Don’t think of a healthy lifestyle of being perfect or a failure, instead try using the dial method.
This is a method I became aware of through my studies with Precision Nutrition, and one that I have adapted to incorporate my mentor, Paul Cheks’ philosophies to make a balanced deep health approach more practical for the real world.
Think of your healthy lifestyle like a dial that goes from 1 – 10.
If you were to dial your lifestyle up to a 10, what would it look like?
WHAT WOULD YOUR NUTRITION LOOK LIKE?
Would you snack, how many cheat meals per week would you allow yourself?
WHAT WOULD YOUR WORKOUTS LOOK LIKE?
How hard would they be, how many per day/per week would you commit to?
WHAT WOULD YOUR LIFESTYLE LOOK LIKE?
What actions or habits would you implement in your lifestyle to support your goal?
Now, dial your lifestyle down to a 1 and ask yourself the same questions.
Thinking of your life right now, where is your dial set?
Do you need to dial up a channel or even half a channel, or should you stick where you are or even more the dial down if you are finding life challenging right now.
Here’s an example of what mine looks like at the moment.
Before last Wednesday I was ticking over at a level 5 for exercise and a level 6-7 for nutrition and lifestyle.
However, last Wednesday evening I got a phone call from Public Health telling me I was a contact of a positive case of Covid.
For me this changed everything.
I have a 4 year old daughter and a pregnant wife at home and I decided that I was going to:
* Eat as clean and healthy as possible
* Lower the intensity of my workouts, include “working in” exercise to cultivate energy rather than spend energy so that I had a net gain of energy in my body.
* Start an intensive week of organic whole food supplements to make sure my immune system was functioning at 100%.
In short I dialed up to level 10+.
As a disclaimer I’m not saying for one minute that this approach will fight off Covid, or is a cure. What this approach does is help optimize my immune function and better prepare my body to fight off Covid if and when it turns up.
Obviously this approach was ALOT of work, I’d been ticking over in maintenance mode, a stable balanced place to be with a healthy lifestyle.
As I’m writing this life consists of
* Finishing house renovations before our second child arrives
* Training clients 8 to 10 hours a day (when not in lockdown!)
* Working on new areas to grow Improve Your Health In 21 days to help leverage my time but help more people when our little boy arrives.
Maintenance mode allowed me to do this. Level 10+ shifted the emphasis firmly onto my health, fitness and nutrition and all of the above took a back seat.
The important lesson in all of this, is that for the majority of people, most of your healthy lifestyle should be spent in maintenance mode.
Only 10% of your lifestyle spent pushing the boundaries or really focusing on a specific area of your health and fitness.
If your goal is fat loss , 4 – 12 weeks should be a focused push on achieving your goal. It’s an all out push to achieve your goal and then the rest of your life you spend in maintained or closer to maintenance if you would like to lose a bit more.
The same is true for any fitness goal.
* Improved fitness
* Increasing energy
* Training for a specific sporting event (although this will likely be in reverse with the push coming towards the end closer to the event
* Improved health after a health scare
* Improving mobility
The important lesson is how doable a healthy, active lifestyle is. There is a big difference between even the lower levels of 1, 2 and 3 and doing the dial off.
When you realize how doable and effective the lower channels can be, you realize that there’s never a good reason to hit pause completely on your healthy lifestyle.