Eat good, Train good, Rest Good.
Training religiously for 90 minutes, three times a week, totals 4.5 hours—about 11% of your waking week (assuming 52 hours). No matter how intense those workouts are, they can't outshine the other 89% of your time. During those remaining hours, your eating and resting habits either amplify or undermine your training efforts.
So the key is to get better at the other stuff: rest, and food. When we eat good, train good, and rest good, our bodies naturally become healthy and strong. But lets pay equal attention to the stuff that happens outside of the gym too:
Eat good.
‘Eating good’ does not have to be an act of scientific precision. You do not have to enact the right thing, at the right time, at the right amount all the time. Eating ‘good’ is about not obsessing about being ‘great’ nor avoiding all that is ‘bad’. It’s just about taking the middle ground. That eating ‘good’ is sustainable and doable. Here are some basics:
Hydrate: If your urine is clear, you’re well hydrated. We don’t always distinguish between hunger and thirst very well and we tend to be dehyfdrated and overeat as a result. Drink a glass of water before a meal or a craving. That should satisfy your thirst, and ensure that the amount your eating is the amount of food you actually need.
Food: Try not to eat past 9pm. Anything after 9pm should be healthy snacks like fruit, yogurt and water. Which means, that you’ve eaten sufficiently throughout the day so that you are not hungry and craving late at night. Have breakfast, lunch and dinner. And try not to skip meals—it’ll only show up as a craving at the wrong time.
‘Bad stuff’: I don’t think there’s such thing as ‘bad food’. I think there’s excessive amounts at inappropriate times. Have the ice cream with your loved one. Have the pizza on the date. Food is as much emotion as it is nourishment, so eating well through the week affords you guilt free moments with loved ones.
Rest good.
Lebron James, entering his 22nd year in the NBA and preparing for another playoff run at 40 years of age recently commented on an interview that he doesn’t take supplements, “I take naps. Nothing is better at repair than sleep”.
“Nothing repairs and restores the mind and body like sleep. All other means to do so is just less efficient and more expensive attempts at compensating for what sleep accomplishes.”
Do your best to sleep well. Try to get at least 7 hours of good sleep, and make up for what you don’t in naps. Nothing repairs and restores the mind and body like sleep. All other means to do so is just less efficient and more expensive attempts at compensating for what sleep accomplishes.
Try not to over caffeinate. As a coffee love myself this is difficult to write lol. Keep your coffee to 1-2X/day because caffeine creates false energy by simply blocking fatigue signals in your brain. Our last coffee should be at about 3pm so that the body can wind down 6 hours later (9pm).
With that said, try to abstain and minimize that which robs you of sleep. Resolve existing conflicts as positively and productively as possible. Minimize the conflicts you take on and if you take something on, ensure that it is worth it.
Train good.
I don’t like the whole ‘training is life’ approach. That’s a pro athletes mentality whose livelihood depends on their physicality and isn’t necessarily a ‘one size fits all’ philosophy.
Elders should be strong enough to be physically independent as much as possible, as long as possible. No massive feats of physical strength necessary.
Parents need to be healthy and strong to stay out of the hospital as much as possible. We have children to care for and families to provide for. As the main economic engines of our families, our health is central to our families continued survival.
Young Adults need to learn the process of strength so that it stays with them for life.
Youth need to train so they enjoy their bodies in a healthy way and therefore know the difference between what is good for them and what isn’t.
“Let’s be good for a long time instead of being great for a moment.”
Training isn’t just a matter of achieving peak performance and holding on to it as much as possible. It comes from the basic understanding that we only have one body in our life time, and our experience of the world is dictated by the health of our bodies; the better it’s state, the better the experience.
Strength train 2-3X/week
Run 2-3x/week
Do Muay Thai at Sylvan Lake Muay Thai ;)
Be good.
I just recently spoke with my son and applauded his perseverance. He was upset that he wasn’t great at writing, but I drew his attention to the the hundreds of attempts he made in the last hour to be great at it and told him that his efforts become greatness; that his efforts is what ‘perseverance’ is: A relatively high degree of effort over a long period of time is what precedes greatness.
We train to add life to our years, and years to our life. I hope for all of us to meet in our elderly years with strong postures, outlook, and happiness.
Let’s be good for a long time instead of being great for a moment.
Kru Yai Nick
