overload.
It simply means adding more weight (through more pounds on the barbell, more reps of the lift, or more sets of the lift leading to more total reps) for a specific exercise, like the squat or deadlift, each training session or every few training sessions. Your body adapts to the continued addition of more weight, and gets stronger.
For example, if this week I squatted 100 pounds for 5 reps, and next week I squatted 110 pounds for 5 reps, and the week after I did 120 pounds for 5 reps then I would be progressively overloading and getting stronger.
I’d adapt to 100lbs for 5 reps by getting stronger. I’d then increase the stressor to 110lbs for 5 reps. Eventually my body would adapt to that weight by getting a little stronger than it was. On and on the cycle continues to get stronger and stronger.
Progressive Overload Example
So all together here’s a simplified example of how one would get stronger using Progressive Overload:
You perform three sets of five reps of squats using 185 pounds.
You allow ample time for recovery. Ample recovery time varies per individual. An 18-year old would be able to recover faster than a 50-year old would generally.
During the recovery your muscles adapt to the stress from those 185-pound squats by getting stronger.
185 pounds is no longer enough of a stressor on your muscles to cause a new adaptation and subsequent increase in strength so at the next training session you add 10 pounds and now do three sets of five reps of squats using 195 pounds.
You again allow sufficient recovery during which your muscles adapt to the increased weight, 195 pounds, and get stronger.
The cycle continues on.
How I Have Used Progressive Overload
From the time I started lifting weights I used progressive overload to get stronger. When I was much younger I used it with bodybuilding-type exercises. I remember curling 20 pounds for 10 reps when I was 14 and being so pumped when I moved up to 25 pounds for 10 reps. I wanted big guns because as my son says now, “curls get the girls!”
Progressive overload is needed to build those guns!
Here are some specific programs I’ve followed using progressive overload:
This program is a pure strength-based program focusing on five key lifts. Those key lifts are the squat, deadlift, press, bench press and power clean. There are only two different workout days (Day 1 and Day 2) and you workout three times per week. One week you do Day 1 twice and Day 2 once, and the next week you do Day 1 once, and Day 2 twice. Each workout you add 5-10 pounds to each lift.
I love the simplicity of this program. As I mentioned earlier, programs have become so complicated. I’ve been doing this stuff for over 25 years and there are some programs I see from “experts” that are so confusing and convoluted that even I don’t know what they mean.
While complexity and nuance are certainly necessary for some programs, primarily amongst advanced or elite-level athletes, for the majority of us simple is best. And this program is simple…but NOT EASY!
One of the best “fitness” resources I have ever come across is the book Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore that outlined this program.
This book is also the best resource I’ve ever come across that outlines the proper form to (shoulder) press, squat, deadlift and bench press.
Mark Rippetoe breaks down clearly with no BS the proper form to execute each of these lifts.
When I was in the Marines I brought this book with me on a deployment and I ended up loaning it to 5-10 other Marines who wanted to learn how to perform these exercises correctly. One thing about Marines is that they’ll tell you what they really think, good or bad, and they all loved this book.
Pull Up Progression Program
Pull ups are critical in the Marine Corps. Every Marine has to perform an annual Physical Fitness Test (PFT) consisting of pull ups, sit ups and a 3-mile run. If you can perform 20 dead hang pull ups you max that portion of the test.
For many Marines, this is the hardest part of the test which makes being able to knock out 20 a badge of honor.
I was not a great runner, which may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy because I had somehow drilled this perception into my brain, so I knew the pull ups were an area that I could make up some lost points from my run time. It was my goal to be able to max out the pullups portion of my Marine Corps PFT.
I made pull ups a huge part of my focus prior to my commission in the Marines. One simple plan was performing 5 sets of max reps of bodyweight pull ups multiple times per week.
This was a form of progressive overloading. Instead of adding 5 pounds to a lift, I focused on adding more total reps each pull ups session. The progressive overloading would come in the form of an additional few pull ups per session versus an additional 5 pounds on a bar.
If I was able to do 2 more total reps than the last workout, and at the time I weighed about 170 pounds, then I essentially lifted 340 more pounds than the last training session (170lbs x 2 additional reps= 340).
Here’s what 5 sets of max number of pullups might look like over the course of a few workouts showing progressive overload:
Workout 1 – Set 1: 7 pull ups – Set 2: 7 pull ups – Set 3: 5 pull ups – Set 4: 5 pull ups – Set 5: 4 pull ups Total = 28 pull ups Total Volume = 4,760 lbs (28 reps x 170 lbs body weight)
Workout 2 – Set 1: 8 pull ups – Set 2: 7 pull ups – Set 3: 5 pull ups – Set 4: 5 pull ups – Set 5: 5 pull ups Total = 30 pull ups Total Volume = 5,100 lbs
Workout 3 – Set 1: 8 pull ups – Set 2: 7 pull ups – Set 3: 5 pull ups – Set 4: 5 pull ups – Set 5: 5 pull ups Total = 30 pull ups Total Volume = 5,100 lbs
Workout 4 – Set 1: 9 pull ups – Set 2: 9 pull ups – Set 3: 7 pull ups – Set 4: 5 pull ups – Set 5: 5 pull ups Total = 35 pull ups Total Volume = 5,950 lbs
Over the course of 4 workouts, I increased my total number of pull ups per training session by 7 going from 28 pull ups the first session to 35 the fourth session.
That represented an increase in total training volume of 1,190 lbs from the first training session to the fourth. Basically, on workout 4 I lifted 1,190 pounds MORE than workout 1!
Those additional reps and additional volume represented progressive overload.
This meant my body adapted, got stronger, and I could ultimately pull myself up and over the bar more often.
What Happens when you Plateau, i.e. Can’t Add Any More Weight or Reps?
Obviously, you can’t add weight to the barbell forever. If that was the case, there would be people squatting 5,000 pounds or clean and jerking 1,000 pounds. There are limits to our physical capabilities.
Sometimes the weight just becomes too much.
Sometimes the weight is just too dang much!
So what happens when you feel like you can’t add any more weight or reps?
First, ask yourself if you really can’t? There have been many times where I “just wasn’t feeling it that day.” I came back the next time feeling rested and motivated and the weight moved.
Also, understand that you don’t have to add weight to the bar or reps to the workout every single training session for progressive overload to work.
When a brand new lifter starts out they can often easily add weight every training session for a long time. It’s not that they are getting so strong, although getting stronger is one part. They are also learning the lifts and their body is getting better at the technique and they experience a sharp beginner’s growth.
As we get closer to our body’s limits, those gains are slowed down. So if you go a workout or two without being able to add 5 pounds to a squat or deadlift, don’t stress. Keep the weight the same for however many training sessions it takes. And when you finally do complete the prescribed number of reps and weight, with proper form, then move up in weight the next training session.
The above graph, which is certainly oversimplified but demonstrates the general point, shows the difference in strength progression in a novice lifter versus an intermediate or advanced lifter using progressive overload. It demonstrates how a beginner lifter often makes more rapid and linear gains than an intermediate/advanced lifter using the progressive overload method.
An intermediate/advanced lifter has ups and downs, stalls some weeks, gets stuck at the same weight at times, but over the course of time still gets stronger; albeit at a lesser pace than a novice.
In the end, both lines on the graph represent getting stronger using progressive overload.
There have been times where I’ve been stuck for a month at the same weight before I finally got over the hump and was able to go up. Sometimes I go up in weight and complete the prescribed reps only to fail to get as many reps the next session with the same weight.
Sometimes if I’m stuck too long I’ll try adding just one more rep or one more set with the same weight so I’m doing progressive overload in a different element than just adding more weight to the bar.
As you get stronger and stronger, and become a more advanced lifter, your methods for progressive overloading may need to become a bit more complex than just adding 5 lbs to the bar or an additional rep.
But even in those more complex programs, progressive overload is still an underlying principle forming the foundation. And for most folks, this level of complexity is not necessary. There are plenty of ways to use progressive overload in a simplistic fashion.
To this day, after over 25 years of lifting weights, progressive overload still forms the foundation for most of my strength training.
2. Volume
Volume seems to be the main driver of hypertrophy (increase and growth of muscle cells), not rep ranges. Meaning, whether you do 3 sets of 10 or 5 sets of 6, what matters most is the total volume of work and not the rep ranges (sets of 10 versus sets of 6).
Volume = Weight x Reps x Sets
For example, if I lifted 135 lbs for 5 reps and 3 sets the total volume would be: 135 x 5 x 3 = 2,025 lbs.
Volume is essentially a component of progressive overload. When we progressively overload we add more weight to the bar, or add more reps, or add more total sets. Doing this increases the total volume of work.
As long as the volume is enough you can get stronger in all different rep ranges. Power lifters often lift in very low rep ranges. Anywhere from 1 to maybe 5 reps whereas you’ll see bodybuilders often lifting in the 8-15 rep range. (There are obviously power lifters who might lift with more reps than 5 and bodybuilders that might lift in lower reps than 8 but mostly they seem to stick to these rep ranges) Both are getting stronger as long as the volume is enough to elicit a stimulus calling for their muscles to adapt.
How do you know how much volume is enough to elicit this adaptation?
First you have to focus on intensity. I’ve always wanted to feel like I am pushing close to failure, but not exactly going to failure. That means I’m really pushing and struggling those last few reps but finish with maybe a rep or two in the tank versus finishing when I literally can’t lift anymore and the weight just crashes down on me.
Go CLOSE to failure, not necessarily to failure!
Total sets is another component of the volume equation. The general consensus seems to be that around 10-20 sets per body part per week is enough to continue to make progress and get stronger.
For beginner lifters, sticking closer to 10 sets will most likely be enough while for more advanced lifters they’ll want to be closer to 20 sets per week.
Putting Volume Together
In practice, it might look like this:
Let’s focus on legs and see how I think about volume over a week to get them stronger.
I’m going to aim for around 18-20 sets of leg work over a week long period. For me, that’s too many sets for me to do in one workout so I’d split those 18-20 sets over two workouts for my legs.
The first leg work out of the week would look like this:
Squats – 4 sets of 6-8 repetitions using 235lbs (last week I was able to get 8 reps for all 4 sets using 230lbs so in the spirit of progressive overload, I added 5 pounds to the bar this week in an effort to provide enough stimuli to create an adaptation for my leg muscles to continue to get stronger) 4 TOTAL SETS
Split Squats – 2 sets of 20 repetitions each leg holding (40lb dumbbells) – This is higher reps than I’d normally perform but 40lb dumbbells are the heaviest I have in my garage gym. In a perfect world I’d probably grab 50lb or 60lb dumbbells and do 10-12 reps each leg. 2 TOTAL SETS
Romanian Deadlifts – 4 sets of 10-12 reps using 225lbs 4 TOTAL SETS
All in all, I would have performed 10 total sets of leg exercises. My total volume would look like this (Remember: Volume = Weight x Reps x Sets):
Squats (let’s assume I was able to complete 8 reps for all 4 sets)
235lbs x 8 x 4 = 7,520 lbs total volume on squats
Split Squats
40lbs x 20 x 2 = 1,600lbs volume per leg for split squats
Romanian Deadlifts (lets assume I completed 12 reps for all 4 sets)
225 x 12 x 4 = 10,800lbs total volume on romanian deadlifts
Overall, my total volume was 21,520 lbs (I counted 1,600 twice – once for each leg) for this leg workout. I completed 10 total sets.
To get to 18-20 total sets for the week to get my legs stronger, I’d do one more leg workout that would look somewhat similar to this one and would have 8-10 total sets.
Next week, when completing this workout again, I’d aim to add a few pounds to each of these lifts (progressive overloading principle). If I completed this same amount of total sets and repetitions with more weight on the bar, I will have created a new stress on my muscles that they’d have to adapt to.
I would continue to increase my volume week after week (again, progressive overload) and I’d get stronger!
3. Eat Enough Protein
Proteins are the building blocks of our muscle.
There are two opposing processes that occur in regards to protein and muscles in our bodies. They are muscle protein synthesis and muscle protein breakdown.
Per Layne Norton in his video, Calories IN Calories OUT: What’s all the confusion about?, “muscle protein synthesis is a naturally occurring process in which protein is produced to repair muscle damage caused by intense exercise. It is an opposing force to muscle protein breakdown in which protein is lost as a result of exercise. If MPS outpaces MPB, muscle growth is achieved.”
MPS is the process of building muscle proteins.
The blog Nutrition Tactics, uses a great analogy. It says to think of our muscles as brick walls. “Each brick is an amino acid. Muscle Protein Synthesis is the addition of new bricks to the wall.”
Muscle Protein Synthesis is like adding bricks to a wall.
MPS and MPB are always happening in our bodies. We can’t stop one or the other completely, but we can impact their increase or decrease.
If we want to be getting stronger and building muscle, we need to ensure our MPS outpaces our MPB. So how can we increase our rate of MPS?
Resistance training is one way to increase our MPS. If we follow a progressive overload principle and work with the sufficient amount of volume and intensity as outlined above, we will be increasing our MPS.
The second thing we can do is to make sure we are eating enough, and the right kind, of protein.
How much is the right amount?
I’ve always strived for around 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. I usually fluctuate around 168 pounds so I usually aim for 160-170 grams of protein per day. Some days I go under and others I might go over. But I’m usually around that 160-170 grams/day mark.
The source of protein is also important. Not all proteins are created equal in terms of their capacity to stimulate MPS. The digestion rate and amino acid profile are the main drivers that determine the effect of protein.
Animal-based protein sources have a high and complete amino acid profile which is why they are generally superior at driving MPS and ultimately muscle growth.
To be clear, I know it is possible to build a strong body without animal protein, but I have no experience doing so and it takes a lot more intentionality and planning than consuming animal proteins.
And let’s be real, animal protein is dang tasty!
Grilled chicken thighs are high-quality, delicious sources of protein and they’re easy to cook too!
I for one have always gotten the bulk of my protein from animal sources such as beef, chicken, pork, eggs, fish and whey protein.
