My Perspective on Health & Lifestyle
If you want to live a Champion's Life, you must cultivate a Champion's Lifestyle
YOOOO what it do my brothas & sisters! I hope you all are having a blessed day today. Before we get into it I would like us all to take a moment & just recognize/be grateful for the fact that we are alive & here today. THANK YOU GOD!
Today’s post is gonna cover my perspective on health & lifestyle and how I view life/try to live my own life.
What is the most important part of a house that is being built? The foundations right? What is the most important part of a plant? The roots that it grows from. The same is true of your own body & lifestyle. You are as strong & sturdy as the way that you live.
There are many levels to health & lifestyle. What level you are at is determined by the lifestyle that you practice. We all have the opportunity to be alive each day that we wake up. That is a true blessing that is not guaranteed for everyone. You owe it to yourself to live in a way that allows you to have full freedom of body, mind & spirit. This means living and operating in a way that is pain free and high functioning. Your body & mind is designed to be living like this.
The reality is that the pleasures/luxuries of a modern lifestyle has changed what our average lifestyle looks like. As a society we have gotten away from the basics, from our roots. This has harmed the overall health of far too many people. I really believe that part of truly living the human experience is to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for the facets of your own life. This includes your health; mental, physical & spiritual.
I think of this as living a Roots First Lifestyle. Minding the fundamentals to promote a life that is filled with feeling good & enjoying the moment you have right now. I am of the belief that health is incredibly simple if you allow it to be.
What are the foundations I practice?
Movement
Breathwork & Meditation (Awareness building)
Cold Exposure/Resiliency Building
SUN MAXXING BABY!!!! (Time in nature really)
Sleep Optimization
Eating Real Food
These are not all of health/lifestyle things I practice but if I had to choose the most important it is definitively a combination of all these. I will go in-depth on all these in future Substack posts, but for today we will keep it simple!
MOVEMENT
Move your body every single day. No excuses. If a car is left to sit for long periods of a time, rust begins to develop & the car runs the risk of not being able to function (Word to Greasemonkey). The same is true for your body.
I put a heavy emphasis on walking for about 45 minutes a day. I like to walk for 15 mins or so after each meal usually, but I also will vary it and just walk for an hour or so at a time sometimes. Walking is an incredibly underrated form of exercise.
It is the bare minimum of exercise. If you can not do anything else, WALK every single day. You will burn a stupid amount of fat & start to lose weight (if coupled with proper eating of course & if that is your goal). Remember, levels to this Anon. Start simple. Go from there.
SUNLIGHT/NATURE
I do this one next because for the way I live my life this one ties in heavily with the previously mentioned foundation. It is IMPERATIVE you get sunlight in every day. If you already should be walking every single day you can get your sunlight in (even if it is cloudy the Sun’s rays still go through) while on your walk. Two birds one stone, bada bing, bada boom.
Your body & brain need Vitamin D to function at the best level it can. It helps keep you energetic, it helps fight off depression/anxiety. But depending on the time in which you get your sunlight in, it also is a key factor to regulating your Circadian Rhythm. EVERY DAY I get at least fifteen minutes of sunlight in within an hour of the sunrise & another fifteen within an hour of sunset. I sleep like a baby. That’s bars.
I try to spend as much time as humanly possible outside. There is a reason the word “Nature” looks like “Natural” because it is NATURAL for us to be in NATURE as often as possible. (OKAY NOW THAT WAS ACTUALLY BARS LETS GOOO) When you spend as much time as you can in nature you start to feel more appreciative of the world around you, more connected to the beauty that is in every single thing that has been created. (Much much more on nature comin in future)
SLEEP OPTIMIZATION
First & foremost I am for 7-8 hours a night, EVERY night. Getting that sunrise & sunset sunlight in helps with that because it regulates your Circadian Rhythm which helps determine when you are wakeful & when you are sleepy. Sleep is obviously important because it is when your body rests & heals. So if you are lifting, you MUST sleep well in order to get the most out of your training.
