Habits for a Healthy Life

Plan to succeed. Those who are successful aren’t necessarily smarter or luckier than anyone else, but they do tend to be more disciplined. Not getting where you want? Plan to make changes. If you’re one of the majority of Americans who’d like to get in shape, but hasn’t been successful with radical or quick fix solutions, there’s good reason for it. If you make a short-term change, in general, you get short-term results. If you want sustained results, you need to change habits. Try these core habits for 90 days to establish a sustainable plan to succeed.

It takes about 30 days to make a habit or change a habit and about 90 days to see major results. The first month is difficult because it’s new. Think about it first. Is the desired result worth the effort to elicit the change? You wouldn’t buy a house or car without considering first whether or not you could afford it. Well, maybe you would. Sadly, many of us do.

We do the same thing with our bodies. We don’t have a plan. One day we wake up and we’re 30 lbs overweight, don’t like the way we look, and have no energy. We want better results, but that takes way too much work. Maybe if we cut out one food group. If we only eat meat , or salad, or just drink juice or a shake for a month. Amazingly, it works…for a month. Then we go back to our old habits and we’re back where we started-we wish-now worse than before. Weigh the cost. Is the desired change worth the necessary effort? For those of you who have never been in shape, let me tell you that it is. Take a month and test it out. Make sustainable changes to the level with which you’re comfortable and see how you feel.

We are creatures of habit. From the time we can walk, we’re in the habit of eating while watching television. When the television comes on, we feel hungry. The flip of a switch triggers our appetites. Flip that habit. Get on a treadmill when you watch your program instead of sitting on the couch or in bed eating. Do the math on this one. Say that by making this one change, you eat 250 less calories per day and burn 250 more-a swing of 500 calories per day. You do this five days per week 50 weeks out of the year. That adds up to 35 lbs. (When you consider that the norm isn’t to stay the same weight, but to slowly gain over time, it ends up closer to 30 lbs.) Still-30 lbs in one year! Maybe this will get boring after some time. Shouldn’t you add some variety? Sure. First, establish some core exercises and dietary habits. Then add on accessory foods and exercises as you find the interest or time. Exercise and diet are not one-size-fits-all. Get the core down cold, then add accessory as time permits and interest dictates. Have a tough week? Stick to just the core. Have more time? Add on.

CORE EXERCISE ROUTINE

Some people like cardio. Some prefer strength training. I happened to go back to the gym I had gone to as a teenager around 10 years later and noticed something remarkable. The people who had regularly done strength training had aged very little. Those who only did cardio, however, aged like everyone else, even though they worked out just as hard as those doing strength training. I believe there is something to that. Whether the strength training triggers our bodies to continue pumping out higher levels of growth hormone or something else entirely, the results are legit. Strength training helps keep us young.

It is taken as fact among weightlifting circles that squats and power cleans will naturally boost testosterone levels. Power cleans aren’t the safest exercise for a novice to take on, but squats are something we do every day when we stand up and sit down. A group of middle-aged men with symptomatic testosterone deficiency came to me for treatment. Rather than start immediately with replacement therapy, we tried a squat regimen. We checked testosterone levels before and after six weeks of a body-weight squat regimen. The average man experienced a boost of his total testosterone level of 20% with even more substantial increases in free testosterone levels. To achieve maximum results with minimum effort-i.e.-maximum efficiency, I’ve tried a number of exercise regimens. The regimen I found most efficient is an undulating periodization routine. Periodization refers to adjusting the weight to keep it new enough to continue to stimulate the body to change. For example, on week 1, you lift a weight you can get 10 times on the first set. Week 2, you increase the weight by 5%-to something you might get only 8 times on the first set. Week 3, you got to 6 times. Then you start over. You can do something similar on cardio days. One day you work on speed, not going as far, but pushing your pace. Another day, you go slower, but longer. Another day, you may do intervals (moderate intensity with short high-energy bursts) or even reverse intervals (high-intensity with short lower-energy rests) as an advanced technique.

The other thing to consider is that if you’re doing strength training correctly, you also get a cardiovascular workout. How can your cardiovascular system not get a workout in moving something heavy? You could make a very strong argument that strength training gives you a superior cardiovascular workout to regular cardiovascular training.

Your maximum marginal gains (when the percentage gain of one day exceeds the percentage gain of the previous) for most people will be at around four days per week of strength training. The maximum absolute gains will be at six days per week. Even God rested one day. You should too. In referring to workout regimens, we’ll discuss a 4:2 program, meaning four days of strength training per week and two days of cardio, and a 3:3 program, meaning three days of each. There are four different strength days, so in the 4:2 program, they are all done each week. In the 3:3 program, they are staggered, with one day extending into the next week.

Most of the core exercises can be done with a pull-up bar, a bench, and a set of dumbbells. Strength training days will be listed as S1, S2, S3, and S4. Cardio days will be listed as C1, C2, and C3. We’ll focus first on the core. For the first month, focus on getting the core down as a habit. You can add as much or as little from the accessory exercises as you like later.