how to build your fitness lifestyle
Fitness means different things to different people, and there are many ways to build a healthy and sustainable fitness lifestyle. The great thing about fitness is that we can create our own philosophy or training method based on our definition of fitness and personal goals.
Different training methods can produce the same or similar results, and we do not need to be locked into one training philosophy. The same can be said about different approaches to nutrition. With that said there are common components in most fitness and nutritional approaches that we believe are important to include in a balanced fitness lifestyle.
We also recommend applying certain lifestyle strategies that can help you achieve your fitness goals and are also important for your overall health and well-being. We believe fitness should be one component of a healthy lifestyle.
Below you will see a brief overview of what we see works well for the majority of people, click on the links to learn about any of the subjects mentioned in more depth. As we grow this site we will continue to update this page and add new links.
strength training
Most people get into fitness to improve the way they look and feel, as well as to improve their general health. Without doubt, the best way to do this is by performing regular strength training. Nothing can change the way you look as well as strength training, it is the most effective way to improve your body composition. To build muscle and reduce body fat strength training is the number one tool in our toolbox.
Strength training is also vital for improving sporting performance, and building muscle is also important for our overall health and longevity, especially as we age. There are many different ways to perform strength training and we can bias more or less time to this depending on our goals and what other activities we perform.
You do not need to have a PhD in sports science to know how to train effectively, however, having a basic understanding of volume, intensity, and frequency can be useful, and allows you to establish if your training is likely to be productive. You should also have a basic understanding of exercise selection so that you can choose the most effective exercises for your goals.
Perform strength training two to six days per week. For most people, the sweet spot will be three to four times per week. If your goal is to build muscle you may need to perform more sessions throughout the week as you become more advanced. This allows you to perform more volume while keeping your set quality high. This can mean up to five or even six times per week for some individuals, depending on their goals and level of advancement.
To build muscle you must perform enough weekly volume (sets per muscle group per week) and your sets must performed at a high intensity to be stimulative for muscle growth (hypertrophy) and you must be progressing over time, this means adding weight and performing more reps in most cases. You can use a simple progression model such as the double progression method. We recommend you train a muscle group 2-3 times per week. However, training a muscle group once per week can still be effective.
If you want to train 2-3 times per week a full-body training split works well. If you want to train 4 times per week an upper body lower body training split works well. You can also use an upper body lower body split to train 3 or 5 times per week, depending on how you set it up. A push pull legs split is also a good option if you are more advanced, and will have you training 6 times per week. Depending on how you set it up you can also train more or less times throughout the week.
You can progress on a fairly low amount of weekly volume, especially if you are a beginner. We recommend you focus on high-quality sets and perform the minimal amount of sets per muscle group that you can progress with each week. Performing the minimal effective dose while still making progress is a good idea. Eventually, you will likely have to perform more sets each week.
Building muscle takes time. Consistency and adherence to a program is important. Your training should be set up in alignment with your current lifestyle. Things to take into consideration are how often you can realistically train each week and for how long. This will dictate the training split you choose. Other things to consider are your stress levels, what other activities you perform throughout the week, your age, and what you enjoy most. More is not always better.
You do not have to focus solely on building muscle. Many people prefer a more strength-based approach where the focus is on lifting heavier weights for fewer repetitions, such as in the sport of powerlifting and weightlifting. This can also be useful when the goal is to increase sporting performance. Many people like to combine pure strength work with hypertrophy work. A ‘power building’ approach can work well when set up correctly.
You do not have to lift weights or even go to the gym to perform strength training. Body weight movements can be performed. Calisthenics has become extremely popular in the last decade and can be a good option, depending on the goals you are looking to achieve.
Bias your strength training to your goals. If you like to do other activities outside of the gym, such as running and cycling perform less strength training. If your goal is to build as much muscle as possible you will need to dedicate more time to strength training.
Nutrition
There are many different ‘diets’ or nutritional philosophies, and many share similar principles. With any approach to nutrition, you will likely find people who have done well on a particular diet and those who have not. All good nutritional philosophies will focus on minimally processed, nutrient-dense whole foods as their foundation.