There does seem to be an upper limit when eating protein in one sitting as to how much goes towards increasing MPS and ultimately being used to build muscle.
Any amount of protein over 40-50 grams eaten at one meal is no longer going towards building muscle. It’s not to say you can’t eat more than that at once. And it’s not to say your body will have trouble digesting more than that at once. It’s just that it won’t have much impact on your muscle growth above that amount.
That’s why I’ve always eaten 4-5 meals and snacks per day so I could spread out my protein intake over many meals and optimize the protein I’m eating to all go towards muscle repair and growth, i.e. muscle protein synthesis.
A typical day of eating in terms of protein for me might look like:
Breakfast – 4 eggs (around 30 grams of protein)
Lunch – Chicken thighs (around 35 grams of protein)
Mid-Afternoon Snack – Sardines (around 20 grams of protein)
Protein Shake – (Around 30 grams of protein)
Dinner – Steak (Around 40 grams of protein)
That comes in around 155 total grams of protein from animal sources. Some of the other food I eat has protein as well. While those sources may not consist of complete amino acid profiles like animal protein, because I am eating them in conjunction with the animal proteins and these animal proteins are providing the bulk of my daily protein, they are enough to put me over that 160-170 total grams per day I’m aiming for.
4. Do the Big Lifts First
The foundation of my strength program has always been centered on the big lifts. They are the squat, deadlift, press (shoulder press as it’s more commonly known), and bench press.
These lifts are known as compound lifts. Compound lifts are multi-joint exercises that generally involve the whole body. A bicep curl includes only the elbow joint and is thus not a compound lift. However, a squat involves the hip, knee and ankle joints, hence it is multi-joint and considered a compound lift.
You don’t have to squat 800 lbs like Ronnie Coleman to benefit from this compound lift.
Why should a good strength program have these lifts as the foundation?
They give you the biggest bang for your buck. They allow you to lift the most weight which allows you to get the strongest overall.
This goes back to the volume concept. The more volume, the stronger we become.
Let’s compare two lifts and look once again at the bicep curl and squat.
Obviously our legs are much stronger than our biceps. I can easily squat 225lbs for 10 reps but I could probably only curl around 125lbs for the same 10 reps.
That means my volume for the squat in this example would be (225 x 10 = 2,250lbs) while my volume for the bicep curls would be (125 x 10 = 1,250lbs).
That’s 1,000lbs MORE volume on the squat versus the biceps curl for the same amount of 10 reps. If I did each set three times that’d be 3,000lbs more volume squatting than bicep curling!
To be fair, the squats are a hell of a lot harder than the bicep curls. But in the gym, the harder it is can often be correlated to how impactful it is. And the big lifts are HARD and thus IMPACTFUL!
This ability to lift more weight is one of the primary reasons I always start my strength workouts with one of these big lifts. Also, they are the most taxing on the body so I like to perform them when I am the freshest and not worn down from other exercises.
To me they are the most important; the highest priority. Because of that I do them first when I have the most effort to give them.
I do want to be clear that you can still get stronger from lifts that I don’t call the big lifts. Doing bicep curls and employing the progressive overload principle to them will absolutely get your biceps stronger over time. You just won’t get the kind of full-body strength that you’d get from those big lifts like the squat, deadlift, press, and bench press.
But those accessory lifts like bicep curls, lunges, pull ups, etc., certainly have a place in a good strength program. If you remember above I spoke about how one should aim for 10-20 sets per week to strengthen a specific body part. These big lifts are so taxing that it isn’t prudent to spend all 10-20 sets just on each big lift per body part. For instance, I personally would not perform 15 sets of squats on a day where I’m focusing on my legs.
This is where the accessory lifts come into play. I may do 3-5 sets of squats, my big lift for the day, and use the remaining 5-7 sets needed on accessory leg exercises like Romanian deadlifts, lunges, even hip thrusts when I’m trying to get my booty poppin’!
For years I’ve started out a back workout with deadlifts and followed with pull ups (the second most taxing back exercise for me) and followed those with different rowing variations.
Even when I’m not doing traditional bodybuilding-style workouts where I focus on specific body parts I still prioritize the big, compound lifts in my workouts.
For example, on a day where I’m wanting to do some metabolic conditioning in the form of a CrossFit workout, I’ll usually start with some sort of compound lift and follow it up with a WOD.
An example one of these days might consist of me starting with squats for 5 reps across 5 sets. Afterwards I might then do a WOD like Helen (3 rounds of time of a 400m run, 21 kb swings, 12 pull ups).
With big reward, comes some bigger risks. And there is probably a bigger risk of injury when doing these big lifts based on the sheer fact that you are handling more weight. The lifts in themselves are very safe when done properly. But with all that weight, it’s often tempting to cheat a little or push a little too hard at the expense of the proper form.
That’s why form is so important when doing the big lifts. Not only is proper form more efficient allowing you to lift more but it also allows you to lift the weight safely.
Big risk, big reward…make sure you are doing the big lifts properly so you can reap all that reward!
Don’t be a gym hero and try squatting or deadlifting 400lbs with poor form to impress your buddies. I’ve been there, done that and it’s NEVER worth it. Better to do half that amount with proper form.
That’s why it’s important to find a good gym, trainer, or resource when learning how to perform these lifts. One of the best resources I’ve found over the years on how to use proper form is Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe.
There’s one last caveat when it comes to the big lifts I’ve described here. I struggle with whether to add in this caveat because sometimes too much nuance just muddies things up. But I’m going to do it anyway because there are definitely dudes out there harping on this topic.
You do not have to do these big lifts to get stronger. Some people might not be able to do them due to some form of injury or pre-existing condition. Some folks may just not want to do them.
For years when I was young I didn’t know how to squat properly so my big lift for legs was the leg press. And I was able to get stronger. But the principle of doing the big lifts first still applied as I always started my leg workouts with the leg press.
But personally, and I write about what I’ve found works from personal experience, while you can get stronger without squatting, deadlifting, bench pressing and shoulder pressing, I have not been able to get as strong without those lifts and if I tried to it’d probably take more time in the gym to make up for how efficient these lifts are at getting me stronger.
These specific big lifts not only get me stronger but they do it more efficiently than when I’ve subbed other exercises for them.
So do the big lifts and do them first and follow them up with the accessory lifts and movements to get you to that 10-20 total set range as discussed in section 2 on volume.
5. Rest/Sleep
I think there’s starting to be a shift in society away from the idea that sleep is not important. In fact, it seemed for most my life people bragged about the lack of sleep they got. It was almost a badge of honor to say how little sleep one could survive on.
But survive is not the same as thrive. And you’ll never be as strong, or healthy for that matter, as you could be if you don’t prioritize sleep.
Besides why wouldn’t you want to? Don’t we all LOVE sleep?!?!?
And 99% of the time it’s not life and death situations that are keeping us from sleep. It’s wasted time. It’s sitting in front of the television, or scrolling through social media in bed, or sitting on the couch drinking alcohol in a haze.
I’m not going to lie, one of the best parts about school starting for our kids is that they have to go to bed early on school nights and that means my wife and I are in bed pretty much right after them.
Whereas I used to brag about how little sleep I got, I now love to talk about how early I go to bed. Maybe that’s just part of getting older. Maybe that’ll be on the next insurance commercial about turning into your parents. Don’t old people love to talk about what time they went to bed?
But going to sleep doesn’t just happen. Here are the things I’ve done over the years to help me fall asleep quickly and get a pretty good night’s sleep most of the time.
1. Get sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning
This is a new one for me. And to clarify, I don’t mean stare at the sun in the morning. What I mean is to get outside early and get some sunshine on your face without sunglasses.
I learned about the importance of sunlight in the morning from Andrew Huberman. He made a post on instagram on this topic and also mentioned it on Mark Bell’s podcast, Power Project.
To grossly simplify, getting sunlight in the morning signals to our body that it’s time to wake up and around 16 hours later it’ll be time to go to sleep. The rising and setting of the sun is what signals to our body what time of day it is.
Getting sunlight in the morning essentially helps set our circadian rhythms.
Sunlight in the morning sets us up for a good night’s sleep.
What I’ve been doing lately, when my work schedule allows, is going on a 15-20 minute walk within an hour of waking up. Not only does this get me the morning sunlight I need, but it also gets me moving and out in nature first thing in the morning which I’m finding is a great way to start my day. It just puts me in a good mood!
I grossly simplified above what getting sunlight in the morning does for us. And as I mention often, I’m not too concerned many times with why something works. I just like to try it out and if it works keep it as a tool for me.
But I found this so interesting that you might too. If you want to get in the weeds a little more on this topic check this out.
It’s amazing how our bodies are synched up with nature…sunlight can work wonder for us.
2. Unwind later in the evening
I usually try to keep things pretty calm after dinner. With kids and crazy sports schedules this is easier said than done. The goal is to try and start winding down and not be too worked up when I get in bed. I never work out late at night for this reason. But if that was the only time I could work out, I’d choose to do it as opposed to not doing it.
3. Don’t drink too much fluids before bed
The more we drink the more we have to use the restroom. The older I get the more I have to do it anyway so I definitely don’t want to add a bunch of fluids to my system at night so I wake up a bunch of times throughout the night.
4. Don’t drink alcohol
There’s no question that alcohol has a significant impact on my sleep. It seems to be pretty well known that that’s the case. In fact, I’m sure I could link to a bunch of studies showing this. But I don’t need studies to know the impact it has on me.
My wife and I used to spend our time in the evening unwinding on the couch watching tv and drinking wine. This was our routine for years. It wasn’t until we stopped this for a significant amount of time that I realized what impact this had on my sleep.
Just having 2-3 glasses of wine had a large negative impact on how well I slept. I knew drinking “too much” had an impact, but I didn’t realize that just a few glasses did as well. I sleep so much better when I haven’t had any alcohol; even just a couple glasses of wine or beers.
I still drink alcohol, but for the most part, I save it for the weekends. It’s easier to take the hit in quality of sleep when I’m not having to get up as early as I do on the weekdays.
Maybe this is me getting old and lame, but I love falling asleep quickly and feeling so refreshed in the morning.
Sleep is critical for our immune systems and our body’s ability to recover. Both of these are necessary for how to get stronger. And for me, and I’d guess most folks, this is one of those things where we can easily love the process. I mean, if the process, i.e. the “grind,” is getting lots of sleep, isn’t that something we can all get on board with?
5. No TV in bed
This is probably one of the biggest points of contention between my wife and myself. She wants a tv in our bedroom and I refuse. For me, a bedroom is for sleeping and should be set up as that type of environment. Just like drinking alcohol impacts quality of sleep, I’m sure there are many studies proving watching television in bed does the same. Whether it’s the impact from the light of the tv or something else, something about it impacts the quality of sleep.
In marriage you pick and choose your battles…this might be one I take to the end!
6. No Social Media/Cell Phones in Bed
As great as our phones are, I often wonder if the net negative effect is greater than the net positive. Just like the light from television can impact our quality of sleep, so too can the light from our phones. This would be reason enough to avoid using them in bed.
But an even bigger reason is the allure of social media. Social media is designed to be addicting. We know that’s true. How often have we sat there scrolling and scrolling only to realize we are in a trance? It’s hard to put down the phone when on social media and even more so, it’s hard to turn off our brains.
Especially in these hyper-partisan times when we’re almost looking to get riled up when we’re on Facebook or Twitter or whatever else. It’s probably never healthy no matter the time of day, but it’s ABSOLUTELY not healthy right before going to sleep.
Getting riled up before shutting your eyes in bed is not conducive to getting a good night’s sleep. In fact, I can’t think of anything much worse for that.
And full transparency, I struggle sometimes with this one. For the most part I never look at my phone when I get in bed. But sometimes the call is just too strong. I’ll just pick it up for a second I tell myself. A second turns into a minute which turns into a ton of minutes. Next thing I know I’m worked up over God-knows-what and kicking myself for picking my phone up in the first place.
If I was smart I’d plug it in away from my bed. But I still use it as my alarm. I should probably invest in an actual alarm clock soon so I can keep the phone away from the bed.
7. Read in bed
So if I don’t watch television or look at my phone in bed, what do I do.
I read!
Before bed, I usually stay away from books this enthralling.
Through high school and college I never read for fun. But I remember being a few years out of college thinking to myself, “I should probably start reading so I don’t just absolutely give up on learning anything for the rest of my life.”
I’m so happy I did. Reading has turned out to be one of the best things I could ever imagine for a number of reasons. One of them just happens to be that it’s something I can do before bed for enjoyment that also puts my mind in a place where it can shut off and allow me to fall asleep quickly.
Because I want to turn my brain off at night I’ll usually read what I call mindless entertainment in bed. I save the deep, insightful reading for other times of the day. Before bed it’s spy thrillers, courtroom dramas, and other great forms of storytelling.
Outside of the occasional time when I get so into a story I can’t put it down, for the most part these books put my mind right where it needs to be before turning off the light and shutting my eyes. In fact, they usually do such a good job that I often have to reread the last few pages from the night before because I was so tired at that point I don’t remember what they were about.
A stack of books on my bedside table is a staple for me. I never let that stack get down to zero because I have to read to fall asleep and I don’t ever want to finish one book and not have another to start.
For the rest of my life I know one constant will be this stack of books next to my bed.
8. Keep it dark and cool
There’s something to be said for an environment matching it’s purpose. It should match it’s function. An office that feels like an office makes us want to work. A library that feels like a real library makes us want to read. The same can be said for a bedroom.
A bedroom’s function is to provide a place to sleep. It’s not an entertainment center, which is another reason I don’t want a tv in it.
A dark and cool room is conducive to sleeping. It’s that simple. That’s why I keep my room dark and cool. At least, I keep it as cool as the Texas weather will allow me to.
I think I read that 68 degrees is the optimal sleeping temperature. At the apex of the Texas summers, when it’s still 90 degrees at night, even with my AC pumping full blast it can’t cool my room to 68. When that happens I get the fan going full blast and substitute the comforter for just a sheet.
