The Pragmatic Approach to Health & Fitness
Hello again to my pragmatic and logical followers and to anyone else who may find this blog entry useful. This is yet another entry defining some of my personal pragmatic approaches to some of life's challenges.
In this entry I'm going to explain the logical approach I took to fitness and how I went from...
The Journey Begins
To understand why I chose to embark on this journey I'll need to tell you about my cousin Kevin. Kevin was someone I will always remember, he was the person who first got me interested in technology, I remember going over to my aunties apartment one night where Kevin was left with babysitting duties and he'd bought his very first computer, it was a 286, he'd need to boot it up with floppy disks just to access DOS, then he'd use manuals of commands to get several components to work just so he could play "UFO enemy unknown", ahhhh those were the days, we'd sit hours together strategizing the different missions in this game, I had so much fun even though in the beginning he banned me from touching the computer, as time moved on he'd teach me slowly how to edit the autoexec.bat file and boot into dos, load the mouse drivers... pretty much all the nerdy stuff from back in the day.
Kevin also taught me about cars, he was the reason why I helped my uncle victor build my first car (Polo Playa 1.4) starting from just the frame, Kevin would bully me the way a big brother would tease his younger sibling throughout his childhood. I looked up to this man, from his commitment to work, family and everyone else around him, I would consider myself lucky if I'd grow up to be half the man Kevin was.
In June 2010 while I was living in London, I received terrible news, Kevin had passed away, he was opening his butchery early hours of the morning and had a heart attack long before anyone would arrive to see him, I was stunned, lost for words, Kevin had left behind his wife and 2 children (one yet to be born), the heart attack had broken his family and ended his life abruptly. At this stage I became very depressed and spent a couple of months thinking about life in general, thinking about Kevin and how something like this could have happened to him, I started thinking about all the possible causes and after much contemplation remembered how health was never a priority for him, he'd eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, a couple of pastries for lunch and downing sodas daily, he'd smoke a pack of 20 a day and he'd have his fair share of alcoholic beverages a little too often, I then noticed how overweight he was. I remember that epiphany as if it was yesterday, I stood up, took off my shirt and stared at myself in the mirror, this is when I saw my body for what it really was.
Before this day of realisation I kid you not I thought I had a decent body, I used to take my shirt off in clubs with confidence, talk to woman on the beach as if I was Casanova himself but after this day it was like I ate the apple from the tree in Eden, I didn't like how I looked, I needed to change and I needed to find the most effective and logical way to do it. It was time to crack down and do some research...
Prioritise
One of the first steps to getting in shape is prioritising, yes, it sounds simple but do yourself a favour, make a list and write down what your top 10 prioritise are, and if Health & Fitness isn't in the top 5 then you wasting your time, in fact anything below your number one priority is already providing you with a scapegoat to use as an excuse not to achieve your maximum potential.
Prioritising is so important as it's one of the basic foundations of discipline which I'll discuss further down, decide for yourself what you want to achieve and what you are willing to do to achieve it.
My Priority number 1 was to have a point in my life I can look back to when I'm retired and say, yes, that year I was in the best shape of my life, I want to look back on photo's to show my grandchildren one day and tell them that that there was their grandfather when he was younger and I want them to respect the effort I put into my body and health, enough to take the journey themselves.
All Diets work
Yes you heard me right, all diets work! they do, the concept of a diet is simple, you applying a set of rules to the way you eat and you committed to regulating and managing the food that passes through your mouth, the key word there is commitment , yes some diets work better than others and all bodies are different blaa blaa blaa, let me tell you this, I went through pretty much every variation of diet programs (Diet Chef, Weight Watchers, Slim Fast, Raw food, Atkins, Dukan, Paleo) in search for the magic one which is going to turn me into Mr Universe in 3 days, there is none!
Ask yourself this, how long have you spent feeding yourself with whatever you were in the mood for? Whether your answer is months, years or decades don't expect to reverse this damage in 3 weeks, choose a diet you like, one with fancy photo's of pretty people in bikinis and stick to it.
But Jeff what about cheat days?
I get asked this all the time, everyone loves a good cheat day, 1 day a week where they can relax and not have to think about food, logically cheat days are a waste of time and the only time I would ever consider having a cheat day was if I'd achieved my goal and then I wouldn't even classify it a cheat day, it would be more like a cheat meal and it would be a naked burger at my local pub with a pint of beer. the only person you are cheating on a cheat day is yourself, your motivation, your commitment and your goals, but I'm not the diet police, if you really want to treat yourself and you choose to do that with junk food then it's your decision, but this is neither logical nor pragmatic.
After my research and attempting many different diets I chose one that sounded right for me, I chose to go with the Paleo diet, and with this big change I chose to stop referring to it as a diet, "diet" sounds too short term, sounds like when you done with it you just going to go back to normal eating, but pragmatically it was this "normal eating" that got you to where you are in the first place so why would I ever want to go back to normal eating? I've been pretty consistent with my Paleo Lifestyle for 7 years and I have yet to miss normal eating, For those of you unfamiliar with the Paleo lifestyle it's a lifestyle which takes the simple concept of what we as a species evolved to consume, so you can pretty much eat anything that grew directly from the ground or had a face. Paleo lifestyle is mainly meat and veg, no processed foods, lots of animal and healthy vegetable fats. If you want to read more one of the best resources out there is http://www.marksdailyapple.com Mark Sisson is 63 years old and committed to the paleo way of life, he is an inspiration to me and his book Primal Blueprint is an amazing start. you really dont need to buy the book though as he has many getting started "Primal Blueprint 101" blogs on his site with enough information to get going.