From a fitness perspective and for those looking to build muscle and lose body fat we see the majority of people do best long-term on a balanced nutritional approach which includes all of the macronutrients and does not limit or exclude whole food groups such as carbohydrates.
Consuming enough high-quality protein is vital however we do not want to overconsume protein in relation to the other macronutrients such as carbohydrates and fats. Around 1g per lb of bodyweight or target bodyweight if you are carrying some excess weight is a good starting point.
Carbohydrates can be somewhat individual and can be increased or decreased depending on activity level and personal preference, however, most people do better keeping a good amount of carbs in the diet, and the amount will largely depend on how many calories they are consuming.
Fats can scale up or down somewhat depending on the amount of carbohydrates an individual is consuming. Some people feel better and prefer a slightly higher fat diet, while others prefer lower fat. We find most people do best when their fat makes up around 25-35% of their total calories.
To achieve the best results in terms of improving body composition, most people will need to track their macronutrients, especially those with average or below-average genetics, which is the majority of the population. You do not need to track calories and macronutrients forever, however, it is an extremely useful tool to use initially and will teach you about the different food groups and the macronutrients they contain.
We recommend following a flexible dieting approach. You can also experiment with intermittent fasting, however this is not great for all individuals and all situations.
Following a bioenergetic approach to nutrition seems to work well for many people. This is not a ‘diet’ and is not dogmatic like many nutritional approaches that tell you what you must eat and what you can not eat. It is based on principles and understands that everyone is different. The focus is on improving and maintaining a healthy metabolism and hormonal health, supplying the body will adequate energy to function at its best and keep stress hormones down.
This approach to nutrition emphasizes pro metabolic eating, consuming foods that are easy to digest, do not irritate the gut, and contain highly bioavailable nutrients. Foods that contain high amounts of anti-nutrients and other substances that are detrimental to maintaining a high metabolic rate and hormonal health are minimized or avoided altogether.
Adequate intakes of all macronutrients or food groups are considered extremely important, especially carbohydrates due to their pro-thyroid and anti-stress properties. Low-carb or zero-carb approaches are seen as detrimental to health over the long term, although they may be beneficial for some individuals for short periods.
Recommended foods include high-quality animal protein sources including organ meats, easy-to-digest plant sources of carbohydrates such as fruit, white rice, potatoes, and other root vegetables, and simple sugars such as honey. Dairy is also recommended if tolerated well. Healthy fats from animal and plant sources in the form of saturated and mono-unsaturated fats are also emphasized.
Cardio
We believe cardiovascular work should be a part of a healthy fitness lifestyle. The benefits of performing regular cardio are numerous and include general health, performance, increased recovery, stress relief, and improved mental health and well-being. Having a good level of conditioning can even help us build muscle by improving our work capacity and helping us recover better between training sessions.
Performing just two cardio sessions per week can be beneficial to your health and can improve your general fitness, depending on the intensity you’re working at. It can also assist in fat loss, although it is not the main driver of fat loss. For most people performing 3-4 cardio sessions per week works well.
For general health and increased cardiovascular fitness, you can perform lower-intensity cardio, at around zone 2. This type of cardio is easier to recover from and can be a better option in a fat-loss phase. For increased sporting performance you will need to perform higher intensity cardio, which can include HIIT. This will burn more calories, however, it will also require more recovery and is more likely to interfere with other activities you perform such as strength training.
If performance is your goal you will likely need to perform more cardio, working at different intensities throughout the week. More thought will be required here on how to schedule your cardio sessions around other activities you perform.
Traditional forms of cardio such as running, cycling, rowing, and elliptical machines can all be good options although they are not the only ones. Metabolic-type conditioning workouts with weights, circuits, classes, and cross fit can all be used as cardio.
