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Words to the wise

Simplify Your Health & Fitness Habits

By Chris on Simplicity

This is a guest post by Chris Stroud. You can read more from Chris at Live Simply and find him on twitter @livesimplyblog

I am in love with the idea and practice of living a simpler life. It allows me to avoid much of the superfluous distractions that surrounds me and allows me to focus more on the things in life that are most important to me; Health and Fitness being towards the top of that list.

In my last 10 years of Strength and Conditioning I have done Bodybuilding, got a degree in Kinesiology, currently compete in Crossfit and Olympic Lifting, and over the last 3 years have maintained 7-8 percent bodyfat. The most important thing I have learned from these experiences is that simpler is almost always better.

Instead of adding complexity to the way you manage your Heath and Fitness here are 5 ways to make it simpler.

1 – Think Long Term. The underlying purpose of why we train is so that we can maintain able bodies and minds for as long as possible. The sports we play, exercise methods we us, and dietary advice we adhere to are habits we form so that can live longer and be happy. When deciding how to eat and how to train take into consideration the long term feasibility, economics, and benefits by doing your due diligence by researching before partaking. This will make things simpler by being able to sift through the plethora of bull shit that is all to prevalent in the Health and Fitness industry.

2 – What you put in your pie hole. You know exactly what you should be eating. Food that is as close to its most natural state as possible. Meat, Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, and Seeds. If you can dig it from the ground, pick it from a tree, or kill it with a stick then its likely a healthy choice. it gets increasingly complex with you start introducing supplements and processed food to your diet while attempting to maintain a certain level of well-being. Focus on developing habits and a lifestyle that makes it easy to eat natural foods. Only keep natural foods in the house, go to farmers markets, and only drink water, black coffee, and tea.

3 – Maintain your Strength. Remember, we train so keep able mind and bodies as long as possible. A very important tool we have for accomplishing that is to develop and preserve as much strength for as long as we can. There is a myriad of different protocols to build strength and a good program will at the very least have a good portion of these core exercises.

Weightlifting: Squats, pressing, and deadifts.
Gymnastics: Pull ups, Push ups, and maybe air squats.
Endurance: Swim, Bike, Run, or Row.

This is a overly simplistic way to evaluate a exercise program, even for this article, but that's the point I'm advocating. Simplicity! A simple routine is more manageable in the long term than perpetually compounding it with complexity. You should aim to be able to do this activities for your entire life.

4 – Remove temptations from the Kitchen. Here are a few rules I follow that help me stay paleo.

Only keep Paleo food in the house.
When I want a treat i'll go out, eat it, but wont bring it home.
Always keep cooked meat or marinated meat in the fridge. I find that having protein around and easy to get to keeps me eating clean.
Go to the farmers market once a week and get what ever is in season.

5 – Enjoy it. You are lucky to be a healthy, athletic, vigorous person. Your health is one of the great joys of being alive. Do fun things like taking adult gymnastic classes, dance lessons, hiking, swimming, rock climbing, paddling, and just learning new sports and skills in general.