A recent study highlights the effect of lack of sleep on increased cravings and calories from snacking.
“Energy and carbohydrate intakes from snacks increased in association with sleep restriction”
If your goal is to lose fat and/or improve the quality of your diet, dial in your sleep.
-J
What are your current struggles with improving your health and fitness?
Hit reply to let me know.
I wish I could say I’ll reply with something you can act immediately. But it’ll likely be a follow-up question so I can better understand your situation.
-J
Why don’t people like working out? The most frequent reasons I hear are related to exercise being boring and repetitive.
I see two options around this.
1. Make the workouts more exciting. Try different styles, classes, equipment and whatnot.
The downside of making workouts more exciting is that the boring and repetitive part of workouts is what gets results.
And if we swap those three for excitement, there’s a chance we reduce the effectiveness of the actual workout.
2. Accept that workouts won’t be fun. You might never like it or look forward to it.
But if you put up with boredom and repetition for 30 minutes twice or thrice a week, you’ll get all the benefits you’re looking for.
The immediate boost in mood and the long-term physical and mental upsides that allow you to get more out of the things you enjoy.
-J
Start by answering these three questions:
1. Why do you want to start exercising? Aka, what’s your goal and the why behind it? The more meaningful your reasons for starting, the easier it is to stick with exercise once the novelty/excitement/whatever wears off.
2. What kind of exercise do you enjoy, if any? Ideally, you’d lean into this as much as possible. But sometimes, the exercise you enjoy isn’t possible right now, or the exercise you enjoy won’t get you to your goal.
3. What’s the most likely time in the day that you’re going to show up to workout? Knowing what you know about yourself, your lifestyle and your schedule. Make it as frictionless as possible.
And then, a few more tactical thoughts:
– ANYTHING is better than nothing. 10 minutes a day x 5 days a week x 48 weeks = 40 hours a year
– When I was pressed for time earlier this year, I did 5 minutes of kettlebells for every hour of sitting. One of my clients only does 15-20-minute workouts twice a week. It adds up
– Can you increase your exercise by combining it with other tasks? I.e. On most days, I cycle to get the kids from daycare vs driving
-J
Almost everything works when you aim to improve general health, fitness and strength.
Pick a plan, or do random workouts. Both work as long as you progressively challenge the qualities you want to improve.
The guardrails go up when the goal is more specific.
That multi-day hike that’s coming up? You need a plan that challenges the lungs, muscles, and all the rest with carry-over to the task you want to complete.
Generic workouts for generic goals. Specific plans for specific goals.
Both have their place. What you do right now depends on your current goals.
-J
“Workout companies and fitness studios are constantly competing for business with all sorts of gimmicks and tricks to draw people in.”
“Fitness is experienced in this country [Joonas: the USA, but could be said of any country in the West] mostly as a consumer product, so the rules of the markets apply to exercise almost more than the rules of science or health,”… “There is this constant cycle of exercise trends mostly because there’s the need to keep creating new products and flashy experiences for people to spend money on.”
“If the point of your workout is to get in cardiovascular activity, the kind of workout that you’re ultimately doing isn’t all that different, whether you’re running on a treadmill or dancing around in a studio”….“It’s not so much a different exercise modality that’s being sold to you as much as it is a different way of doing it or a different package,”
Change what you do if you want to try something new. Perhaps to keep things interesting.
But the new thing isn’t going to be any more effective than the old thing. It’s the same thing with a new label.
What matters is showing up and doing the work. Regardless of the label.
-J
Come January 1st, a bunch of folks are kicking off the year with a diet. Cutting carbs and whatever else is in vogue.
Maybe you’re one of them.
Most will fail to make noticeable progress before they give up. Those who do see results will revert to their starting point within the next six months. Only to repeat that cycle the following year.
Because they don’t have the patience to slow down.
There’s nothing wrong with restrictive, short-term diets.
As long as you’ve first built a solid foundation of healthy eating habits.
And have a firm grasp on managing your sleep, recovery and rest.
So, if you have January 1st circled in your calendar in red, consider these two options:
a) Go hard, and maybe get some good results quickly. And likely revert to your starting point by June.
b) Go slow, build the foundation, and see average results in the short term. And then witness those results compound over the year as your foundation strengthens.
Your call.
-J
“Compared with men, they [women] report higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression and burnout, while also performing the lion’s share of care work. They feed their families while food costs soar… Running alongside this imbalance are the familiar pressures to enhance the body, radiate poise, master impulses (hunger, rage) and perfect the contortions required of the double standard. It is no wonder, in this field of outsized expectations, that wellness has found a ready market among women.”
“Wellness, she argues, presents collective social ills as problems for the individual to solve through some alchemy of consumer behavior. Joining a union would arguably deliver greater benefit than downloading another meditation app, but the wellness market presents the latter as a logical solution to work-related stress and deteriorating mental health.”
“Everything about the language of wellness is designed to push the goal lines further and further out of reach,” she says. “You never arrive at a point to go like, ‘Oh, I’m well now.’ There’s always something else we could be doing.” As a result, there is no resting place because we can never fully restore what’s been lost, and there is always a greater state of enhancement to attain.”
-J
You strength train because you care about your health.
It’s not easy. You wouldn’t consider it as your favorite pastime.
You might not even enjoy it.
But you value the physical and mental benefits.
So you keep showing up.
-J
These studies are about young female cross-country skiers. But they highlight a trend I’ve noticed coaching women over 40 who are into running and other recreational endurance activities:
Not eating enough calories to support their activities. Especially around training time.
This can hurt your performance and recovery. And when you’re not getting enough food when you need it, it’s easier to make poorer food choices later on.
“Young female cross-country skiers had similar EA (energy availability) and CHO intake over four training periods. Both EA and CHO intake were at suboptimal levels for performance and recovery.” Here’s the study.
This second study highlights one potential solution to eating enough for your goals—having adequate nutrition knowledge.
“In conclusion, young female cross-county skiers had difficulties meeting recommendations for optimal EA and carbohydrate intake. Better nutrition knowledge may help young athletes to meet these recommendations.” Here’s the second study.
-J