Many people who are high achievers have an incredible ability to focus on one thing until it is done.

An all or nothing approach is very popular as it works on projects. However, with health and fitness it usually ends up with burn out and another failed attempt at getting back into shape.

What I would like to talk about today is a slightly different approach. Rather than pursuing absolute perfection with diet, lifestyle and exercise, perhaps we can look at a way to get 10% better or one notch closer to what science considers optimal.

Science has proven that the following pillars for optimal health are true

1- For fat loss we need a minimum of 5 hours of exercise each week

2- Our bodies function optimally when we eat a balance of proteins, fats and carbs every 2-4 hours

3- Our mental and physical recovery is best when we have 8-9 hours of deep sleep every day. Going to bed and waking at the same time

4- We stay hydrated and drink our body weight in lbs x 0.033 each day.

5- We manage stress best when we have a recovery strategy in place- meditation, massage, relaxing music before bed, writing a journal to externalize our thoughts.

In an ideal world we would do these all the time. The reality is that we all have many things going on in our lives that we do for a sense of purpose and pleasure. Some healthy and some less healthy. Thankfully this is part of being human and makes life exciting and worth living. How boring it would be if we were all machines that followed an identical routine!

If we follow certain habits that are not so healthy and we can see the consequences of these choices start to become a reality then we eventually get to a place where we feel we need to change things as the consequences of not changing scare us or is emotionally painful.

Most of probably get between 4-6 hours of sleep a night, drink more coffee than water, exercise far too little, are highly stressed and eat far more processed carbs than we do veg and protein. (Oh and the odd bottle of wine or three).

The next challenge we face here is how to tackle these habits that have negative consequences on our lives. We can try to change them over night with a hardcore health and fitness overhaul. With a strict regime your likelihood of failing is at least 80% and leads to guilt and lower self esteem.

Or...

Embrace our human side and the fact we will make mistakes. Trying something a little less dramatic and sustainable. If we can move one notch closer to what is "optimal" then that is an improvement that is more likely to stick.

For example try the following

1- Exercise 1 hour more a week than you currently do. See if you can stick to that extra hour for 2-3 weeks...rather than 6x a week...

2- Go to bed 30 mins earlier than you usually do right now... rather than abandoning your social life and becoming a hermit.

3- Have a greens drink 1x a day for the next 2-3 weeks and see how you feel...rather than the latest 7 day super fat loss juicing detox diet.

4- Drink one more glass of water a day than you do now and perhaps have one less coffee.

5- Try having one additional snack during the mid morning or afternoon to help keep your blood sugar levels more even than they were were before.

We may never get to the end destination of optimal. but if we find a notch on the scale that fits in with our lifestyles and allows us to be healthier than we were before then I would consider that a success that we can sustain.

Whatever skills or habits we need to build to achieve our goals, remember they will not happen over night so think forward using long term perspective and get to the top of your mountain one step at a time.

Yours in health

Patrick Fallis