There are beds that have cooling functions built into them now. You can literally set the bed to a temperature and the mattress will cool to that setting. I’ve never tried one but it’s definitely on my list of things I’d like to get someday.
In the end, setting up my bedroom as a place for sleeping and specifically keeping it dark and cool has helped me recognize it as a place to sleep, not stay awake.
9. Be tired!
I know this sounds obvious, but it sure is a lot easier to go to sleep when you’re tired. That’s a big reason I don’t sleep in super late anymore on the weekends. Well, having kids makes that difficult too. But they’re old enough now that I could stay in bed until 10am on a Saturday and they probably wouldn’t even notice. They’d be on their ipads or Xbox playing games with their friends.
So I always try to get up relatively early so I’ll be tired at night. On the weekdays that’s easy because I have to get up around 6 to start getting the kids ready for school. Because of that I usually get up around 5:30 so I can have some time to drink some coffee and read and relax before the chaos of the day begins.
That morning sunlight I spoke about earlier also helps me be tired at night because my body’s internal clock knows it’s time to for sleep.
Being physically active throughout the day also helps to be tired at night. If you’re following the principles outlined above on progressive overload and lifting with volume that is close to failure and doing the big lifts, chances are you’ll be exhausted at night.
Not only do I try to be physically active from a viewpoint of getting stronger, but I also like to be physically active for other reasons. I’m constantly playing sports with my kids to bond with them and help them get better. And I love to go for walks.
In regards to walks, I don’t use them as exercise. I like to walk slowly just to collect my thoughts and get outside in nature. Because of that I never listen to music when I’m on a walk.
Between getting up early and getting sunlight right away, lifting weights, playing with my kids, and going on walks, I exert enough physical energy that when I turn off the lights at night and close my eyes my body is physically tired and in need of sleep and recovery.
This allows my body to get the rest it needs to fully recover, adapt, and get stronger. AKA…get my beauty sleep.
6. Have a Plan and Track it
For progressive overload to work, you actually have to progressively overload. And you have to do it consistently. So that requires a plan and it requires keeping track of that plan.
I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve thought to myself, “I’m going to start saving more money.” But I never actually say HOW I’m going to do that. I just tell myself vague statements like, “I’ll spend a little bit less on Amazon, stop going out to eat as much, and just keep an eye on my spending closer.” And guess what? That NEVER works.
That is little more than wishful thinking.
How have I been able to save money? I have a plan and track it!
Instead of, “I’ll spend a little bit less on Amazon,” my plan says, “I will only make one purchase from Amazon per week and it will be on Sunday.” That stops me from all the impulsive purchases Amazon has made so easy to do.
Amazon has made it almost too easy on us. They know the easier they make things, the more we’ll buy. Of course they’re RIGHT! Any random thing that pops into my mind I think, “I’ll just order it on Amazon and it’ll be here tomorrow.” Hell, there’s a good chance it might be here tonight.
As the great comedian Ronny Chieng said, pretty soon we’ll want Amazon Now. We’ll complain if it takes 2 hours to get us what we want.
So instead of making multiple purchases on Amazon throughout the week, my plan only allows one time to purchase what I need weekly. Come Sunday, I know I only have one shot to order what I need from Amazon. My wife and I talk it out and through this, we generally don’t make all those impulsive, spur-of-the-moment purchases I make like when I’m just ordering anytime I get the impulse.
In the end, this plan helps us just get what we need, not what we want, and ultimately we spend less per month on Amazon.
Another example would be instead of saying, “I’ll stop going out to eat as much to save money,” my plan might include, “$200 per month going out to eat (with 3 kids it’s hard to get out of Chick-Fil-A for under $50!!!!).”
And instead of saying I’ll, “just keep an eye on my spending more,” my plan would include, “a weekly budget meeting with my wife to discuss the prior week’s spending, next week’s spending obligations, and any future big spending items we need to plan for.”
When my plan is specific and trackable I get results. When it’s vague and full of statements that can’t be tracked, I don’t get results.
The same goes for getting stronger!
Every few months I’ll write out a broad, general plan for the next few months. It will include statements like, “focus for the next 8 week cycle will be on increasing squat strength and metabolic conditioning.” That’s the macro focus.
The micro focus is what is detailed and trackable. I write the specific workouts every Sunday or Monday for that week’s workouts.
Pages of two different workout logs. Note the macro plan at the top of each with the micro/daily below.
These weekly plans include the exercises I’ll be doing, how many reps I’ll be doing (within a range) and the weights I’ll be doing as well. Then as I do the actual workouts I track exactly what I’ve done. Then I use those numbers to help plan for the following week.
I track all sorts of things. You can see from one of my logs above I even sometimes log how I feel. One of these days I must have had a sore back because I wrote a note about it and adjusted the workout to accommodate it. (Sidenote, 10 years ago I would have fought through the back pain…I’ve thankfully learned to finally listen to my body now)
For instance, if I write that I’m going to do five sets of squats on Thursday of this week with 250 pounds for five reps each on my plan it would be written as; Squats (250#) – 5 x 5. Come Thursday, if I complete all 5 sets with 5 reps I’ll mark that on my plan and maybe even make a note telling myself to go up 5 pounds next week. Then when I sit down to plan for the next week’s workout I’d plan for 5 sets of squats at 255 pounds this week as opposed to the 250 pounds from last week.
Progressive overload in action.
If we want to make progress in something we need to be specific and we need to track it so we ensure we are actually making progress. Saying you want to get stronger but walking into the gym with no plan will not work. Just like saying you want to save money with no plan won’t work either.
So have a plan and track it!
7. Create Habits and Be Consistent
Mark Bell posted something recently that I found very compelling. He said the best science is consistency. You can have the best plan and the best resources and all the best intentions, but if you’re not consistent you won’t get results.
Getting stronger, unfortunately, is not an overnight matter. It takes time and consistency. It takes the grind of day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year of doing the right practices, many of them explained above, over and over and over.
It can all seem daunting. For many it is so daunting it keeps them from doing it.
I also understand that reading this post makes it seem like there are SO MANY protocols to getting stronger. “It’s just too much,” we can think and throw our arms up in surrender.
But many things can seem daunting when only focusing on the end point. In order to keep healthy teeth you have to brush twice a day, floss once a day, go to the dentist every 6 months and you must do this FOR YOUR ENTIRE LIFE!!!! “Wow, that is just too much!” Nobody ever really says that right? They just do it. So how come that doesn’t seem daunting?
Simple, it’s a habit. So we just do it.
There’s a misperception that habits and routines confine us. They lock us up. But it’s the opposite. Routine and habits FREE US! They prevent every single daily decision from being this big, mentally exhausting exercise. Can you imagine how painful it’d be if every single time we went to brush our teeth we had to muster up the will power and motivation to do so?
If everything were that hard we would not be free. We would be beholden to all our obligations and things we need and should do.
Habits and routines free up our mental energy so we can focus on other areas of our life. Instead of mentally expending energy everyday to brush our teeth the habit of just doing it frees up this mental energy to tackle something more complex, unique, and interesting.
Doesn’t this just look like a guy who knows a little something about discipline?
Believe it or not, getting stronger can be the same way. If we develop the correct habits, again, those mentioned above, it doesn’t seem so daunting. It just becomes something we do.
And if it’s something we just do, then those days, months, and years just start adding up and the consistency takes care of itself. And once you start seeing results it can make the habit easier and easier to do because you become more and more ingrained in the process.
In the end, despite all the fancy gimmicks out there, and all the snake-oil salesman selling solutions that are too good to be true, just know that to get stronger it takes simplicity, and consistency. Do the right actions, and do them over and over and the results take care of themselves.
A funny thing happens when it comes to getting stronger, the habits that make us stronger, as written about throughout this post, become enjoyable in and of themselves, independent of the ultimate outcome of being stronger. You ultimately love the process because those activities make you feel so good on a day-to-day basis.
As Shane Parrish says on his great blog, fs blog, “what’s worthy of pursuit cannot be accomplished in a hurry.”
And I’d say that being stronger is certainly a worthy pursuit.
Be consistent with the right habits.
8. Stick to the Basics
Speaking of simplicity, that’s the focus of this last point. I’ve been trying to get stronger now since I was 14 years old. It started like a lot of folks. I wanted big muscles to look good! While that has not necessarily changed, the focus has definitely shifted to having a better quality of life and hopefully a longer life as well.
In those 25+ years of working to get stronger, the basics have formed the foundation of my efforts. Resistance training, progressive overload, and consistency.
Over the years my wife has asked me to write workout programs for her. Like lots of folks, she’ll stick to them for a few months but then life will get in the way.
A few years ago she asked me again to write her a program. I wrote it out and handed it to her and she said, “that’s the same thing you had me do last time.” I said, “I know. It was the right program last time and it’s the right one this time.”
People seem to want change just for the sake of change. They don’t often give the tried-and-true basics a long enough chance to even work. And maybe that’s not their fault. With companies and influencers peddling false promises of get-fit-FAST products it’s easy to understand why many people can be seduced by these promises and gimmicks.
“The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom…And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty…Perhaps this is why we get caught up in a never-ending cycle, jumping from one workout to the next…As soon as we experience the slightest dip in motivation, we begin seeking a new strategy-even if the old one was still working.”
He goes further noting a quote:
Men desire novelty to such an extent that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly.
Machiavelli
Obviously this is true not just for men, but for people.
So we have to learn to love the boredom, i.e. loving the simple things.
Because the reality is that simplicity is often the best answer. I’m leery of fitness influencers selling insanely complex programs or selling some new fad that promises to change the game.
Don’t let these people confuse you. Don’t let their noise drown out the true signals. Those signals are the basics. The simple acts. They are the things I’ve described above like progressive overload, sleep, protein, etc.
Naval Ravikant is one of my favorite follows. I find him insightful and enlightening. In his book, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, he says, “Basically, if someone is using a lot of fancy words and a lot of big concepts, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. I think the smartest people can explain things to a child. If you can’t explain it to a child, then you don’t know it.”
Do a little bit more each time. Sleep well. Eat quality protein. Track and measure what you do. I’d say that’s pretty simple.
But as I’ve said many times, simple doesn’t equal easy. Knowing one needs to program squats, deadlifts, and presses to get stronger is simple. But actually doing them is anything but easy.
From my experience, keep the foundation of your strength-training program simple and basic. It’s worked for me and countless others.
Secondary Considerations
Above are the eight steps I’ve used to get stronger throughout my life. They are the core principles that have had the biggest impact on my strength and will form the basis of my strength training for years to come.
There are a few other things I have considered over the years. Call them accessory steps (less important than the above mentioned) or call them caveats. Whatever you call them, they take second fiddle to the eight steps mentioned above.
If someone were to ask me about one of these, I’d first make sure they understood the above 8 principles before even beginning to discuss these. But I’d definitely NOT do it in a condescending way as many folks in the “health and fitness” industry seem to love to do.
I’d just stress that these are not the most important factors in how to get stronger.
Supplements
I think we’ve all probably heard by now that the supplement industry is a multi-billion dollar annual industry. It seems like every bodybuilder, Instagram influencer, “fitness pro,” etc., is hawking some kind of supplement.
Heck, with the advent of MLM supplement companies like Herbalife and Advocare, it seems like EVERY PERSON EVER is selling some kind of supplement.
My issue with this is that supplements often make promises that they can’t back up. Also, they can make you take your eye off the ball if you attribute too much significance to them.
You might think, “maybe instead of getting quality sleep I can just take this supplement loaded with whatever that promises to give me that jolt I need to power through my lack of sleep.”
A supplement that promises energy is NOT an equal substitute for a quality night’s sleep.
Supplement, in my opinion, should never be the primary focus. They should “supplement” your primary focuses like proper nutrition, strength training, adequate sleep, etc. Hmmmmm, maybe that’s how they got the name supplement?
They don’t call them primaries for a reason.
Supplement companies love using “science” stock photos like this one that have nothing to do with their products in an effort to make them seem legitimate and grounded in said science.
But for many, they start with supplements thinking they are going to make them stronger or thinner with nothing else required. They think the supplements are what should form the foundation of their fitness program.
I can’t tell you how many times in my life someone has come up to me, someone who would admit to not taking care of themselves physically, and asked, “what supplements do you take?” I always reply with, “that’s the wrong question.”
I don’t say this in a condescending way either. I’m not trying to sound all high and mighty. It’s just not the starting point for a healthy journey and I feel compelled to tell people because they’ve been misled by dubious folks out to make a dollar.
Whatever the intentions, it tends to usually fall on deaf ears. And I get it. Hard, long, consistent work around the basics isn’t as appealing as take-this-pill-and-get-magically-skinnier-and-stronger NOW is. Or sell-this-stuff-and-you-too-can-be-rich.
I’ll get off my high horse, but I want it to be absolutely clear; if I was forced to either give up supplements or one of the 8 foundational principles of how to get stronger I wrote about above, I’d give up the supplements in a heartbeat.
With that said, I do take some supplements because I think while they don’t give the biggest bang for your buck, if everything else is dialed in they can provide some slight benefits at the margins.
The supplements I take are:
Whey Protein
When it comes to proper nutrition and building muscle, it’s essential to get enough protein per day as I mentioned in the “Eat Enough Protein” section. I usually aim for around 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight so for me that’s between 165-170 grams per day.
While getting that from high-quality real food sources like beef, chicken and fish are best, the reality is that with my lifestyle that’s often hard to do.
Enter whey protein.
Real food sources fill the bulk of my protein intake but I supplement with some whey protein. Usually one protein shake per day. This helps me get to that 165-170 grams of protein per day number I’m shooting for.
Not all whey protein supplements are created equally. Truthfully, I don’t have a good guide on what to look for either. For me, I’ve always stuck with brands or recommendations from folks I trust.
I’ve used SFH Whey Protein for years. It’s not the cheapest, but I trust the quality of the brand.
Optimum Nutrition is another brand I’ve used over the years. It’s probably one of the most used, and most rated, protein brands on Amazon.
