Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
When I ask people what their main goal is, they often say:
“Santo, I just want to be healthy so I can ________ (Insert task, or responsibility here).
For some, their interest is to:
Be able to watch their kids graduate
Be a badass in the board room and on the gym floor
Look like they lift
Fit into their suits so they don’t have to get new ones
Throw down hard workouts until further notice
The approach to do all of those things are going to be individualized, with varying degrees of somewhat similar approaches.
For example:
What will work for someone who is a business owner with no kids & has a pretty vibrant social life, won’t work for a Mom who works from home 2-3 days per week with a husband who travels frequently for work.
In most cases how we define “health” is usually associated with looking:
Lean
Athletic
Strong
Happy
A high degree of vitality
Health is much more complex than this short list.
The results of the bullet points above comes from more than eating well & working out, too.
For this article, let’s define “Health” as someone who has a positive balance/relationship in these facets of life:
1) Relational health - Having strong bonds with those you love & have meaningful relationships with.
2) Physical health - Being in good physical condition & overall health.
3) Mental health - Be attentive, concentrated, and reflective. Acquiring knowledge, retaining information, and adeptly resolving challenges.
4) Environmental health - Having surroundings that are conducive to feeling appreciated, safe, welcomed & heard.
5) Emotional health - Experiencing, expressing & exploring different types of emotions in an appropriate way.
6)Spiritual health - Having a deep sense of purpose, meaning & fulfillment.
Not only are these interconnected, they’re also influenced by one another and can be driven by consumption of different:
Food
Individuals
Experiences
Sounds
Environments
This can look like:
Someone coping with ice cream after a break-up or while grieving the loss of a relationship. (Emotional & relational lever gets pulled that influences physical & mental).
Moving to a new neighbourhood outside of the city & meeting new neighbours who are into stargazing. (Environmental lever gets pulled that influences a spiritual & relational lever)
Hard workout that induces endorphin rush that puts you in a positive mood throughout the day (Physical level that gets pulled that positively influences your relationships & mental health)
When we associate & align ourselves with the environments & people who have similar goals, principles & values, the likelihood of us sticking to that lifestyle is much higher than if we were to go at it alone (1)
When in pursuit of a meaningful life with a clear purpose, we can run into challenges that require us to reframe those challenges into solutions that promote action & help us overcome those challenges.
This keeps us motivated to continually pursue our goals & be successful.
For some coping mechanisms can be food, work, a hard workout, or being social.
For others, it can be not eating, avoidance tendencies, and being anti-social.
When one of those six facets mentioned above is experiencing a challenge, the solution or way we can improve the status of that particular facet can sometimes be hiding in one of the other levers.
How so?
Lets unpack that.
To achieve a goal of improved body composition, you could:
Strength train 2 - 3x a week
Drink 1/2 - full bodyweight in ounces of water each day
Get 7-9 hours of restful sleep each night
Take 7-10k steps every day
Maintain a caloric deficit
And see the results you wanted.
But to do that,
you had to give up your :
Favourite places to visit
Late night fun to get to bed
Friends who lived a different lifestyle
Habits that were holding you back
You may feel great physically, but the shift in lifestyle is one where you’re losing the relationships & environments that you’ve built and enjoy experiencing
So what about:
Weeks 13-25?
After a week long vacation?
Getting sick for 10 days?
After you hit the number on the scale you want to be?
What happens then?
Do you simply go back to the way things were as if the “change” you made never happened?
Of course you don’t… well, completely.
Most of the challenge comes from looking to see the results you’re looking for, in an unrealistic time period.
If it took you 2-3 years to put that weight on, you can bet that it will take longer than that influencers 12 week program they’re selling on instagram.
Here’s why:
The weight you put on isn’t just from food.
It’s also from:
Poor sleep hygiene
Not strength training
Drinking more coffee than water on a daily basis
Aiming to sleep enough just to get by
Yo-yo dieting because you’re tired of buying new clothes
A lack of movement
When we can create a lifestyle that allows us to still have the things in our life that we appreciate, it provides a more gentle approach that you can actually enjoy & stick to for the long term.