Lift some weights bruh!
I know you wondering what routine to follow that's going to give you the best results, well just like diets most exercise routines work, here's the secret... Pragmatically as long as you are lifting weights and keep lifting weights 4-5 times per week, you going to see results fast, when I say fast I mean like 6-12 weeks fast, remember you are trying to undo years of putting off exercise completely, don't expect results overnight it just doesn't happen, get your mindset out of the destination and focus on enjoying the exercise, focus on beating the "you" that you were yesterday.
I'm talking about real lifting though, not heading to the gym and picking up a few dumbbells and swinging them around trying to impress everyone around you, nobody cares how much you can lift trust me, what you should be doing is focusing on your form, form counts for 80% of your progress, doing dumbbell curls with 2 kg weights (if that's as heavy as you can go) and perfect form is going to be 1000x better for you than lifting 18kg weights and swinging them around like a monkey. If you not sure about how to achieve the perfect form take advantage of the many resources available to you, you can tap into full workout routines at https://www.bodybuilding.com/ download them, download the app, watch the video's which show you how to lift, grab a staff member at the gym, nobody is going to judge you, if anything they going to respect you more for wanting to do things properly.
Discipline in exercise is one of the toughest obstacles I've had to overcome, in the beginning it's so hard to step out of your comfort zone and head to the gym, everyone around you looks so much better than you, and its hard to stay motivated, even today I carry around a notepad which has my workout for the day written down on it that I pulled from Bodybuilding.com. I've been gyming for 7 years and I still cant achieve anything without following a program, I've tried. Following a program allows me to stay disciplined, a day skipped at the gym is a day I need to earn back, if my program has 5 days a week I will make sure that all 5 workouts are complete each and every week.
Discipline is the key to achieving your goals and discipline requires rules. Pick a workout that works for you, stick to it, push passed your limits and make new limits each and every day.
Make it count
If you understand the way muscles grow it makes it much easier to understand what needs to be done to support this growth, to understand this you need to understand why muscles grow. Think of the following situation...
you decided to be very silly and climb a mountain all by yourself, suddenly a giant bolder fell on top of you, you push and push but you can roll this bolder off of you, that's it, there's nobody around for miles and you have met your fate, you decide to give it one last try, you summon every bit of energy you have and push this bolder until you red in the face, your eyes are becoming bloodshot as you keep pushing, just when your body was about to fail the bolder tilts forward and rolls off of you.
The signal you have just sent to your body was that if you were any weaker than you were that day you would have died, your body is now going to respond to this signal and start working on making sure that if that same situation has to ever happen again you'd be able to handle it, the next time you come accross a bolder of that same size and weight it will be easier to move, thats the product of millions of years of evolution.
fortunately for us in the modern day we would hardly find ourselves in situations like this, a quick emergency dial to 999 would have a helicopter come and rescue you in minutes, no need to even try to push that bolder. Your body still works under those same principles though, only now you can manage them for your own benefit, at the gym, replicate this scenario across your workout and send those signals to your body, you may not have the energy in the beginning but just as your body responds with a plan to increase your strength every single time you completely depleted of energy it will work hard to ensure that the next day you have more energy than the day before, keep pushing these limits and you'll soon see an abundance of energy and strength like you would never believe.
I personally like workouts that are split by primary and secondary muscle groups, my split works like this.
Day1: Chest + triceps
Day2: Back + Biceps
Day3: Shoulders + Core
Day4: Rest/Cardio
Day5: Legs
Day6: Rest/Cardio
Day7: Rest/Cardio
I know alot of gym goers would disagree with this kind of split but I found that pragmatically this works best, as you'd always focus your first half of your workout on maximising the lift for your primary muscle group while "warming up" your secondary, so when you get to the second half of your workout you can push your secondary muscle group all the way to failure, this is both time efficient and effective, and provides me with more than enough rest before the next weeks workout on that same group.
Conclusion
Health & Fitness isn't just something you consider when you need to lose a bit of weight and fit back into that good pair of jeans, this is something that really should be a part of your life. The main comments I hear from people are things like "I dont know where you find the time", I promise you, if you have your priorities set right, you are committed and have made sure that you have the discipline to succeed you will find the time to do it, even if that means making big decisions to change your lifestyle so that it suits your priorities and goals, that's exactly what I did and I have never looked back, take a good look at yourself and decide if you have already achieved your maximum potential, I bet most of you haven't and there's still enough energy left in you to give it another shot. It's not hard, remove the emotional connection, apply logic to your decisions and commit to those decisions.
This blog was inspired by @fitchick so please head on over and read some of her stuff when you have a chance.
