To be a healthy, well rounded individual who has an extraordinary quality of life (our goal for you), we need to fill the following buckets:
- Consistent exercise (in accordance with your needs)
- Quality Nutrition
- Sleep
- Emotional Health
- Utilization of pharmacology if necessary
(These are from the teachings of Dr. Peter Attia)
This is in order of importance as well because of the waterfall fitness effect. If you exercise more consistently, you tend to eat and sleep better. If you’re eating and sleeping better, you tend to be more emotionally healthy. If you’re filling the first 4 buckets, the 5th bucket tends to be a whole lot smaller.
Let’s take a look at each one of these buckets.
Consistent Exercise
Just 3 hours a week of exercise has shown a 50% reduction in all cause mortality as people get older. WHOA. Just 3 hours?! That’s awesome. We should all strive for 3 hours of activity to be our minimal acceptable output per week.
It’s important that we approach exercise with a game plan to help bring up our weaknesses as well. Most of the world is “under-muscled” … as in, they don’t have enough muscle mass. Having more muscle mass has a myriad of benefits and literally no downsides unless it’s taking away from your stability or mobility. Showing up for your strength workouts is one of the best things you can do!
On the flip side, if you do have adequate levels of muscle mass but are lacking aerobic capacity, mobility, or stability, it might be a better idea to lean into our Level 2 workouts most days to help with that.
Be consistent with your exercise, and work what you need to work!
Quality Nutrition
There are 3 types of people in the world these days… under nourished, over nourished, and adequately nourished. Our goal for you is to be in the adequately nourished category. This will look different for each individual, but being adequately nourished means you’re consistently at a healthy weight and are eating a wide variety of foods to get all of the macronutrients and micronutrients you need. There are a variety of ways to get there, and if you’re in need of help with your nutrition, we’re here for you! Email [email protected]
Sleep
The average American is only getting 6 to 6.5 hours of sleep per night. This is down over 1 hour from 1958. Current research shows us that upwards of 60% of Americans aren’t getting enough sleep!
I’m not saying you need 9 hours of sleep per night, but you do need to strive for 7-7.5 hours at least. Take a look at your sleep habits honestly, and look where you can make a change. For most of us? It’s going to be turning off the television and the phone before sleep. I don’t know how many times I’ve wasted 30-45 minutes at night scrolling Facebook and Instagram even though I’ve seen everything already that day… that’s almost an hour of sleep I’m losing!
Aim to go to sleep 15 minutes earlier tonight. You’ll be surprised how easy it can be!
Emotional Health
“There is no age that has a monopoly on misery.”
It doesn’t matter what age you are, you could potentially be miserable. Without being emotionally healthy, we can’t be healthy.
I said above that there’s a waterfall fitness effect that can improve your emotional health, but at the end of the day some of the objectively fittest people in the world are still emotionally unhealthy. There’s a suite of tools we can use to help improve our emotional health, but the best place to start is by working with a mental health professional. I’ve been going to therapy once or twice a month every month since December of 2020, and it’s done wonders for my emotional health. If you need a starting point, I can help you.
Pharmacology
While the big craze in the fitness industry is to get people off all medications, use no supplementation, and exercise our way to making big pharma declare bankruptcy, the reality is that even healthy people need pharmacology. There’s ZERO shame or guilt in utilizing modern medicine to help you stay your healthiest.
Take me, for example. I’m objectively healthy. Oh, except that little gene that my parents passed to me that gives me hilariously high blood pressure. Doesn’t matter how solid my aerobic capacity is… my blood pressure can be at hypertension levels. Rather than beating myself up about something I literally can’t avoid, I take 25mg of hydrochlorothiazide every morning, and all is well.
Sure, we absolutely CAN out exercise our way from medications, or get our nutrition in order to prevent diabetes, and even get people off of blood pressure medications. But for some, it’s not an option. That’s where pharmacology can step in if it’s necessary.
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You have some buckets to fill, and our goal here at Yellow Rose is to help you fill them. We start with consistent exercise and see where that takes us. Let’s get to the gym and fill up those buckets. If you need help, please let us know. We’re literally here for you!
-Coach Clark