A few people who have their own protein brands that I trust are: Layne Norton, Mark Bell, and Mark Sisson. I’ve never used these brands but I’d have no problem doing so.
I’m sure there are many other quality forms of whey protein out there. Whatever brand someone chooses, they should just make sure to do a little research on it.
Creatine
I also take creatine daily. Well, most days. I take creatine monohydrate and stay away from the other forms of creatine that cost more money.
Creatine is one of the most studied and effective supplements out there. Once again, I’ve come to this conclusion from people I trust like the ones I just mentioned; Layne Norton, Mark Bell and Mark Sisson.
Creatine doesn’t make you stronger just on its own. It essentially helps provide ATP, a specific type of energy for your muscles. This extra boost of ATP allows you to push a little harder in a workout. It can help you through another rep or two. And as we learned above, an extra rep or two or a few more pounds increases your volume output which helps you get stronger.
To be clear, creatine is not a magic bullet. The benefits it provides once again fall secondary, in my experience, to the eight primary principles outlined above.
There are TONS more supplements out there. I sometimes take Cod Liver Oil and sometimes I take a magnesium supplement. But I ALWAYS research what supplements I take. I research their effectiveness and then if I choose to take them I research specific brands to make sure I’m taking the best available.
All in all, I feel like supplements can fill in those little gaps and not much else. I try to leave as few gaps as possible through the foundation of what I do, but inevitably a few remain and that is where supplements come into play for me.
Building Muscle versus Getting Stronger
Building muscle and getting stronger go hand in hand. Your muscles get bigger as they get stronger. And as you get stronger your muscles get bigger.
I just reread that above sentence like ten times and I’m not sure if it totally makes sense how I wrote it but I’m going to leave it in there because I think you can get the gist of what I’m trying to say. I’m sure that violates a ton of laws for proper writing but this isn’t English class.
However, maximizing muscle-building and maximizing strength differ slightly. It’s why a power lifter can be much stronger than a bodybuilder but a bodybuilder would be much more muscular and might look stronger.
Training to maximize strength and training to maximize muscle-building will look different. The principles of eating enough protein, progressive overload, adequate sleep, etc. will be similar. But the specifics of the program such as exercise selection, reps and sets, etc. will vary.
But the vast majority of folks aren’t training to win a strongman competition or a bodybuilding show. Myself included. I’d like to get stronger, and look pretty good. Nothing crazy.
That’s why sometimes I train more like a strongman, lower reps, and other times I might train more like a bodybuilder, higher reps and splitting up my workout days by body part.
Just know you can get stronger training both ways. Find what suits you and go for it!
Conclusion
I am a broken record. I say this over and over; just because we are complex beings full of interdependencies, doesn’t mean we require complex systems. Simple is often best. Be it nutrition, philosophy, or movement and exercise.
Or in this case, getting stronger.
I often find myself skeptical and weary of folks who push nutrition protocols, exercise regimens or even financial advice that is so complex that nobody can understand it. Sometimes I feel like they are making it complex to make themselves feel smarter or to validate some high fee they charge.
But don’t be fooled, simplicity is key. And these eight principles are what I’ve used over the years to get stronger. But the great thing is they’ve enhanced my life in so many other ways outside of just getting stronger.
For example, sleep is SO important to allowing your muscles to recover and adapt and ultimately get stronger. But sleep also plays SO many other important roles. It makes us mentally sharper and happier and it helps keep our immune system strong and helps us recover when we do get sick.
Like I said, we are full of interdependencies. Doing these activities day in and day out doesn’t just impact our muscles and our strength. They impact our entire bodies; both physical and mental.
And remember, simple doesn’t mean easy! Squatting 5 reps for 5 sets and adding 5 pounds a training session, when you can handle it, is a simple concept. But trust me, once that weight gets heavy, it’ll be anything but easy!
So get out there and get stronger!
Whether you are an athlete or a bookworm, young or old, wanting to look ripped or just wanting to move better, it’ll make your life better EVERYDAY if you are strong.
As Mark Bell says, “strength is never a weakness and weakness is never a strength.”
How to become antifragile has been a topic I’ve explored since before I had even heard of the term. I was 14 when a friend who had been hitting the gym showed me his biceps. I was impressed because what 14-year old kid doesn’t want big biceps? I started hitting the weights with my buddy. All I wanted was some big muscles to impress folks but little did I know that was my start down the road to antifragility. But I’m jumping ahead.
It wasn’t until I read Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile a few years back that this idea of antifragility crystallized and began to shape a lot of my thoughts and life.
It’s hard to overstate the importance this book has had on my life. In fact, the concept of being a practitioner, which I learned about in the book, is so important to me that I knew I wanted to incorporate it somehow into the title of this Blog.
A practitioner walks the walk. They are about action, not words. They are authentic because they practice what they preach. They eat their own cooking as Nassim says.
The idea of a practitioner is one of many things touched on in this book and it’s a concept I’ll surely explore more in another post. But today the focus is on the idea of antifragility.
What is Antifragility?
Nassim Taleb starts the book saying, “wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.” The point is that wind represents volatility, stress, and uncertainty. And this volatility, stress, and uncertainty can cause loss to some things (fragility) yet it can strengthen others (antifragility). And this, in a nutshell, is what antifragility is all about.
Antifragility is simply the opposite of fragility. While fragility is what loses from volatility, stress and uncertainty, antifragility is what gains/benefits from the same volatility, stress and uncertainty. Where fragility wants tranquility, antifragility wants disorder in order to grow.
Muscles are antifragile. When exposed to volatility and stressors, like lifting weights, the muscles grow stronger. A glass plate on the other hand is fragile. When exposed to volatility and stressors, like being dropped, it breaks.
Why being Antifragile is Important
A central tenet of the book and the concept of antifragility is that it’s hard to predict what is going to happen in life. If you need any proof of this just look at 2020. No matter the number of “experts” we see on TV, predicting harmful events is pretty tough to do and ultimately just plain impossible.
This seems like bad news right? Don’t we all just want someone to tell us what bad things are going to happen so we can be prepared? Yes, we do! But unfortunately that’s not possible. However, we do still have control of our fate.
How do we have control? Well, it’s relatively simple to determine what is fragile. Being $100,000 in credit card debt means you’re probably pretty fragile from an economic standpoint. Binging cigarettes and monster energy drinks everyday would probably make your metabolic health pretty fragile. You wouldn’t build a paper house directly in the path of a tornado. And if we can determine what is fragile, we can work to make those things less fragile or in some cases antifragile.
As Nassim Taleb says in the book; “Not seeing a tsunami or an economic event coming is excusable; building something fragile to them is not.”
How does this apply to us? Well, while we can’t predict what harmful events may occur, if we can make ourselves antifragile then when those harmful events do occur we can at worst not be harmed and at best grow even stronger.
We see this with hurricanes. If you visit the coast in Galveston, TX you’ll notice that the houses are built 15-20 feet in the air on stilts. While hurricanes can somewhat be predicted on short notice, they can not be predicted in enough advance to completely allow someone to protect a house in the path of a hurricane that was built on the ground. With that fragility recognized, the people living on the coast in Galveston determined that the best course of action would be to build their houses on stilts so when a hurricane hits and the waters rise, their houses will be much more protected from damage than if they had been built on the ground. These houses are not necessarily antifragile, they aren’t getting stronger from a hurricane even if they are on these stilts, but they are much LESS fragile and more robust.
You also see this with the human body. Again, you can’t predict all harmful events like cancer or a pandemic but we can work to make ourselves more protective against these harmful events and thus more antifragile. We can get in shape, build more muscle, and improve our metabolic and mental health.
There are studies showing that having less muscle mass is predictive for a worse recovery after injury or surgery. There are also studies showing exercise having a positive impact on our mental health. But it doesn’t take a study to know we feel great after a good workout. And it doesn’t take a study to think that having more muscle mass can help us recover from an injury or surgery.
And while there are certainly anomalies, as we continue to fight through COVID it seems that how healthy or not healthy a person is prior to getting COVID plays a large factor in how they fare with the illness. Those who are metabolically less healthy or already fighting another disease tend to be impacted far greater than those who are healthy.
So whether it’s surgery or an illness, being antifragile may help one weather the storm.
How to become Antifragile
There are many things one can do in their lives to make themselves antifragile. I’ve incorporated a number of them over the years. Some have stuck and some haven’t but the ones that have stuck have had a profound impact on my quality of life. Not only do I feel more prepared to handle volatility, be it physical or emotional, but it makes my everyday life just plain better.
I lift weights to build muscle which makes me more antifragile to surgeries, illness etc. But the workouts to build these muscles have a profound impact on my mental health making my daily life much more enjoyable and positive. It’s a win for the present and the future…a win-win!
I’ve separated the steps I’ve taken into two categories. They are the physical and the mental. To me though, our bodies and minds are interconnected and what affects one affects the other. So in actuality I don’t think of them as separate but for the sake of a blog I thought it’d simplify them if I broke them out that way.
Things I do to become Antifragile
Physical
Exercise/Movement
Our physical bodies are the physical vessel that carry us through this life. We’re stuck with them whether we like them or not for all our time on earth. So why wouldn’t we want them in top-performing shape?
The stronger we are physically, the more we can withstand what is thrown at us. This is not only true in the physical sense like overcoming an illness or recovering from an accident or surgery, but it’s also true in the mental and emotional sense. Exercise and movement undoubtedly strengthen our mental and emotional health as well.
I haven’t written about my specific workout plan but for me, lifting weights has been the most valuable component of it. Historically I’ve followed a linear progression plan for basic lifts with the goal of getting stronger. If I get bigger muscles along the way, great. While “linear progression” sounds complex, it really just means adding a few pounds or reps week after week, year after year to my weightlifting exercises. Linear just means, “arranged in or extending along a straight or nearly straight line.”
So if I squatted 150 pounds this week for 10 reps, next week I’d try 155 pounds for 10 reps. If I keep adding weight when I hit 10 reps, progressing in a linear fashion, then someday I’ll be lifting 275 pounds for 10 reps. I’d be stronger and hopefully more antifragile.
add a few pounds each week and get stronger
Outside of lifting weights, I love CrossFit, gymnastics, and playing sports.
I eat mostly real food, and not too much. For me, what I eat has as much, if not the most, impact on my physical health.
I’ve tried all the “diets” out there. Whole 30, Paleo, Keto, low-fat, etc. I’ve thought carbs were the enemy. I’ve thought calories were the enemy. I don’t tell people how they should eat. As a practitioner, I can only tell you what works for me. Now, what works for me might work for others as well. Who knows. But right now, I don’t think I exclusively fall into any one of these diet idealogies listed above. I don’t “identify” as one type of eater. I think I’ve settled into a healthy mixture of all of them; at least in terms of what works for me. The basic tenets I abide by are:
1. Protein is the star – I tend to plan around quality protein and fill in with fats and carbs.
For me, quality protein consists of unprocessed red meat (ground beef, steaks, roasts), chicken, fish, eggs, pork, and some full fat dairy like plain greek yogurt or quality cheese.
2. Stick to whole foods – I focus on whole, real foods like meat, eggs, cheese, nuts, seeds, potatoes, fruit and vegetables. Processed foods that are not “whole” like chips, pretzels, bread, etc. are hyper-palatable and are much easier to cause me to overeat.
As I heard once and it rang true, how easy is it to eat an entire bag of chips when you initially just wanted a few? I mean, “I bet you can’t eat just one,” was a tag line back in the day for Lay’s potato chips.
But does this same thing happen with eggs? You eat two and the next thing you know you’ve finished off the entire dozen? NO! That doesn’t happen with real food!
3. Meal Prep – I’ve written in depth on this before. To me it’s one of the most important lifestyle habits I have that has helped me become antifragile. I’ve said this many times, “as my meal prep goes so goes my week.” Meaning, if I prep my meals on the weekend I tend to have a good week.
4. Cook – LEARN TO COOK! Even in this day and age with much more options out there, it’s still not easy to eat healthy away from home. While it’s doable, the healthy choices are still heavily outnumbered by the unhealthy.
This doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. If you can cook eggs and meat, roast veggies, bake potatoes, and wash fruit you’ll be in good shape. Being able to do these accounts for most of the meals I eat. And when I try something fancy, luckily I have YouTube to show me how. And the secret to cooking meat is to NOT OVER COOK IT! So get a good meat thermometer like this one.
I want to speak some specifically on dieting for weight loss. I admittedly have never had to really diet to lose weight. So because I pride myself on being a practitioner and speaking only about what I practice, I can’t talk much about dieting to lose weight. But, I have been around a lot of people who have and some good resources out there are Working Against Gravity and Layne Norton.
The nutrition field is CROWDED to say the least. Here are some folks I’ve found incredibly helpful over the years. Robb Wolf, Mark Sisson, Layne Norton.
People wore their lack of sleep like a badge of honor. “I have too much to do to sleep.” Sleep was almost viewed as a weakness. I think thankfully we’ve turned the corner on this absurd thinking. Sleep is important! It’s critical to being healthy both physically and mentally. While I don’t always get eight hours of sleep a night, I do value sleep and generally get enough to feel refreshed most days.
Here are some of the things I’ve incorporated to get a good nights sleep:
Be Tired – I’m sure this seems too obvious…but then again simplicity works. The best thing I can do to get a good night’s sleep is to be tired. When I get up early, have a productive day, am active physically and mentally, and get in bed with a clear conscience and am tired I tend to sleep great. Conversely, when I get up late and do nothing the entire day and try getting to be early and am wide awake then I obviously don’t sleep great.
Lay off the caffeine – I LOVE coffee! I literally go to bed and think about how much I can’t wait to have that first cup in the morning. But I realized that if I drank coffee too late in the day it absolutely impacted my ability to fall asleep. I have no idea how long caffeine stays in your bloodstream but I generally don’t drink caffeine past noon.
Ease up on alcohol – I used to drink a few glasses of wine a night. I love wine but I realized that even a few glasses of wine impacted my quality of sleep. It may help me fall asleep but I definitely am more restless throughout the night. So a few years back I generally cut out the few glasses of wine per night on the week nights. I save my alcohol consumption for the weekend. If I don’t sleep as well then, oh well.