A big part of optimizing your sleep has to do with blue light. Once the sun goes down, my blue light blockers go on (when indoors/around ARTITIFICAL light, no need to wear them outside). Blue Light/artificial light tricks your Circadian Rhythm by making your brain/eyes think it is still daylight out. This poses a problem because it shifts your CR forward into a state of wakefulness when really it should be at a state of restfulness. Your phone emits a lot of blue light. In a future substack I will go real in-depth on blue light, but for now just focus on using your phone less as you get closer to bed time.
EATING REAL FOOD
This one is incredibly simple because it is, like the previous three, rather intuitive. We are designed to eat REAL FOOD.
What is real food? Food that is unprocessed. When I was first starting to lose my weight after hip surgery I started out by walking, getting sunlight, cold showers & REAL FOOD. That is where I began. That is what built me to where I am now.
When I grocery shop I do not buy snacks or anything that I do not know the ingredients of 99% of the time. I am not neurotic though. Every once in a while is okay. I EAT REAL FOOD that I COOK AT HOME! This is KEY to losing weight & living an optimal lifestyle. Control what you can control. You can control what you CHOOSE to put into your body.
I try to eat as seasonally as possible, as local as possible (this helps with the energy content of food, more on that in future). I love going to the farmers market (word to Farmer).
You can lose a ton of weight/body fat off simply eating at home & eating real food man. It’s incredibly simple really. Maybe it takes a bit more work than ordering out or eating frozen meals, but the amount of benefit it brings to your health/lifestyle VASTLY outweighs any amount of work it could take. Besides, healthy eating can be simple & delicious if you allow it to be.
COLD EXPOSURE/RESILIENCY TRAINING
Another massively important part of my foundation is willingly doing things that are difficult. I get into the cold every day for the health benefits of course (increased energy, alertness, brown fat build up, cold tolerance, immune system support, fat loss) but the other main reason I do it is to build resiliency of mind.
When we do things every day that SUCK it trains our brain/spirit to be able to endure when they really need to. When times are difficult in our lives and we are down on our luck our resiliency & our spirit is what gets us through.
You don’t have to get this training from cold, I just find that it is easiest to do it this way because we all (hopefully) shower every day. What does it take to turn the cold on for 30 seconds at the end? Besides, it builds a STUPID amount of discipline to SHOW UP FOR YOURSELF like that every single day.
It helps you build mental toughness. Life is hard man. It throws challenges at you every day & every moment. You are literally fighting for your life every moment that you are here. You MUST be tough in order to make it to where you aim to go.
BREATHWORK/MEDITATION (AWARENESS)
If you have interacted with me even once you know how incredibly important this one is to me. I have been practicing DAILY breathwork & meditation for years now and will say wholeheartedly it is the most important practice I have ever developed in my life.
Why? Your ability to breathe is directly correlated with your life span. The better you breathe, the longer you will live (not one size fits all obviously). But also because of the awareness that these practices build. They are rooted in being in the present moment, focusing on just one thing & coming back to it when you stray from it. This helps build focus in your day to day life.
It also builds a certain level of awareness of body, it helps you be more in tune with yourself on a physical level & an emotional/mental level. Being mindful is incredibly important when living in a world filled with distractions. Be present, all you have is where you are right now & this present moment. So feel it, be it.
Breath is meditation & meditation is breath. They are interconnected and go hand in hand. Train them often. (I have a simple guide to starting meditation here)
Implementation
Do you see a pattern with all these practices? They are simple. Life is already complicated enough, why not make your health practices simple? For me, this is really the only way.
Not only are they simple, but they are practices that build discipline. Walking every single day, sitting for 5-10 mins EVERY DAY to meditate & to breathe, cooking your meals at home, etc. They require & build a certain level of discipline in your lifestyle.
Much reward comes to the disciplined man, but much also comes to the undisciplined man as well. Pain. Discipline is the key factor to building the life that you want to live. Cultivate the FIRE IN YOUR STOMACH by living a DISCIPLINED LIFE! Each day that you do your daily practices, you add logs to the fires in your belly. You burn hotter & with more passion because you build BELIEF in yourself/the lifestyle you are building. Take pride in the way you live!
I know this has been long, but I hope these BARS resonated with you my friends.
As always,
GOD BLESS & TYG!!!!
BowTiedFighter (CERTIFIED BEAST!)