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Health & Wellness: Be Active, Be Nourished, Be Rested and Be Calm

I’ve always been interested in how our lifestyle choices affect our longevity, durability in the activities we enjoy, and our overall content-ness and wellness. Our health and wellness can be greatly affected by how well we are able to:

  1. Be Active: more is not always better

  2. Be Nourished: our body and mind

  3. Be Rested: quality of sleep and downtime

  4. Be Calm: managing stress

There are other areas of our life that can affect our wellness such as our work environment, the quality of our home life, our love/friendship connection and mental stimulation. This posting will focus on activity, nourishment, rest, and calmness.





BE ACTIVE:

Ben Greenfield is a big fan of a “move often” approach to fitness rather than high volume training that adds wear and tear to the body. What does this mean? Our ancestors would have many hours (upward of 7 hours a day) of very low intensity work (walking around gathering) with bursts of high intensity and strength work (hunting and survival). Not much middle zone or gray zone intensity. What does this look like for today’s athlete?


  1. If you have a desk job, stand up and move around: often. Set a timer to remind you to move. Do a few lunges and push-ups every so often. I often “sit” at my desk in a kneeling low lunge with my back knee rested on a yoga block. Consider getting a standing desk.

  2. Include some HIIT workouts 1-2 times a week.

  3. Lift something heavy (safely).

  4. Multi-directional jump training or plyometrics.

  5. Work on range of motion: yes this is stretching and yoga, but also specific mobility work (check out The Ready State)

  6. Under-speed workouts (legs/arms going slow)

  7. Over-speed workouts (legs/arms going fast)

  8. Easy workouts should be just that; easy. And hard workouts; hard. Don’t make all your workouts gray zone workouts.

  9. Seek new challenges to stay motivated and stimulated



BE NOURISHED

Processed foods and refined carbs 'tell us' to keep eating. When you cut out these foods and eat a nutrient dense clean diet along with healthy plant-based fat your hormones help bring back your 'appetite signaling' to a normal place. Natural satiety signals kick-in.