Hey, F your diet. Yeah, I said it.
We are in the era of diets. Everywhere you look is some sort of new or old diet promising something. Many of these diets are promising weight loss and happiness. Somehow over the years (media, marketing, fashion) weight loss and happiness have been tied together. Well, I am here to say F that noise. Enjoy your food, create a healthy relationship with it, remove guilt, remove stress from your dietary decisions. This is not a jailbreak to start indulging like a bratty 8 year old who can’t eat anything green, I assume I am speaking to adults. Be an adult when it comes to eating but be a kid when it comes to movement.
I know people love to say, I mean I hear this all the time, “you can’t out train a crappy diet”. As if movement should not be focused on.
The simple fact is, a majority of us need to move a lot more than we currently do. We are constantly looking for more ways to move less. How can I do that in less time? This would be great if you were creating more time for movement outside of the gym, however, it usually only leads to less moving outside the gym and in your everyday life. It is quite the scheme employers have cooked up, get people to feel guilty about not working so that they work even more and move even less for the same pay. Bravo.
This lack of movement has led to more time sitting and more time thinking, thinking about how out of shape we have gotten. We blame the rice, we blame the bread, we blame it on the goose, yet in reality, for most people, those are not the issue. The issue is, that out of every 168 hours we move for 2.5 hours if we follow the guidelines for exercise. We sleep for 56 hours if we follow the guidelines (8 hours of sleep per night). This would leave us with 109.5 hours left in the week. Subtract 40 from that (amount of time most salaried jobs pay you for) and we are left with 69.5 hours. That is a lot of time, and since most of us do not actually meet the exercise guidelines or sleep guidelines that number is even higher. If those 69 hours are filled with no movement………… Duh right?
Movement is the most important behavior habit one can have. If you become a fanatic of movement and make moving well and often a priority then a lot of other dominoes will begin to fall.
Where to start? Start with creating the easiest possible wins ever. Gradually start to add a minute more of movement per day. Each week increase the weekly volume by 20%. Mark on your calendar, or in your phone or tell a friend. Create a community out of it. Win the day every day. Life will happen, and when it does, don't be discouraged, just hop back on the wagon and continue ahead. When you are sitting, train your mind to think about movement, not that boring ass salad you plan on having for lunch.
Our biology evolved with movement at its base. To strip it of movement is to leave it exposed to the extremes. Loss of cognition, weight gain, discoordination, all is a result of not moving enough. This is not life being unfair, it is life being life. Move more, future you depends on it.