No TV in the bedroom – much to my wife’s chagrin, I REFUSE to have a TV in the bedroom. I can’t cite a study, but I’ve seen enough out there that watching TV before bed can impact sleep quality and I know I sleep better when I don’t watch TV in bed.
Read – I absolutely have to read before I go to bed. It’s how I unwind. And I generally have to read what I call mindless entertainment. I save the deep, thought-provoking reading for the morning. At night, I want my mind to unwind and a good thriller or mystery usually does the trick. In fact, it usually works so well that I often have to go back and re-read the last few pages I read the night before to remember what was going on.
STAY OFF THE PHONE – I think it’s safe to say the phone can get all of us worked up. Whether it’s through social media or the news, it generally gets the heart racing. And that’s the last thing I want when I close my eyes. So I make it a rule not to look at my phone once I get in bed. And when I break that rule, which I sometimes do, it almost always leads me down a rabbit hole I don’t want to go before bed and usually leads to me NOT being able to go to sleep.
For years I’ve wanted to get an alarm clock so I could put my phone in another room to charge at night thus reducing my ability to succomb to the allure of the phone and look at it in bed. I haven’t done this yet but it’s something I should do.
Mental
Reading
I read, a LOT! If I ever won the lottery I’d probably spend half my day just reading. I read all sorts of things; fiction and non-fiction. I read thrillers, mysteries, philosophy, motivational books, self-help books, history books, tales, fables, etc.
To me, reading is like exercise for the mind. If it wasn’t for reading I never would have discovered Nassim Taleb. If I had never discovered Nassim Taleb I wouldn’t have discovered the ideas of antifragility and of being a practitioner. Without discovering those I wouldn’t be writing this today! I read before bed and I read first thing in the morning when I get up before the rest of the house to have a cup of coffee.
Philosophy
Philosophy has a bad rap. I know I used to think of it as a waste of time. Something people with too much time did. People pondering ridiculous ideas and concepts that had no direct relevance to real life. But then I discovered Stoicism.
Stoicism is a form of philosophy that is not some abstract thing. It is literally a guide for how to live a good life. It is meant to be implemented; to be practiced. It coincides perfectly with the idea of antifragility. One of my favorite concepts of stoicism comes from Epictetus: “If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.” Talk about true ownership and personal accountability!
I’m not an expert on Stoicism. To learn more about it, which I HIGHLY recommend, check out Ryan Holiday.
Family/Friends
Being with friends and family is good for the soul. There is nothing more uplifting than loving others and being loved. And being part of a support system and having a strong support system allows for a foundation that can weather any storm. Without that foundation, I’m not sure how one could truly be antifragile.
Stillness
While I don’t technically meditate, I do practice stillness often. I think being still and just allowing ourselves time to think and reflect are critical to being antifragile. Without stillness, I don’t see how we could be proactive in our lives versus reactive. There is so much external noise coming at us that for me it would be impossible to forge my own path if I didn’t step out of that noise to think for myself. Otherwise I’d just get caught up in the external noise and be reactionary.
I practice stillness throughout the day but it always starts in the morning. With kids it’s hard to find time for stillness so a few years ago I made a habit of getting up early so I could get 30-45 minutes by myself in a house that’s quiet. It’s time I cherish and without it I don’t think I’d be where I am today.
It’s also important to grab those spare minutes for some stillness when they present themselves throughout the day. Maybe it’s sitting in the carpool line for 10 minutes before school pick up. Set down the phone, turn off the radio, roll down the windows if it’s a nice day and just sit there for a few minutes in your own thoughts. I try to grab a few minutes here and there like this as often as possible. It’s amazing how great it feels sometimes to just turn it all off and sit in my own thoughts.
Finances
First, I learned to want less. We want so much stuff! Then when we get it, there’s an initial surge of happiness but eventually that wears off. You buy a house, WOW, but eventually it’s just your house. Then you want a better house. But if you got that house the same thing would happen. You’d be happy, amazed even, “I can’t believe I get to live here.” That feeling would wear off and eventually you’d want a new house. This is the Treadmill Effect. A cycle of just wanting more.
Get out of debt! Debt strangles us.
Do we own the things we purchase or do they own us?
While acute stress is good for antifragility, chronic stress is not. And being in debt is a constant stress hanging over us. As Nassim Taleb says, “much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.” Fragile things are vulnerable to volatility. Being in debt makes one vulnerable to volatility. Lose your job, enter a recession, have a bad sales month, etc.
This step can be hard. I know it is for me. Sometimes I falter and we spend a little too much and we have to back off some.
A weekly 10-minute finance check-in with my wife has helped immensely to counter the drift into debt.
Addition versus Subtraction for Antifragility
We live in a world that is now dominated by lifehacks.
Take this pill for this. Add this obscure food to your diet for this mineral I’ve never heard of. For sleep take this concoction. Spend one hour doing these special joint manipulations to ensure all ten toes are ready for your workout. Put this on your face for glowing skin. Buy this special oil to help you sleep and buy that special oil to calm you down. Do these twenty things every morning for the optimal morning routine. Add this to your life. Add that. Keep on adding things! More, more, more!
Who says more is better?!?!
We are complex individuals full of interdependencies. What I eat can impact what I feel. What I’m thinking can impact my physical health. But just because we are complex does not mean we require complex systems. If that were the case how in the world did we survive before all these hacks existed? If all these additions are necessary, why do no other species need so many?
It’s crazy how much of the “health and wellness” industry is about adding products to our life.
What about removing stuff? Or, Via Negativa as Nassim calls it in the book. How much better do we feel when we clean our car and remove all the clutter? I just got my car detailed for the first time in years the other day. It was a MESS! The moment I got in it after it was clean I just felt better. Less anxious.
Removing clutter/harmful stuff can have just as much of a positive impact, if not more, than adding stuff. But nobody wants to admit that because you can’t sell removing harmful stuff to people. At least it’s much more difficult than selling a pill or new life hack.
While we are complex beings, it does not mean we require all sorts of complex, sophisticated inputs. Simple is often best. So often the answer lies in simplifying. Removing unnecessary stuff.
We can work towards becoming antifragile by removing harmful things from our lives. As Nassim says, and I agree with:
“The good is mostly in the absence of bad.”
So becoming antifragle is as much about removing harmful stuff as it is in adding positive things. Alcohol, drugs, negative people, social media, tobacco, etc. Remove these things! This is the simplest, and fastest way, one can get started on becoming more antifragile.
A lot of what I have done to become antifragile mentioned above was removing things from my life. Alcohol, afternoon coffee, TV in my bedroom, external noise, etc.
While I haven’t removed social media from my life, there have been times where I’ve gone weeks or a month without it and it’s always amazing how much better I feel mentally. It’s undeniable that the removal of it has a profoundly positive impact on my life! The fact that I always reincorporate it back in shows how addictive these companies make their platforms and how hard it is to remove.
Things I’d like to Incorporate
I’ve touched on the basics I use to build a strong foundation for my own antifragility. These basics center around my physical and mental well-being and the biggest impactors of those have been centered on what I eat, how I move, getting sleep, reading, finding stillness, and surrounding myself with family and friends.
But there are some things I’d like to add. Now, I realize I just spoke about not always adding things and here I am talking about more things to add to my life. The reality is, I feel like these are ancillary. They are secondary to the basics I’ve touched on. They are the supporting cast while the above basics are the stars.
Maybe these are the things that can get me that last ounce or two of antifragility. Maybe not. Sometimes it’s just fun to try new things!
Sauna
I’ve heard so many accounts of benefits people have experienced from spending consistent time in a sauna. I’ve even heard that consistent use of a sauna may have benefits that mirror cardiovascular exercise. Who knows if that’s the case but I do know lots of people say they just feel great after incorporating it. I’d love to give it a shot but I don’t have access to a sauna that I could use consistently enough.
Much like the sauna, I’ve also heard so many people tout the benefits of cold water immersion and how great they feel afterwards. I could definitely try this by putting my shower on full cold for a few minutes a day but I haven’t worked up the nerve to do so.
Meditation
Walks/Nature
Nassim talks a lot about things that have been around for a long time. If something has survived thousands of years there must be something to it. And taking walks, being in nature, have certainly been used in ancient practices, religions, and by many historical people. I know when I go on a ten minute walk in the evening with my wife I feel fantastic afterwards.
Being more charitable
My high school motto was, “Men for Others.” I truly believe one of the best things we can do is to give to others. With children and obligations this has taken a back seat but it’s at the top of my priority list moving forward.
Fasting
Fasting is all the rage now. But fasting has been around for thousands of years. It’s worked it’s way into the fabric of many cultures through religious and cultural practices. And if something has been around for that long, there must be something to it.
While it’s current popularity is as a weight loss tool, I am more interested in using it as a development and growth tool. I think it’s important to practice being uncomfortable and working through struggle. It teaches us discipline. And being hungry is certainly uncomfortable. I’ve done some fasting but I’d like to incorporate it on a monthly basis.
Removal of Social Media
No need to say much on this. Most of us would probably agree that we’d be a lot happier if we removed this from our lives.
Conclusion
I don’t have it all figured out. That’s for sure.
I worry, have stress, and don’t always react how I’d like to. I don’t even follow all of the things I’ve written about 100% of the time. Sometimes I eat like crap. Sometimes I drink too much and get a shitty night’s sleep. Sometimes I find my mind wandering to all the material things I want. That’s why these are daily practices! That’s why I have to be proactive about making them happen.
I don’t wake up and think they’ll just happen on their own. Just like we have to brush our teeth daily, I have to make an effort to implement these things, or keep certain things removed, on a daily basis.
I do this through being conscientious about them. I spend time in stillness thinking about them and why I do them. I plan for them. For example, I spend 10 minutes every Sunday with my wife talking about our finances. Without this simple practice we’ve found we have a tendency to spend more thus getting the credit card bill higher and eventually piling up some debt.
Building habits around these principles has also been crucial to keeping them front-and-center in my daily life. I’ve mentioned before but one of the best resources I’ve found for building habits is Atomic Habits. The author, James Clear, has a great BLOG that expands on the points he outlines in the book.
To me, being antifragile, does not make me indestructible. In fact, it may not protect me from everything life may throw at me. But I do know that the more antifragile I am, the more I’ll be able to handle.
Nassim says, “Everything gains or loses from volatility. Fragility is what loses from volatility and uncertainty.” That means antifragility is what gains from it.
The wind is volatility. It can extinguish a candle but it also can energize a fire. I’m trying to be like the fire. How about you?
It’s hard to eat healthy at work. Sometimes we have the best intentions but the environment we find ourselves in can wreak havoc on them. It’s as if our coworkers don’t care about our intentions!
When I worked at an office it seemed like every day was a minefield of terrible nutrition choices. I had to be intentional to navigate those mines and not fall victim to them. I followed a few simple practices to eat healthy at work that helped me get through them. They are so simple that anyone can follow them. Trust me!
The Office: Like College, but Not Really
I’m a Seinfeld junkie. Somehow, I relate almost everything back to some Seinfeld episode. There’s one episode in particular where Elaine denounces office parties that come with cakes and all sorts of treats. She’s so sick of every single afternoon having to sing happy birthday to someone she doesn’t really like while eating another piece of grocery store cake. Once she denounces them though, she starts having sugar withdrawals every afternoon. She didn’t realize how dependent she became on those afternoon sugar rushes.
If you’ve worked in an office, like I did for years, you know this all too well. The office is literally a haven for junk. It seems like everyday someone has brought in donuts or someone is celebrating something with cake, cookies or cupcakes.
Why is this? Why have our places of work become such clusters of sugar-laden choices? Are we somehow treating work like college…minus all the alcohol…except at happy hours of course?!
Remember how awesome college was? Or even if you didn’t go to college, those wonderful years in your early twenties? Freedom, parties, zero cares.
There were many rites of passage during those years. The first taste of freedom, our first time away from home, our first time having so much alcohol accessible.
And of course, who can forget the Freshman 15?
The thing about the freshman 15 was that we were too young to care about any real “health implications” that came with it. We were just having a great time and the freshman 15 reflected that.
The Freshman 15 came with all of the good stuff and really none of the bad stuff. We got to eat junk food, have pretty terrible lifestyle habits, and got little sleep at night but a lot of sleep during the day, often through class. We were happy, having fun, and definitely not worried about cholesterol or blood pressure and any of that adult stuff.
It’s almost as if there is an “office 15” just like there was a “freshman 15.” The problem is though, the office 15 doesn’t come with any of that good stuff. But it does come with plenty of bad stuff.
No parties, no fun, no freedom. No best friends, care-free days, or endless optimism.
Just self-loathing, depression, and severe anxiety, with some high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and maybe even some Type 2 diabetes thrown in there as well.
The reality is that it’s HARD to eat healthy at work. We are surrounded by terrible choices. Donuts, constant birthday celebrations each with its own cake and cookies, lunches out, Starbucks runs for drinks that have more sugar and calories than many desserts, and vending machines filled with junk.
While the freshman 15 is filled with happiness, excitement, and a lifetime of memories, the Office 15 is filled with loneliness, self-loathing, and depression. The Freshman 15 comes with parties, all you can eat dining halls, late night pizza, laughter, friendship, and even a little learning. The Office 15 comes with lame office parties, stale grocery-store donuts that for some reason are irresistible, co-workers you may or may not like, and GUILT!
Lots and lots of GUILT.
WHY IS IT SO HARD TO EAT HEALTHY AT WORK?
It’s often important to understand the why of something if you want to change it. If you understand the why, you can understand the root cause. And once you understand the root cause you’ll know what to address to “fix” the issue.
Why did I eat those donuts…they didn’t even taste good? Why am I sitting here eating junk food from the vending machine when I wasn’t even really that hungry (hint: you were bored and had nothing healthy convenient to eat instead)?