Performing cardio outside can be a great idea for the extra health benefits, such as getting more sunlight and fresh air, as well as training in more stimulating environments, compared to performing cardio in the gym. Some good options here are running, trail running, and cycling. Choose the type of cardio that you enjoy and the one you are likely to be consistent with. The bottom line is just get your heart rate up at least a few times throughout the week.
Lifestyle
Building healthy lifestyle habits will improve the results you are likely to achieve in fitness. The time we spend in the gym or performing other fitness activities is only a small part of our day and week. How we live the rest of our lives matters, not just for fitness, but for our overall health and well-being. Some of the most important and impactful things to focus on are daily movement/activity, sleep, recovery, and stress reduction. When these are not addressed all areas of our lives will be affected especially our fitness.
Daily Movement
One of the simplest and most underrated things we can do to improve our health and well-being is to increase our daily movement. Simply being more active in our day-to-day lives can make a big difference and can help us achieve goals such as fat loss far easier.
The easiest way to achieve this is to have a daily step count, and building walking into your lifestyle has many benefits. Some of these include being able to consume more food while maintaining or losing weight, getting more sunlight, improving mental health, and gaining insights and thinking over problems.
Stress
Stress is not inherently bad, it is a normal part of life and can not be avoided altogether. Acute stress can be beneficial, such as the short bouts of stress from a training session in the gym. This stress is the mechanism behind how we adapt and grow stronger over time. Stress only becomes a problem when it is too great and exceeds the ability of our body to recover from it. This can be seen when people perform too much exercise combined with poor nutrition and/or overly restrictive diets.
The real problem, especially in the modern world is chronic stress. This is where stress is elevated all the time and the body is in the ‘fight or flight’ mode. This is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system which prepares the body for strenuous physical activity. This is a vital survival mechanism and helps us survive dangerous situations, however, it is not good for us to remain in this state, as over time the body will begin to break down.
Whenever our bodies do not have adequate resources such as when we are restricting calories or carbohydrates, stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline increase to make up for the shortfall. This is a perfectly normal and important process however these stress hormones do this by breaking down the body to make energy. If these are elevated long term this is not healthy. You can think of this as an emergency backup system, fine for short durations but not good for prolonged periods.
The healthier you are the better you will be able to deal with stress. When you have a healthy metabolism and good hormonal health, with adequate supplies of energy to respond to stress, your body will be able to return to a more parasympathetic state. This is the ‘rest and digest’ part of your nervous system. The more unhealthy you are, the more stress can affect you and the longer it will take to deal with the stress and return to baseline.
Stress is not simply a mental thing. The bio-energetic model of health defines stress as anything where the energy demands of the stressor exceed the energy the body has available to be able to respond to the stressor and then recover.
Some Common Stressors
Mitigating Stress
Here are some useful strategies for reducing stress:
Sleep
Sleep is of vital importance when looking to optimize any area of our life, especially health and fitness. It also has the greatest impact on recovery from training sessions, allowing us to train harder and be ready to come back stronger than before. Getting consistent good quality sleep is also vital for our mental health and wellbeing as well as things like focus and cognition.
Here are some useful strategies for improving sleep quality:
Self Improvement
The eternal markets of health, wealth, relationships, and happiness, are what people strive for and they make for a fulfilled life. True self-improvement and personal development involve mastering all of these and they also feed into each other.
If you are not healthy you may not be able to find happiness, if you are not in good shape this may affect your confidence and your ability to find your ideal partner. If you lack money you may not be able to afford high-quality food and live a stress-free life. If you are missing one or more of these, you will unlikely find true happiness.
Self-improvement and personal development go hand in hand with fitness. The skills we learn through fitness and achieving our fitness goals can impact all areas of our lives. Building daily habits, cultivating discipline, and achieving goals are vital skills to master.
An individual will often need to change their self-image to achieve their health and fitness goals, as well as any other goals they are looking to achieve in life. To build muscle and reach low levels of body fat you have to become the person who is able to achieve this goal, the person you are now may not be able to. You have to become another person by building new habits and changing your mindset and how you see yourself.
We have content coming on mindset, habit-building, and self-improvement in general. Watch this space!