For example:
In early 2023, I was working out for 12+ hours a week, which included:
6 hours of intense boxing practice
3 hours of intense strength training
3 + hours of cycling to get to work
I weighed 151 Lbs, and looked probably the best I’ve ever looked physically, but:
My business was not growing
I ate whatever I wanted
I lived in a state or perpetual soreness & not in the degree in which it was fun to complain about
I couldn’t sleep well from being constantly over trained
Fast forward to 6 months later, I turned the fitness dial down from 10, down to what I would consider a 5-6, and started turning the nutrition & recovery dial up a bit higher (around the same, 5-6) while also aiming to be more social.
My workout time was no more than 4 hours per week
I ate whatever I wanted, but I tracked it to stay in a caloric deficit relative to my activity level
I slept much better
My business grew because I had more time to work on it
I was 153Lbs & looked similar physically
Was stronger
Actually had a life outside of the gym
Creating a sustainable lifestyle
In strength training, there are certain laws we follow to make continuous progress. One of them is known as:
“The law of diminishing returns”
This law states that you will no longer continue to see the return on your efforts you once saw, if you continue to use the same stimulus or efforts on the strength floor.
You’ll either have to:
Use a heavier weight
Perform MORE repetitions
Change the difficulty of the exercise
Perform it under fatigue
For you to still see gains from that particular stimulus.
The same law applies this idea of the different facets of health.
You’ve heard it before:
“You can’t out train a bad diet”- Joe Wicks
Though this isn’t entirely true, it is definitely difficult to do given the other responsibilities & tasks we have to do in our day to day to live a fulfilling life.
Though it would be nice to eat whatever we want, always, the rest of the time would have to be spent moving to combat the additional caloric intake.
The results would not be guaranteed as then you would start getting into the conversation of overuse & overtraining & whether or not you’re able to recovery appropriately.
Instead of reaming on the fitness lever at 100% to try & see the results you’re looking for, you’d have a much better quality of life if you were to pull on all levers at 70%-80% effort.
Doubling down on fitness to try & overcome poor dietary habits is a losing game, one in which leads people to the decision that “nothing works”
When our physical exterior begins to change, how we see the world begins to change, as well as how the world sees us.
Your:
Perception
Priorities
People
Personality
Performance
All begin to shift in a direction that is a more aligned with that new identity of who you’re becoming & is highly individualized according to what a person considers to be “healthy”.
Our body is a complex system that is dependant & intertwined with itself in many different ways.
That’s how we’ve survived millions of years to get us here, to where we are now.
When it comes to health, the goal is not to trade off being obese for being lean & miserable.
I’ve personally been on both sides of the equation, and the more enjoyable experience was the one where I chose to be happy (Spoiler - I was happy in both scenarios).
We’re not a prisoner to our current circumstance regarding the relationship we have with our body.
We made a series of choices that resulted in the current state we’re In & can also make choices to make our way out of it, too; or at least change how we perceive it.
The decisions we’ve made in the past are what brought us to this point, where we may of had to:
Stay up late nights to build our business
Have more alcohol than we intended to build key relationships with those to insure success longterm with a deal
Sit at our desk for countless movement-less hours to get a presentation done
Eat more take out than home cooked meals.
Honouring & thanking your past self for that sacrifice is part of expressing gratitude for those decisions.
You did what you had to do to get you to where you wanted to be.
Now is the time to focus on how you want to experience that success.
Will it be:
Heaving for air as you climb the stairs?
Not being able to chase your kids?
Using a seatbelt extender on a plane for family vacations?
Making sure you pack your insulin wherever you go?
Similarly to before, you get to decide.
If you’re interested in having the conversation around what health means to you & how/what levers you need to pull to get you to that goal, click the “apply now” link below this article.
I’d love to have that conversation with you & hear what health means to you!
(1) Haidari, A., Moeini, M., & Khosravi, A. (2017). The impact of peer support program on adherence to the treatment regimen in patients with hypertension: A randomized clinical trial study.
Iran Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research, 22(6), 427–430.
https://doi.org/10.4103/ijnmr.IJNMR_16_16