The K.I.S.S Approach To Health: 5 Simple Ways To A Healthy You‼️
“Keep it simple, stupid!” lacking political correctness, but wise words nonetheless is what it stands for to me.
Along your journey to finding your path in this changed world, I wanted to remind you to simplify. Master the basics of your lifestyle and watch it bleed into all other aspects of your life. Not just a glimpse of it!
K.I.S.S. Rule
It’s a rule that can be applied to anything you pursue whether it be learning a new skill, tackling a new task, or cooking dinner for the family. Here are some tips to apply the rule to your health and fitness.
Focus on Your Food
Eat real food. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store. Make healthy food convenient, and unhealthy food inconvenient (meaning not in your house). If the food in your house can go bad and doesn’t have an unlimited expiration date, then it's probably good for you. If you cannot pronounce your food, it has tons of ingredients, and it has a very long shelf life, it tells you that the food is heavily processed and probably not that good for you.
Keep your food intake simple. Be sure to hydrate and remember that often times when the mind thinks we are hungry, we are actually dehydrated. Unless you are very fit with a very high resting metabolic rate, and a list of great biomarkers, the most important decision you make each day is what you eat. Keep your nutrition simple and strive for nutrient density. If your goal is to lose weight, create a small caloric deficit and focus on eating foods that keep you satiated and feeling full for a longer period of time. Consistency is key and a food log keeps you honest. It’s not a short-term diet, but a long-term lifestyle change.
Improve Your Sleep
Sleep so much so as to not lose your relationships or your job. Sleep is the real deal. Imagine how hot and overworked your car gets after long drives. Even a well-oiled machine will run out of steam if not given the opportunity to rest and recover. Without getting too deep into all of the sleep benefits, I’ll just leave this here: If we have problems with sleep, it doesn’t really matter what we do with training and nutrition. If you want to gain fat and lose muscle, then don’t sleep. Sleep is a truly underrated part of our lives.
Make Exercise a Consistent Habit
You don’t need to set world records right now or pursue PRs, complain that you are “so out of shape”, or “not as strong as you once were”. We get it, trust me! Focus on just showing up. Create a fun and healthy relationship with exercise again. You do not need to set major expectations or overcommit to 7 days a week of exercise. Focus on what your body and mind are capable of. All you have to do is make exercise a choice and actually do it. The best program is the one that you do…consistently.
Keep your program focused on laying a strong foundation. Master the basics and you can always layer on intensity and complexity. Decide what you want. What are you looking for? How can fitness best serve you? Keep your program basic and tailor your routine to inch you closer to accomplishing your goals. Pursue challenges, but don’t be afraid to give yourself some wins along the way.
Keep Challenging Yourself
It’s easy to settle sometimes for good enough or the bare minimum. But we all have a bias. Surround yourself with go-getters, and push each other to lift a little more, go a little faster, or even back off sometimes. Progressive overload is a great way to enhance your fitness. As you develop a consistent training routine, it is important to keep making workouts a little bit harder in innovative and unique ways to change the stimulus and challenge the body and mind on the quest for adaptation. This is where change takes place. A great way to help manage your training is to use to track it so you can refer back to it and compare if you were better/same/ worse across training sessions. Detail loads lifted that can help you make incremental improvements over time.
Turn Temporary Change into Permanent Change
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Upgrading our personal operating system with good choices consistently is the route to more success. Rather than viewing making certain lifestyle changes up until a certain point, why not let them stay for a while? Habits are not a box to be checked after completion, but rather a lifestyle to be lived.
The more disciplined you can be with your choices, the more likely it is to create permanent change. Every action you take is a vote for the person you want to become. Who do you want to be? How do you want to live? What do you want? The answer to these questions lies in your consistent habits and actions. Be sure to live according.
The quote below is one of my all-time favorite quotes. Gets you thinking of not focusing too much on one goal but rather on consistent moment-to-moment habits and decisions. The collection of good habits and taking positive action will lead to an enhanced quality of life. Just by taking that first step!
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”
-Lao Tz