So why do we do this to ourselves? Make choices that don’t make us happy. Make choices we regret. Make choices that keep us up at night beating ourselves up.
It’s obvious why we make the good choices. They make us happy. It’s not so obvious why we make the bad choices. They make us unhappy and often unhealthy too.
The craziest thing is that it seems like more of our decisions are geared towards not really making us happy…not moving us closer to the life we want. I’m not a psychologist so I can’t give you the clinical reason backed by clinical studies why we do this. But I am a human that has a long history, like EVERYONE, in making poor decisions. So I think I can speculate at least a little on the reasons why.
It probably boils down to a few things.
Boredom – we eat when we’re bored and sometimes, or most times, work is BORING!
Inability to delay gratification
Lack of planning (letting yourself get STARVING with no good options available)
Laziness
Peer Pressure
Of course there may even be deeper issues rooted in experiences that go back to our childhoods or things we are currently going through. Those though, I’ll leave to the psychologists.
Instant vs. Delayed Gratification
I think we all struggle with the decision that’s right in front of us vs. the vision that’s 3 months or even 3 years down the road.
Sure, we desperately want to finally be able to put that bathing suit on in the summer and feel confident in it. However, when it’s October and you’re sitting there staring at the clock watching the minutes tick by and it’s eight months from swimsuit season, it’s a lot easier to forget about the future and to eat that donut staring you straight in the face.
Instant gratification usually wins out over delayed gratification.
And this one stings a little bit, and it affects ALL OF US…but sometimes it just boils down to laziness. Eating junk food at the office is easy. It’s everywhere!
Eating healthy at the office is not so easy. It takes some effort, planning and foresight. And with all we have going on in our lives, that often means that eating healthy takes a back seat.
There’s a TON of external stuff coming at us all the time. Especially now in 2020. Family, finances, work pressure, politics, etc. It’s endless! And to try and stay strong and plan to eat well at work can be overwhelming. It can be enough for us to throw up our hands and say, “forget about it!”
There’s a real fear involved here as well. Anytime we put ourselves out there we are potentially setting ourselves up to fail. Failure can be a great thing. It teaches us. Not surprisingly though, failure also invokes a lot of fear in us and fear can paralyze us. What if I fail? What will my coworkers think?
And even though we’re adults, by the time we’re working in an office peer pressure can still have an impact on us.
“Oh come on and go grab some McDonald’s for lunch with us.” Or “you’re not going to have a donut?!?!” “Please eat some cake! It’s my birthday!” It can be hard to say no sometimes. Unfortunately, your coworkers don’t usually make it easier.
All these reasons are why it’s so easy for instant gratification to win out over delayed gratification.
5 Steps, plus a bonus, to eating healthy at work
So we understand the why, but now let’s address the HOW.
How do I avoid junk food at the office? How do I make healthy choices at the office?
Saying no to the junk at work and avoiding the Office 15 doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It doesn’t require iron will power and thousands of dollars, or hours and hours of work per week.
Don’t fear that trying to make this change will lead you to a miserable existence sitting at your desk thinking about those donuts in the break room trying desperately not to get up and go grab a few.
In fact, with a few simple steps, ditching the office junk will be easy. You’ll feel fantastic and be on your way to a better overall lifestyle too.
It just boils down to making a few simple choices and doing them over and over until they become habits. Once that happens, you’re basically on auto pilot. Okay, maybe not necessarily auto pilot. But over time it will become easier and easier.
Here’s what to do:
1. Make the decision to stop eating junk food at work.
I get it…this sounds too simple. But it’s important.
Our actions follow what our minds think. We live the stories we tell ourselves!
Making this decision can be internal to you or if you like you can proclaim it to everyone around you. What matters is that it’s a decision you make and most importantly a decision you mean.
It has to be genuine enough for you to believe it yourself. Our actions follow what our minds think so it’s vital that you truly believe and think this.
We can only handle so much complexity in our lives. And if you think about it, it’s amazing the amount of complexity and chaos that constantly flood us. Our phones, television, social media, cable news, traffic…it’s never ending. Making decisions helps us to handle this complexity and to simplify our life around us. So do habits. Both ease our cognitive load.
By making a decision, you are allowing yourself the ability to simplify your thought processes. If you make a true decision, one that you mean, to stop eating crap at the office, then the next time you see donuts you won’t need to agonize over what to do. You’ll have already made that decision. Now you can move on.
I completely understand that this sounds overly simplistic. But it is the absolute first step necessary. Make a decision with conviction. Stick to it. And the beauty of it is, it’ll get easier and easier.
When I was in my early 20s I decided I wanted to be a Marine Corps Officer. To do so you must first complete Officer Candidate School in Quantico, VA. Officer Candidate School (OCS) is basically boot camp for officers. It’s 10 weeks of sleep deprivation, constant hunger, never-ending physical activity, and scary dudes, Sergeant Instructors, yelling at you non-stop. Think the beginning scenes from Full Metal Jacket but with no punching from the DI’s and a little more political correctness.
The thing with OCS is that at any time past week three you are allowed to quit. The thinking is they don’t want anyone with even an ounce of doubt leading Marines. The process to get to OCS is intense and takes months, sometimes years to prepare for. You have to prepare physically and mentally. Most folks do not come to this decision lightly. Yet, even with all this preparation, I’ll never forget that within the first few days there were already a number of folks who had decided OCS “wasn’t for them” and that they were going to quit.
I remember thinking that was crazy. How could they go through so much previously to get to this point and then within a few days just think it wasn’t for them? Quitting never crossed my mind even during the most intense moments at OCS. It wasn’t because I was physically superior than the others. In fact, I was probably in the middle of the pack in that regard. And many of the people who did quit were physically stronger than me.
What it boiled down to is that I had made the decision that I wanted to be a Marine Officer and that was that. By making the decision, and meaning it, I never considered quitting because getting through OCS was just one step to my final goal.
The decision to be a Marine Officer had been firmly committed to and that was the biggest factor in how I made it through OCS without considering quitting. Even on those days when I was being yelled at so much I couldn’t remember my own name or the times I was so tired I was literally falling asleep while standing up, I never considered quitting.
Make a firm decision and the process will be easier
Yes, the first time you see those donuts it may take a little willpower to resist. Okay, more like A LOT! But you made the decision to stop eating junk at the office so you do so. However, by the 5th time you say no to the donuts at the office, it’ll be much easier.
Like everything, the more you do it the better you’ll become. And with enough repetitions, it’ll become a habit. The decision will have been made long ago and your mind will ease the cognitive load by barely thinking twice about those donuts.
We often think that by making healthy choices we are missing out. Or depriving ourselves. Guess what, if you do it right, YOU’RE NOT! In fact, you’ll be giving yourself the fuel to thrive. To live a life that brings you joy and makes you feel unstoppable. After the initial shock to your system, you’ll never feel like you’re missing out again.
When FOMO does start to creep in, remind yourself that you are not depriving yourself. You are allowing yourself to thrive. You are NOT missing out on anything!
3. Don’t let yourself get STARVING at work!
Yes, it’s that simple. At work, don’t allow yourself to get starving. You do that by being prepared. By having healthy snacks and meals near you at all times. Never get caught starving with nothing good to eat nearby. It’s a recipe for disaster.
4. Meal Prep
For me, this is probably the most powerful habit when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle. Spend an hour or two on the weekend cooking and portioning all of your lunches for the week so all you have to do is grab them in the morning on your way out the door.
Who we surround ourselves with has a profound impact on who we become. Find others in the office that are living a healthy lifestyle and surround yourself with them.
BONUS STEP: If this is a possibility, work out during your lunch break.
Find a gym nearby and use that hour to your advantage. Not only will exercising during the day make you more steadfast in your decisions to avoid the junk food, but it’ll give you the energy to avoid the afternoon crash and be full of energy come that 3pm dead time.
Follow those 5 steps and you’ll be set. I think it’s fair to say your life will be changed. I know that sounds so melodramatic, but these changes can have a profound impact.
Make a decision.
Change your mindset.
Don’t get hungry.
Meal Prep.
Surround yourself with people who have similar goals.
Bonus – work out at lunch
Final Thoughts
I’d like to leave you with a couple of parting shots.
First off, believe in yourself! You can do this. It might seem difficult at first, but after a few weeks it’ll get easier.
Stop putting off until tomorrow what needs to be done today! Stop sacrificing the future for the present.
Donuts today is sacrificing good health tomorrow.
Donuts today is sacrificing feeling amazing in that swimsuit come summer.
Donuts today is sacrificing playing with your kids a year from now.
Donuts today is sacrificing walking by a mirror a year from now and beaming at your reflection with pride.
Donuts today may even be killing you tomorrow.
Why are you dogging donuts so much you might be asking? Believe me, I love donuts! To me they are just the symbol of junk food in offices because they seem to be the most prevalent.
And I have to say, it’s not like you can’t have donuts and still be healthy. But the norm must be saying no to crap more often than not.
As they say, a year from now you’ll wish you had started today.
Two final points:
If you fall off the wagon, hop right back on. We’re all human. We all make mistakes! DON’T BEAT YOURSELF UP. Don’t let that one mistake turn into 50. Don’t let one weak moment derail everything. Don’t let one candy bar from the vending machine lead to a month of gorging.
If you have a moment of weakness, remember the decision you made and WHY you made it. Get right back on track and brush it off. People often make one mistake and just give up. Don’t do that!
And second, this is a weird parting shot, but be ready for EVERYONE to be all up in your business! All of a sudden EVERYONE will care about what you’re eating or what you’re not eating.
“Oh, look at James…eating a healthy lunch making us all look bad.”
“You’re not going to eat any donuts?!?! Why not? Go ahead and just eat one.”
“Just come to McDonald’s with us!”
“Cake in the break room everyone…of course James isn’t going to eat any!”
You’re going to wonder why in the world everyone is suddenly so interested in what you’re doing. The reality is it’s because you’re inspiring them. They’re noticing your positive choices and deep down it’s making them start to think about their own choices. It may not seem like that, but trust me, it is.
One thing I can promise you is that if you keep making these positive healthy choices at work, it won’t be long before some of these same people who seemed so concerned that you weren’t partaking in the office donuts will soon be asking you for advice on how to eat healthy at the office.
Before you know it you’ll be spending your time explaining how you meal prep, or what snacks you keep at the desk, or how in the world you cannot have a sugar-filled Starbucks drink every morning.
While the freshman 15 is something we love to joke and reminisce about, the reality is that the Office 15 can be a serious subject. It’s often accompanied with real, serious health consequences. It can also have devastating effects on our mental well-being and our self-esteem.
But the amazing thing is that if you implement these five steps you can spare yourself this pain. And honestly, it’ll quickly become a habit and something you won’t have to think twice about. And not to mention the positive choices you make at the office will most likely lead to more positive life choices outside of the office. You’ll feel so great at the office you’ll want to feel the same way all the time.
These are all things I noticed when I decided to eat healthy at work.
It’s that compound effect again. It works in investing, and it definitely works with your health.
Stick with this plan and before you know it you’ll be able to walk right by those stale donuts from the grocery store and not think twice about them.
You won’t be depriving yourself. You’ll finally be thriving.
I write about things I’ve tried. Things I’ve done. As I’ve said before, to be a practitioner you have to eat your own cooking. You have to, “be a doer, not a talker.” When it comes to meal prep, I’ve literally eaten my own cooking hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
I was meal preppin’ before meal preppin’ was a thing. Before Instagram influencers were lining up 50 gourmet meals for “meal prep glamor shots,” I was spending an hour every Sunday in my kitchen making some meals for the upcoming week.
I’ve meal prepped so many times that it’s become second nature to me. I’ve talked about the importance of meal prep to others almost as many times.
Now I want to share the tips and tricks on how I meal prep so it can become second nature for you too. I’ll break it down step-by-step so when you’re finished reading this you’ll be ready to dive right in.
What is Meal Prep?
The name is pretty self-explanatory. But just to make it clear, meal prep is the planning, shopping, prepping and storing of meals that you plan to eat later in the week.
Think your very own grab-n-go system.
Meal prep can be easy, but sorry to say maybe not this easy.
You make a bunch of meals and store them as individual servings in the fridge so on the day you’re ready to eat one, you just grab it and go. Simple!
How Meal Prep Began for Me
I ran into an old friend not too long ago. I love it when that happens. No matter how old I get, or how much of an adult I become, when I’m with an old friend I instantly fall right back into that time in my life when I was carefree and immature. It’s definitely good for the soul.
We had a few beers and a few laughs. We traded the usual stories that never seem to get old no matter how many times we’ve heard them.
We updated each other on all the new “grown up” stuff in our lives. Kids, spouses, jobs, RESPONSIBILITIES….BORING!!! (Full disclosure…kids and spouses are OF COURSE not boring…but it can be fun to throw off the responsibility jacket and vent a little with old friends).
Anyway, after a few too many beers, things took a little turn south. My buddy looked down at his beer, and up at me and just kind of blurted out, “I’ve turned into an amorphous blob.”
AMORPHOUS BLOB!?!?!
Good Lord! How DEPRESSING! It killed me that that’s what he thought of himself. He’s super successful, is living what appears from the outside to be a fantastic life, yet I could see the despair on his face. “How the hell did I let myself get so unhealthy?” he asked.
Not surprisingly, his physical unhealthiness was significantly impacting his mental health as well. This isn’t surprising to me because we are complex beings full of interdependencies. What impacts the body impacts the mind. And vice versa.
A quick backstory on me. My kids think I’m pretty special. And on occasion when we visit my folks my mother will say something that will make my wife roll her eyes and make a gagging gesture, so I suppose my mom thinks I’m pretty special too. But I’m not.
Truth be told, heart disease runs in my family for men. My grandfather and father both suffered major heart attacks at early ages. This scared me so much that I took a pretty big interest in trying to be in the best shape possible so I could avoid that same fate. Who knows if I will, but I figured I’d try my best.
I studied EVERYTHING I could find. Fitness, nutrition, sleep, EVERYTHING. I also tried EVERYTHING under the sun. Remember, TRYING things is the key to being a practitioner. Every exercise program, diet, supplement, etc. So maybe not every one of them, but certainly a lot of them.
