Five Steps to a Healthy Life

There is an overwhelming amount of information on how to be stronger, fitter, and more healthy. Every day, you will see a 30 second sound bite on how to lead a better life with a new diet or exercise program. Who knows what to believe? There is also small populations of people who lived very long and healthy lives, and you have to wonder why is that. They didn’t have the internet to guide them, so how can that be? It is very hard to tell the difference between someone who is simply looking to transfer some of your wealth into their pocket versus someone who is really trying to help you feel better. How do you fight through all of this? Simply follow these five steps.

1. First, if you think anyone’s 5 easy steps will meet your every need and turn you into tall, well muscled athlete, you are crazy. The methodology to solve any problem is the same: define your problem(s), research and gather all the information you can using well qualified opinions and data, develop a plan and try it, check the result and repeat the process until you get the desired result.

Your current health, the area in which you live, the food that is available to you, your financial status, and many other factors all play a part. Don’t believe me, any one source on the internet, your doctor, or your friends as the single defining source. Focus on things that are not opinions, but are backed up by real data and proof. Anyone can write or say anything, and many sources of information are driven by a financial return that may or may not be aligned with what you really need. To blindly follow what your doctor says, to take a supplement because it has a slick add that says it will improve your health, to ingest herbs recommended by the local hippie, or to jump on the latest diet all fall into the same bucket of dirty water. Those things may or may not actually help you. For every problem, please, do your own research and ask your own questions, and judge proven results.

2. Convert to a plant based diet. There is overwhelming research that says people with plant based diets on average will live longer, and perform at a higher level in athletics. 90-95% of what you take in should be plant based. Beyond that you need to eliminate processed and genetically modified foods as much as possible, like enriched wheat flour, snack foods, any kind of soda, fast foods, sugars and artificial sugar substitutes. By converting to whole grains and eating the entire fruit, you add healthy fiber to your system and increase total intake while reducing calories consumed. There is so much information available it could be overwhelming, but if I had to pick one source of information I would go with Blue Zones, by Dan Buettner. This is a study of pockets of people with extreme extended life cycles, what they eat and how they live, and what all these pockets have in common. It is not extreme like many sources, and is focused on overall well being within the area where people live. The Mediterranean Diet has been offered as a benefit to type 2 diabetes patients from the American Diabetes Association, as another example of this.

3. Burn at least 750 active calories per day. This can be anything, from work, to walking or running, biking, or any combination. Its important that you do what you enjoy, because the key here is that you need to do it every day. There just is not that many sedentary lifestyle 100 year olds on the planet for a reason; the key is to move your ass. Not only is this healthy, but it creates a sense of accomplishment and progress that becomes a reward system in your brain. When this becomes a habit, your brain will signal if you are being lazy and calm you when you complete the work. A easy visual reward system will help your brain motivate you. Consider getting a motion watch, like a Fitbit. They are dirt cheap, between $25-50, and count your step motion. If you can, take it to the next step and get a watch with heart rate data, and even a GPS to track motion. The top of the line feedback system is a Garmin, that will record your heart rate and analyze resting and active states, and also includes proprietary software that analyzes the state of stress, along with steps and mileage you do while running, hiking, or biking. Track these things and enjoy the process.

4. Train your brain to be rewarded for right things. The brain drives addiction, rewards your achievement, makes you stop at In N Out, and causes almost all diets to fail. Do not underestimate or forget about it. You are basically an animal, and your instinct is that success will give a positive reward, and failure will give a negative reward. If you feel like you are making progress, things become easier and you tend to do more. By eating the right food and burning active calories, you will see outcome based results. Positive things will happen, like body shape change, A1C drops, blood pressure drops, weight drops, and you will feel more energy. Don’t skip the step of rewarding yourself. Write down the change and track the result, or note how your waist size changes in pants you wear. Learn to associate doing 15000 steps per day with feeling healthy, and record the improvements in your appearance. Take a picture when you hike to a place you previously could not make. Success breeds success.

As important as the feeling of daily accomplishment is to learn to avoid artificially enhanced pleasure activities. Your brain naturally seeks these out, and may or may not align with your sense of accomplishment. Shooting heroin falls in the same bucket at eating a cheeseburger with fries and a shake. They produce an instant reward in your brain, soaring the pleasure meter to its max. You will find yourself willing to sacrifice the sense of accomplishment and well being for the sense of pleasure, and in most cases that is destructive. By recognizing how your brain reward system work, you can work to eliminate bad habits and increase good habits.

5. Foster a sense of community. Whether a friend, a spouse, or relatives, it is important to foster a sense of well being with other humans. The saying ‘you are your friends’ is true. If you hang out with a hard drinking, hard smoking crew that eats at the bar, guess what you are going to do? If you hang out with VR gamers that lock themselves in a room eating junk food all day, how is that going to turn out? If you get on a biking forum and find friends that like to hit the trails with you, the result will be not only be pleasurable but will produce healthy change. Not everyone is going to want to live healthy lifestyle, but you can seek out areas and people where those things are present.

An anecdote for life: Someone in my circle suffers from type 2 diabetes, and claims to spends $thousands per month on medications and supplements. That person did an extended stay trip of a few weeks to Ecuador, saw a weight loss drop of ‘20 lbs’ and significant improvement in A1C. That result was attributed to only whole and natural foods being available, and being required to walk everywhere. That person came back to US and went right back to the old ways. Well, here is some news: you can walk and get exercise in the US, and you can also eat healthy here. You don’t have to move to Ecuador.