If there’s one key to longevity, it’s good health.
There exists, for you, an optimal health. Maybe it’s six pack abs and a cut physique, or maybe not. When you decide to take ownership of your health it’s important to nail down exactly what that optimal health looks like for you. The way to get there is to implement sustainable systems in your life. These systems will help your body naturally transform into the condition it’s meant to be in. That way, once you reach that condition, the systems are in place and maintaining will be the objective.
No diets, no fads, no ’30 Day Challenges’, no cleanses.
Just systems that can be sustained for eternity. Like everything in life, it’s all connected, but approach your health systems in the following three ways: Diet, Fitness, and Mindfulness.
Personal Health: Diet
This is an old cliché, but it’s totally true: you are what you eat. Everything your body does from replenishing blood to growing hair, it all comes from what you eat. I’ve heard it from those more credentialed than I that good physical health is 80% diet and 20% exercise. This makes sense to me when I see laborer’s who bust their ass all day yet still have a pot belly.
The life system I have implemented is largely influenced by Tim Ferriss’s Slow Carb approach. I eat great food 6 days a week, and eat anything I want on that 7th day, which, for me, is Friday. Great food is essentially anything this isn’t, or couldn’t be, white. There are a few more details to that, but it’s the shortest description I can come up with.
Great food also means nutrient dense food. If I tried to build a car in my garage, it would pale in comparison to what a commercial car company can build. But if I grow food in my backyard, it will likely far exceed the quality I find from the commercial food supply system. For that reason, and many others, I spend a lot of energy learning how to grow and raise food at home. I look forward to sharing all that I learn through this website.
To learn more about implementing long term dietary systems into you life to crush the 80%, follow this link:
How to Take Care of Your Health with Diet
Personal Health: Exercise
Exercise should be fun. It blows my mind to find people who hate running yet compete in marathons. If you hate going to the gym, don’t go to the gym. Instead, figure out what you love doing with your body, and do that instead. Invest that gym membership fee into a road bike or ultimate frisbee league. Making a commitment to a fun athletic activity with other people will make it way more likely that you’ll actually show up. And if you enjoy it, you’ll keep showing up.
Again, implement exercise systems into your life that are sustainable for the duration of your life. Walking the dog, playing tennis and gardening are such examples. If you’re struggling with exercise and make a commitment to walk your dog every day I promise you’ll start seeing a positive change. Again, using that example, everything is connected. Your dog will be happy for the walk, you’ll be happy for the walk, your mind will work better and your body will progressively change toward the optimal condition, especially if you combine that daily walk with healthy food.
My job, my hobbies, and my diet are such that I don’t dedicate much of my bandwidth or time to physical conditioning. I call it maintenance mode. I hang right around 150lbs. I run a few times a week, swing a kettlebell once a week and get a weekly dose of situps and pushups.
If you aspire to reach maintenance mode, I’ll help you with the lessons that I have learned to get me there, and to keep me there. Check out this link to learn more:
How To Take Care of Your Health with Exercise
Personal Health: Mindfulness
This is the most overlooked area of personal health, mindfulness. You’ll likely know when you meet someone who has a habit of meditation and reading. The adjectives that come to mind should be: cool, even keeled, kind, insightful. If your objective in life is to find and maintain happiness, mindfulness is for you.
I’m a strong advocate for purposeful meditation and recommend implementing it into your daily routine. I’ve found a lot of joy out of using the Calm app and take delight in the Daily Calm offered through that app. I meditate for 10 minutes in the morning before the rest of the family is awake, and before I start my day. It’s invaluable.
It’s fun to joke about how people we know have lost their mind, but the reality is must less funny. If you don’t use it you lose it. Like a foreign language, or picking the right size socket after glancing at a bolt. There are few things more important than keeping the mind engaged. Learn new hobbies, study something, become the expert in your interests. Rebuild a motorcycle or learn how to paint. It doesn’t matter what it is, it matters that you’re doing it.
I hold my Uncle Jack in high regard. As he enters his 90th year he’s still as sharp as a tack. I aspire to be like that. He purposefully reads every day. He always has a book going, and I always ask him what it is. He’s part of a book group and he meets with them every week to socialize and discuss what they’re all reading together. As he says, his opinions are usually wrong, but at least he’s forming them.
There are lots of ways to keep the mind engaged. As I will eternally explore things, I’ll post about them here:
How To Take Care of Your Health with Mindfulness
The Best Version of YOU
Living healthy is absolutely about longevity, but it’s also about living the best version of you. Looking good and feeling good should be part of life, it’s what life is all about. But it’s still only part of the picture.
To be truly happy it is important to be and to feel healthy, but it’s also important to have your finances in good order, to be able to take care of yourself, and to form meaningful relationships with other people. My goal is to help you recognize that each one of these are connected, and that you can’t dedicate yourself to changing one, without influencing all the others. I capture my thoughts on these matters under: Money, Resilience and Relationships. I invite you to explore each one.
If you agree, perhaps you’d like to join my newsletter so I can provide occasional reminders to focus on what’s important in life, and to develop systems that lead to happiness.