I settled on a few things that really seemed to work and over the years I developed a few key habits that have helped me stay in pretty good shape.
The fear of having a heart attack literally made me take a pretty dogged interest in being as healthy as possible. Maybe I need to develop some new fears in other areas of my life which I haven’t been so diligent in. But that’s for another day.
Now back to my story…
My friend asked me what he could do to get back to his old self and not feel so depressed all the time. He wanted to feel strong, fit and attractive. He wanted to stop OBSESSING over his weight and what he looked like all the time. He wanted to lose weight quickly!
He wanted to no longer feel like an amorphous blob!
I’m not big on abstract suggestions. Things like, “move more and eat less.” Spoiler alert, that advice is GARBAGE. While yes, technically to lose weight you must burn more calories than you store, it doesn’t give you tangible, actionable advice.
Another one of my NON-favorites; “just find something you like doing and do it.” Another spoiler alert, that advice is garbage too. Okay, “garbage” may be a little harsh. And there’s some kernel of truth in that, but again, it’s not specific and actionable enough for my liking.
I mean, if you like eating ice cream and sitting on the couch for hours, should you keep doing that? If I only like going for walks but I want to build lots of muscle would that advice be applicable? No!
Walking on a treadmill probably isn’t going to get you ripped unfortunately.
If you’re someone who hasn’t spent their life reading up on nutrition and health what are you supposed to do with vague advice like those above? My guess; not much.
I’m a simple guy so when I’m seeking help I need it laid out to me simply. I need tips and tricks that I can implement into my life immediately. I need something tangible, not abstract. I need something SPECIFIC.
When I go to experts I’m often thinking, “just tell me what to do and how to do it!” Maybe it’s not the best mindset, but it’s the truth.
If it were that easy and intuitive folks like my friend wouldn’t feel so desperate and confused.
So I told him, in my opinion, the number one thing he could do to start taking back ownership of himself and his life was to do meal prep.
Cooking your meals for the week on the weekend can be life changing.
Meal Prep?!?! That’s not what he expected to hear.
Keep in mind, meal prep in and of itself won’t cause you to lose weight. A caloric deficit will do that. So you’d have to meal prep with a plan to achieve that deficit.
But for me, meal prep leads the charge in my healthy lifestyle even when it’s purpose is NOT to create a caloric deficit but just to have convenient, nutritious meals available for those times when I’m busy throughout the week.
Why Meal Prep is Vital
I think my buddy expected to hear something like, “run 5 miles a day,” or “go on an absurdly untenable 500-calorie-a-day diet.” I don’t think he was expecting me to say MEAL PREP.
What he was expecting was what people think it takes to be “healthy.” Miserable, time-consuming, kill-me-I-don’t-want-to-do-this-exercise, and starvation diets. And I STRESS think because it doesn’t take that at all.
For me, I’ve always said, “as meal prep goes, so goes my fitness.” It is absolutely the number one habit I’ve developed to help me stay healthy and happy all these years. A good week of meal prep usually leads to a great week of healthy activities…working out, getting good sleep, laying off the booze, etc.
Meal prep is ONE tool I use to help create an overall healthy lifestyle. But for me, it’s one of the biggest tools I use alongside resistance training and getting quality sleep.
The benefits of meal prep go beyond the physical as well. I’m usually much more alert, focused, and generally in a good mood. The more consistent I am with my meal prep the more consistent I am with exercise and physical activity/movement.
And exercise is like an antidepressant. It makes us happy and balances our hormones, so it’s no surprise that it impacts us mentally and emotionally as much as it does physically. After all, our bodies and minds are all wrapped up in one so it makes sense that one impacts the other.
If you feel stuck and in a rut, meal prep may be a pretty good place to start to dig out of that rut and start taking some ownership.
Is it the finish line too? No, but let’s not worry about that now. Sometimes looking too far ahead can be pretty overwhelming. Just know that’s it’s a great starting point.
You’ve heard it all, right? “Abs are made in the kitchen.” “You can’t outrun a bad diet.” It’s not rocket science, right? Then how come we still make so many terrible, self-sabotaging food decisions?
We tell ourselves lies.
As Richard Feynman said, “you must not fool yourself-and you are the easiest person to fool.”
“I’m too busy.”
“I don’t know how to cook.”
“It’s too expensive to eat healthy.”
“Eating healthy is BORING…I can’t do chicken breast and steamed broccoli every day.”
“I don’t even know what eating healthy means anymore!”
“It’s OVERWHELMING!”
And let’s be honest with ourselves, it’s easy to eat junk! We’re surrounded by it!
Motivation vs. Habits
Picture this…it’s noon on a random Tuesday in the middle of August. It’s HOT, you’re HUNGRY, and you’re now over seven months removed from those lofty New Year’s resolutions.
The rest of your office is heading out to grab some fast food for lunch. You said you were going to eat healthy that day but you have no lunch and at this point you don’t even care. So you’re off with your co-workers and the cycle continues. “I’ll start again next New Years,” you tell yourself.
It’s habits, not motivation, that’ll save you here.
We all like to rationalize our bad choices. I do it all the time. My kids are in front of their iPads entirely too much. (Side note to all the parents, how the heck did our parents and grandparents raise kids without iPads?!?! Incredible!)
But I tell myself, “hey, at least they’re playing Minecraft. That’s like a video-game version of Legos…ergo, they’re kind of learning about engineering.” Pretty far-fetched, I know, but it’s seriously what I tell myself.
Lately I’ve even told my kids to, “get off your iPads and go watch some tv!” WTF?!?! Somehow I’ve convinced myself that watching tv is better, or not as bad at least, for them than staring at those STUPID YouTube videos on a device inches from their face.
Anyway, we rationalize our bad choices to make ourselves feel better about them. It’s hard to confront our actions and say, “yup, that was no good.” But if we don’t confront them, how can we improve them? If we don’t acknowledge and own our actions, then we can’t fix them.
We don’t need to beat ourselves up over them, but we do need to acknowledge them and be aware of them.
Wouldn’t you rather have the ownership to CHANGE your lot in life even if it means confronting some uncomfortable things to get to that point? It’s not easy, and I’ll be the first to admit that in other areas of my life many times I’ve said, “no, I’d rather just not confront those uncomfortable truths,” than chew on them, acknowledge them and work on them.
But over time I learned that in the long run it’s much better to accept some immediate hard truths so you can get to long-term happiness.
Sticking our head in the sand doesn’t make our problems go away.
What good does sticking your head in the sand really do?
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be in control and not feel like I have no power to change.
Meal prep can be intimidating. In the Instagram world we live in, seeing someone post a picture of 35 gourmet meals all portioned out perfectly for the week can seem a little unrealistic. And a little daunting too. I’ve been doing meal prep for years and I look at those pictures and think, “no way could I do that.” Who has time for that? Except maybe professional meal preppers.
Good on the folks who do have time for that kind of meal prepping. I suppose it’s something us mere mortals can strive for. But I’m guessing you have a job, things to do, a life to live. I’m guessing that you’re not someone who replies to the question of, “how you been lately,” with, “great…I have soooo much free time to do whatever the heck I feel like doing.”
We are already stretched to our limits!
The beauty of it though is that it doesn’t have to be like that. You don’t need 50 hours to meal prep. And you also don’t have to take the time to make all those prepped meals line up perfectly so you can snap that pic for your Instagram or Facebook. And you don’t need a ton of cash either.
So when the motivation fades what’s left to fall back on? Systems. Systems that become habits remove the thinking. They put you on autopilot. They remove decision fatigue.
Do we need motivation to brush our teeth every night? Of course not. We’ve done it so many times most of us probably don’t even think about it.
We just do it!
Habits and systems, not motivation, is what’ll make conscious decisions like eating healthy stick.
Benefits of Meal Prep
With a little bit of planning, meal prep can be:
Fast (I’m talking from start to finish in an hour)
Cheap (It IS possible to save money while eating delicious and nutritious food)
Delicious (You DON’T have to eat chicken and steamed broccoli everyday)
Convenient (a little time up front saves you a lot of time the rest of the week)
Rewarding (It helps us stick to our goals)
Healthy (It helps us make healthier choices)
Not to mention, it’s an easy way to portion-control your meals. Think about this, when you go out to eat restaurants love to load up your plate with servings of cheap, unhealthy food. It’s an illusion to make you feel like you got great value on your purchase. “Oh look, I just got 100oz of coke for a dollar.” Or, “yay, a mega-super-serving-size of fries for 99 cents.” You think, awesome, I just got a great deal!
So many fries, more than I need, but it’s such a bargain how can I say no?!?!
But the reality is it probably only cost pennies for the fast food joint to produce those things. And their real goal is just to use those deals to get you in the door so you spend a lot more money on other things. So while you have this illusion of a great bargain, you really just got a super-sized serving of more junk than you actually need or even want.
And if you’re like me, if it’s on your plate you’ll probably eat it…whether you’re still hungry or not. And if it’s a salty, fried-carbs-and-fat-combo…you’ll definitely eat it. That type of food is addicting! And it’s addicting ON PURPOSE!
There are literally people at food companies designing ways to make food so hyper-palatable it’s almost impossible to resist eating more and more.
Remember Clark Griswold? You know, from the classic Vacation movies? In Christmas Vacation his job was literally a food additive designer and he was lauded for an invention that sealed and coated the cereal flakes so the milk didn’t penetrate them which kept them crunchy. Why would that be better? BECAUSE THAT CRUNCH IS SATISFYING AND MAKES US WANT MORE!!!!! These people exist in real life!
Seriously, we all know that feeling when you eat one potato chip and then you can’t help yourself from eating the whole bag. I mean, have you ever eaten one egg and you just couldn’t help yourself so you ate the whole carton? Nope, of course not. Because real food is filling so you get full on less. Meal prepping solves this problem.
They make them so salty, crunchy, and satisfying that they bank on the fact you can’t eat just one!
Meal prep goes beyond just losing weight. It’s literally transformed my whole life from a physical and mental standpoint. There are so many more benefits to what I listed above. For me it’s led to better sleep, more energy, better moods, and so much more.
The benefits it provides for the little time investment it requires are incredible! And totally disproportionate! I can hardly believe that spending an hour or two doing meal prep on a Sunday can have so much positive impact on my overall life!
Little effort, BIG reward!
My Meal Prep System
The big question is, how can you, someone who is busy, tackle food prep as a beginner? Here’s how I have incorporated it into my life.
Meal Prepping 101 – Ultimate Guide:
1. Keep it Simple
If something is too hard or too time-consuming chances are it’ll be too hard to maintain over the long haul. This is especially true when it comes to new GOOD habits we are trying to incorporate. So don’t overcomplicate things when you initially begin.
Chicken, rice, and veggie bowls are simple to make, and always delicious to eat! A great combo.
While imitating those professional meal preppers may seem tempting, in reality, the amount of effort it might initially take to turn out that many gourmet, complex meals could turn you off of meal prep forever. So don’t feel like you have to copy those professional meal-prepping pics you see on Instagram.
When I started, and still to this day, I’ve kept my meal prep pretty simple. Grill some chicken and roast some sweet potatoes and vegetables. Simple and doable.
2. start with lunch
I think lunch is the most dangerous meal of the day. At least it is for me.
Most of us are usually away from home during this time. A lot of us are in an office or work setting. We’re short on time. There’s stress, peer-pressure, and maybe a lot of people we don’t really like. Not to mention those environments are a landmine of bad choices.
Birthday cakes, donuts, lunches with the team, snacks during meetings (and the snacks are always JUNK)…so many bad choices staring you in the face!
Because of this, I just started to meal prep my lunches. This way I tackled the most dangerous meal of the day while also only having to prepare 5 meals per week.
I only prep weekday lunches which is where I get the 5 meals to prep. Those are the days that are the busiest and most challenging which is why I choose to prep for those days. On the weekends I usually have the time to manage something for lunch.
3. get the proper tools
Back to elementary school. You’ll need a lunch box. I like to use a small cooler. You’ll need some meal prep containers too. They offer the perfect portion sizes so you’re taking charge of your portion control too. Plus, they are microwaveable.
4. plan your meal
Failing to plan is planning to fail. Or something like that. But the bottom line is, you have to know what meals you are going to make. So think of some meals you’ll actually enjoy eating, and write out the plan for the week.
Sunday dinner at Mamaw and Papaw’s means I don’t have to plan for that night!
This is one of our weekly plans. I usually do my grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon so it never fails that each Sunday morning I ask my wife, “what do we want to do for dinner this week?” So you’ll see I wrote out our dinner plan and I also wrote out what I was planning to meal prep for my lunches that week.
Sidenote, Sundays are dinner at my folks’ and we “wing it” on the weekend which admittedly can get us in trouble.
The key here is to think of things you’ll actually enjoy eating. Sometimes our good intentions can set us up for failure. If you’re super motivated on your meal prep day and prep plain chicken breasts with broccoli but come Thursday afternoon you’re tired and frustrated and not feeling motivated you may skip out on that chicken and broccoli and say, “screw it, I’m heading to McDonald’s!”
Don’t let this happen!
I’ve prepped the same few lunches for over a decade. I’m often amazed that after all these years I still look forward to the lunches I’ve prepped. I managed to find some meals that were nutritious, simple, and delicious. So no matter what day of the week it is or what kind of mood I’m in, I’ve always been happy to eat them and thus not tempted to throw them in the trash and head out for fast food.
When it comes to planning my meals I’ve stuck to a pretty basic, but delicious, outline for my meals. I focus on protein, and surround it with vegetables and sometimes a starch which for me is usually a sweet potato.
5. have a grocery plan of attack
This is just a fancy way of saying, “write out a grocery list.”
A friend once told me, “we’re all winging it as parents.” It’s kind of true, right? But don’t wing it when you go grocery shopping!
You must have a plan of attack. Otherwise you end up wandering around randomly making your way back and forth between different aisles and parts of the grocery store just throwing whatever into your basket.
