You want to be fit, and healthy. And you want an improved quality of life and live longer. Great!

Yesterday, we discussed the what.

Today, I'd like us to think about a few questions revolving around how much.

Man pressing in the gym.
Photo by Damir Spanic / Unsplash
  1. How much time do you have to put into this?
  2. How much effort are you willing to put into it?
  3. How much money are you willing to spend?

These are not mutually exclusive, and tightly related.

Let's break this down a bit, and look at our diet.

  • Do you have enough time to figure out a menu, go grocery shopping, and do the cooking.
  • Or if you do not have THAT much time, do you have the money to outsource some of it i.e. hire a cook?
  • If you don't have time to figure out what to eat, well, that needs more money too - to spend on a nutritionist or whatever.
  • Do you have the money to buy organic, high quality foods?
  • Are you willing to put in the effort to figure out where these foods are, and procure it?
  • If your cooking is sub-par, do you have it in you to dedicate time and effort to learn cooking?

I am not gonna dive into exercise, sleep, and stress. You get the general idea.

figuring all of it out. or not.

Which diet to follow? Should I go low-carb or low-fat? Or try keto for 6 weeks and then go to a paleo diet for 6 weeks?

Should I join that CrossFit thing? Or go on a walk? Or how about I do 3 days of yoga and 3 days of HIIT, and do some cardio-boxing in the evenings?

Photo by Jamie Haughton / Unsplash

Woah!

We need to evaluate so many of these options, all of which just serve to confuse us more with their "facts".

The missing parts

There's a couple of things missing.

  1. goals. Where are we going.
  2. Is this right (for me)?
  3. Is this healthy? Will this cause more harm in the long-term?

Without #1, we won't be able to answer #2. And most people unfortunately ignore #3, due to sheer desperation. As someone who's been there and done that, I want to see if I can help people avoid some mistakes.

Don't get me wrong. We all make mistakes. We learn a lot from our failures. But there are good failures, and harmful failures. I am strictly talking about the latter.

My coaching philosophy revolves around letting my students interpret things for themselves, allowing them the time and space to figure things out.

In my next post, we will get to the where. For today, see if you can answer some of these how much questions for yourself. A tip - they are not constant. They will ebb and flow.