How to Start from Scratch
If I were starting from a place where I hadn’t worked out in years, didn’t think at all nutrition, health, hydration, fitness, or lifestyle, but all of a sudden got a wake-up call from a doctor or friend or life that I needed to turn things around, here’s what I’d do…
- Move my body every day.
- I would do this for 20 minutes to start, and work up to 45 minutes. Four days of the week, I’d just walk. Three days, I’d do something harder: at least one of those days, I’d try to pick up something heavy. At least one of those days, I’d try to get out of breath and sweaty. At least one of those days, I’d try to do something fast.
- Eat as much whole food as possible, and not eat too much.
- Whole foods (i.e. things that are minimally processed) are not morally superior to processed foods, but they are nearly always higher in volume, higher in nutrient density, and lower in calories than processed foods. If I could theoretically grow it, raise it, hunt it, or catch it, that’s what I’d prioritize. I’d eat slowly, with no TV or phone to distract me, and I’d eat until I no longer felt hungry, rather than eating with the goal of feeling full.
- Drink a lot of water.
- I’d start with taking a couple of days to keep track of how much water I was currently drinking, and then I’d aim to increase that by 10-15 fl. oz. per day until I was drinking 1 fl. oz. for every 2lbs of my bodyweight (i.e. if I weighed 200lbs, I would build to 100 fl. oz. of water daily).
- Get outside every day.
- Ideally, this would be a place where I can see the sky and see plants. Animals and water are a bonus. I’d start with 10 minutes per day and build to 20 minutes or more (even in the winter). This could be walking, exercising in any form, sitting, or doing any kind of work.
- Invest in meaningful relationships.
- Friends I care about, family members, neighbors, acquaintances who I think would make good friends one day… I’d set aside at least 10 minutes per week to send texts or make quick phone calls, at least one hour per week to connect with someone in person, and at least 5 minutes of undistracted, in-person connection with each person in my house each day.
- Improve my sleep.
- I’d work up to 6 hours of quality sleep per night to start, and then build to somewhere between 7 and 9 hours, or where I started to wake up well-rested without an alarm clock. Uninterrupted sleep is great, but not always realistic, but I’d set myself up for success by a) doing items 1-5, above; b) avoiding screens for at least 90 minutes before bed; c) avoiding caffeine for at least 8 hours before bed; d) avoiding more than 2 alcoholic drinks within 3 hours of going to bed; and e) sleeping in a dark, cool, quiet room.
- Ignore every other tip/hack/product/supplement/optimization plan out there.
- I would take any influencers off my feed and unsubscribe from any e-mails that didn’t support the above. Instead, I would focus on items 1-6 and see what kinds of changes happened in 90 days of consistency. After that, I might try to optimize some things like exerise and nutrition, but I might just keep it simple. Either way, I likely would be so blown away that I would do those things for the rest of my life.