You’ve determined what you want to eat for your 5 lunches, see step number 4, now write out what is required, and bring that list with you to the store. Simple!
Walking into the grocery store hungry and with no plan is asking for trouble!
We decided what we wanted to eat for the week now we write down everything we need. Simple!
And yes, I have a problem…I often go to three stores for grocery shopping. Certain things are better at certain places and certain things are cheaper at certain places. I mean, steaks at Costco ate great quality at a great price…that alone is worth the trip there!
6. set aside a block of time for meal prep and make it a habit!
Set aside an hour for your prep. Sundays are great. Make this a time that’s enjoyable and just for you. Put on some music, an audio book, or tv. Whatever you like. My favorite time to meal prep is during football season. I love having football on in the background while prepping my foods. It makes the time fly by.
For those of you with kids, like myself, DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO KEEP THE KIDS OCCUPIED. You have to be selfish sometimes and this is the time to focus on YOU! We all want to be super parents but it’s okay if you have to sit them down for an hour in front of the tv or iPad while you do this. In the long run, it’ll actually show them that you value your health and that you make it a priority. That is a great example to set!
MAKE THIS A HABIT! I can’t stress this enough. Try to do it at the same time every week and try to make it coincide with something you enjoy like listening to music or an audio book or watching sports like I do.
You’ve done the planning, you’ve done the grocery shopping, you’ve set aside the time to cook. You’re all set. Now it’s time to do the work!
If you’re like me sometimes you can plan, plan, and plan but never actually execute. I think it’s a form of procrastination. But all the planning in the world does you no good if you never actually execute the plan.
When it comes to cooking your meals, there are a number of different cooking methods that you can use to prep your meals. For me, this is what I’ve employed the most over the years.
ROASTING/BAKING
While I sometimes have used roasting and baking to cook my protein, usually when it’s raining outside and I don’t want to go out and grill, I normally use this method for my vegetables and sweet potatoes. A couple of things I’ve learned over the years (remember, I’m NOT a trained chef…these are tips I’ve learned through personal experience from doing this for over a decade…I have NO clue if they are “technically” correct).
When roasting, whether vegetables or potatoes, put some foil down on the tray. It’ll make clean up MUCH easier.
Even when using foil, coat it in some form of oil or spray to prevent sticking.
Roast at a high temperature and make sure the vegetables are spaced out some. I’ve found that if I pile too many vegetables on the tray hot air from the oven can’t get around the vegetables and I’m left with soggy vegetables.
I usually roast everything on 400. It’s probably better to roast vegetables at a little higher temperature but since I am usually roasting sweet potatoes in the same oven I’ve found 400 is the best temperature for both.
Sweet potatoes rinsed, poked, and ready for the oven!
Roast multiple things at the same time to save time. I’m almost always roasting vegetables and sweet potatoes. So I just throw them in the oven at the same time. Do vegetables and sweet potatoes roast best at the same temperature? I have no clue! But I’ve been doing them that way for years and they taste good enough for me.
Grilling
For almost the entire time I’ve been meal prepping, I use my grill for the protein portion. Even when I only had a charcoal grill, I still found it easier for the amount of protein I was cooking than using an oven or stovetop. Not to mention it tastes MUCH better.
A few years back I got a gas grill, thanks Memaw!, and it’s made grilling my proteins even easier. It’s big enough that I can fit all the protein on at once and there’s no time needed to get the coals ready. Just turn it on and it’s ready to go. And clean-up is a breeze too. I just scrape off all the grates with a grill brush when I’m finished and that’s it.
Cooking your protein on the grill is convenient and allows you to cook it all at once.
PRO TIP: Invest in a meat thermometer. I like the ones with the probe that you can leave in the meat while it’s cooking. It makes it dummy-proof…which is what I need!
Air Fryer
I’m new to the air fryer game. I know there is so much that can be done with the air fryer but when it comes to meal prep, I’ve only so far used it for sweet potato and regular fries. I cut them up, soak them in water for a few hours, dry them, season them and throw them in the fryer. They require very little oil, just one tbsp. of avocado oil, so they are MUCH healthier than deep fried versions.
One thing to note though, if you look up recipes for air fryer fries and sweet potato fries, they all say to space out the fries in a single layer in the air fryer so the air can circulate around all of the fries. You’ll notice if you do that it barely makes any. So if you followed this method and wanted enough for 5-days of meal plans, you’d have to make a ton of batches which would take forever. Nobody wants to do that.
Here’s what I do though. I take a huge batch of cut up potatoes or sweet potatoes, and after I’ve tossed them in oil and seasoning, I pour them in an air fryer at 380 degrees and every ten minutes I shake them up so the ones that are soggy are moved to the top so the air can circulate around them and crisp them up. I repeat this until they all are cooked and pretty crispy. It’s usually around 30-35 minutes total.
Does this work as well as if I cooked them in a single layer? No. But it works well enough and means I only have to cook one batch so it saves a ton of time.
Crock Pot/Slow Cooker
While I’ve cooked many-a-meal in the slow cooker, I’ve never used it for meal prep. But I imagine throwing in a pot roast or pork butt would be an easy way to prepare protein for the week.
8. Portion your food
I know the wisdom in this last step is almost too earth-shattering to comprehend. Only a true “guru” like myself could offer such profound insight!
You’ve done all this work and cooked all this food but you’re probably wondering, “now what?”
Well, you take the food you’ve cooked and place it into the 5 meal prep containers. You then stack them in the fridge and stare at them with an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment. And hey, I know I kind of dissed the food preppers who take pics of their 50 meals all lined up neatly, but go ahead and do it if you’d like. It’s cool to feel proud.
It’s satisfying to see all those meals organized and lined up.
How Meal Prep Can Impact the Rest of Your Life
Do you want to…
No longer struggle to find the perfect angle for your pics or selfies?
No longer feel anger and self-hate for reaching the point you have?
Stop feeling depressed, anxious, and lethargic?
Feel free and confident?
Walk by a mirror and think, “Damn, I look good!”?
Not dread summer and swimsuit season like waiting for a hurricane to hit land?
Get your partner to raise their eyebrows and turn their heads when you walk by?
I feel like this is a GREAT habit to get you heading down this road of accomplishments. It won’t magically do all of these things just by itself. But I do believe it’s a precursor to other positive life choices; exercise, better sleep, less booze, better mental attitude, more happiness, etc.
Your life isn’t segmented. Everything we do is linked together. If I make one poor decision it can lead to many other poor decisions and vice versa. Even if the decisions aren’t directly linked.
We’ve all been there. “Oh man, this week is going to be a GREAT week. It’s going to be the week that things change. I’m going to eat healthy, work out every day, lay off the wine, get to sleep early, and not watch so much reality-tv!”
Then Monday morning rolls around. You’re sitting at your desk already dreaming of Friday. All of a sudden you get a whiff of something that smells AMAZING! “Uh oh,” you think, “someone brought donuts.” “No way am I going to cave,” you tell yourself as you’re sitting there unable to think about anything else except how good that donut would taste.
You resist for 15 AGONIZING minutes. Then you tell yourself, “I’ll just have one.”
GAME OVER!
One leads to four. Donuts leads to fast food for lunch. Fast food leads to driving right past the gym on your way home. That leads to plopping down on the couch with a big glass of wine, or three. You turn on the TV and dial up some Big Brother. Come midnight you finally think to yourself, “I’ll start over next week.” Next week leads to next month which leads to next year. All because of one bad decision…I’m looking at you, donut.
One bad decision can lead to a vicious cycle of bad decisions. They all piggy back off each other. Here’s what’s great though, you can make it a POSITIVE cycle if you just substitute a positive decision.
And for the record, of course that was a dramatic scenario but it paints a picture of how decisions can have compounding effects. And I don’t think a donut here and there is “bad” but it’s much more likely that a donut can be just a donut and not a spiral of bad decisions if you have a system in place like meal prep to help you maintain healthy eating MOST of the time.
The Domino Effect – One bad decision can led to many bad decisions, but one good decision can lead to many good decisions.
I call this the domino effect. This analogy has been used for lots of things, and it definitely makes sense here. All the dominoes represent positive activities in your life.
Better sleep, less anxiety, more confidence. And further down the line of dominoes you have better outcomes…A toned body, less body fat, more muscle, more confidence, more happiness, self-love instead of self-hate, better cholesterol, better blood pressure, less medications, jeans you haven’t been able to fit into since college, setting a positive example for your kids, family, friends and co-workers, and maybe being the envy of your friends.
In my opinion, meal prep is the first domino in this chain. Tip it over and the rest can follow.
You Can do Meal Prep!
You can take this step that can lead to big changes in your life. You can reclaim control of your health and your body.
I’m just like you…I feel like my days are dictated by external stuff. Kids, work, house stuff…I NEVER HAVE TIME! But this allows me some control. It will allow you some control too. It will free up time from the rest of your week. Just as important it will free you up mentally because you won’t be thinking about what you are going to do for lunch.
That thing called decision fatigue I mentioned earlier? This helps with that. Big time!
It’s your opportunity to stop being a spectator of your life and to start being the director of it.
Be proactive, not reactive.
BE A DOER, NOT A TALKER.
Meal Prep Unintended Consequences
BE WARNED:
If you do this there will be some unintended consequences.
-People will suddenly become very interested in your lunch every day. “Oh look, John had to go and be healthy again and bring his lunch today.” You’ll wonder, “since when did everyone get so interested in what I eat?!?!”
-Folks will pressure you to “just go out to eat with them this one time.” Unfortunately, misery loves company. Folks will push you to cave. Stay strong! And while it might not seem like it at the time, your resolve will be inspiring them to possibly take the same journey when it’s right for them.
-You may finally achieve that dream body you’ve always wanted. And sometimes reaching a long-term goal can be a bit scary. It’s like being reborn as a new person in an unfamiliar world. You reach this point you’ve dreamed about for years and you think to yourself, “now I have no more excuses to being the greatest version of me possible.” Scary, but exhilarating.
-You might even run out of storage space on your phone from all the selfies you’re now taking because you just look so good! Time to upgrade with some more cloud space.
Meal Prep Final Tips
What to do when you don’t have a microwave?
Due to my day job, I’ve eaten many of my meal-prepped lunches in my car without access to a microwave. I’ve just eaten them cold. Is it ideal? Not really. But it still tastes pretty good to me.
For the record, I have no idea if this is SAFE. While the meat is pre-cooked, I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be preheated back to 165 internal temperature prior to eating it again.
How long can you store meals?
For the past ten plus years that I’ve been doing meal prep, I’ve cooked five meals on a Sunday to last me M-F. I don’t freeze any of these meals, I just store them in the refrigerator.
Maybe I should start freezing the lunches I plan on eating Thursday and Friday but up to now I never have.
But don’t rely on me. For specifics on food safety and storage, refer to these guidelines:
Even though I prep a lot of the same lunches to eat week after week, I do small, easy things to mix them up some. That may include using different spice rubs on my chicken to throwing in one of those individual packets of pre-made guac to mix in with my chicken.
There are a lot of subtle, easy, inexpensive ways to vary your meals slightly while still keeping the overall process simple.
What should I cook?!?!
I didn’t get into what exactly to cook. For now, focus on what you like and make that. Chances are, making your food at home will automatically be healthier than just winging it at work or school. Plus, your portion sizes will be much smaller for the reasons I mentioned earlier.
But if you want one example of a lunch I prep fairly often that is simple, cheap, nutritious, and delicious; here goes:
Buy a few pounds of chicken thighs (I like boneless-skinless), some broccoli and some sweet potatoes. Roast the sweet potatoes and broccoli and grill the chicken thighs.
I usually grill my chicken thighs around 18-20 minutes depending on the size of them and flip them half-way through. I use this homemade seasoning recipe for the chicken which I also add 4 teaspoons of cumin to.
I poke a few holes in my sweet potatoes with a fork and then roast them at 400 for around 60-90 minutes depending on how big they are. And I toss my broccoli in olive oil and season with salt and pepper and roast it at 400 for around 20-30 minutes. I do both at 400 so I can put them in the same oven.
Again, is this the ideal temperature that a trained chef would use to roast these two different foods? I don’t know, and I don’t care!
Portion it all out into individual containers and just like that you have a great lunch for the week.
Personally, I usually vary my lunches on a weekly basis. Meaning, I’ll usually prep the same lunch for an entire week and then switch it up the following week. I’ve found that by prepping one lunch for the week I save a considerable amount of time. And just when I’m starting to get tired of that meal, the week is over and I follow it with a new one. And I tend to vary my dinners more so that keeps me from getting too bored with eating the same lunch everyday for a week.
What about fat loss?
I say over and over that I write about things I’ve tried and done. I’m a broken record. Why? Because it’s important to me to be authentic. I don’t want to lie or act like an expert in things I have no real experience in. And I don’t have personal experience in losing weight because I’ve never really had to go on a diet.
But I will say this, I know it takes a caloric deficit to achieve fat loss. And from being around many folks who have gone through this I know it’s even more important to plan properly when trying to achieve and maintain a caloric deficit. And that makes meal prep, in my opinion, an even more important tool than it already is when you are using it while trying to achieve fat loss.
Things to Avoid in Meal Prepping
Things that could get soggy like salad that has already been dressed.
Things that can stink up an office like fish. (If you work from home then have at it! Although, I’ve found fish don’t reheat very well.)
Things that require a microwave if you don’t have one.
Things that would be kind of gross like cheese if you don’t have a fridge for your meal prep containers.
To Sum it Up
-Keep it simple
-Focus on lunch first. Five meals prepped per week
-Get the tools you need
-Plan your meals – what am I going to eat?
-Have a grocery plan of attack. AKA, a grocery list!
-Set aside an hour for the prep – MAKE IT A HABIT
-Cook your food!
-Portion the food into the food prep containers
There you have it. A few reasons why you should be doing meal prep and a starting point for how. It’s time you take back control of your life and reclaim your body. If you do that, you’ll be amazed at what follows.
