The Rules Have Changed

Eat better. Move smarter. Relax harder.

That’s the mantra here at Lean, Mean, Virile Machine. In order for most of us guys to do this successfully, we need to learn primarily three skills:

1. How to buy and prepare healthy food.
2. How to work out more efficiently.
3. How to enjoy life a little more.

But these things don’t tend to come to us naturally. Worse, they seem to run counter to what we have been led to believe is optimal.

Shouldn’t we be spending as much time as possible hitting the gym? Shouldn’t we be finding out which pre-packaged meals are best for us? Shouldn’t we be cutting back on sleep in order to get more done?

This “path of least resistance” is advocated by most men’s health authorities, but falls apart when we try to fit it into our modern lives.

The old ways don’t work anymore.

The world has changed. And you must change with it.

Once Upon a Time…

There’s a good reason why most men have no idea how to cook: we’ve never had any cultural incentive to do so.

It used to be that the woman of the house (either the wife or the mother) prepared all the food that the family ate. This is a pretty consistent pattern across cultures, and likely has a pretty strong historical significance.

If you were a guy, you didn’t even have to think about eating a diet of primarily Real Food. That’s all there was. And, more likely than not, someone else was making it for you.

But over the past few decades, most women have largely abandoned a role they felt was unfairly dumped on them.

On the whole, this has been a VERY positive achievement. Everyone, regardless of sex, race, religion, or anything else, should be free to do as they please with their lives.

But it’s important to acknowledge the negative things that have resulted from this largely encouraging development. One of which is the disappearance of home-cooked meals as mainstays of most everyone’s lives.

Another development during this time is the embrace by the restaurant industry of such cheap and time-saving ingredients such as sugar and seed oils.

Not only can we no longer assume that we’ll have a home-cooked meal waiting for us at the end of the day, but neither can we hope to get a healthy meal from a restaurant if we choose to eat outside the home.

Pumping Iron

It may be hard to believe, but “working out” is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Up until a couple of decades ago, the only exercise most people would get would be that naturally found in their daily lives. The lower classes would get the most activity, doing such things as manual labor and farming, while even the upper classes could still expect to get a fair amount due to the lack of sitting and motorized transportation.

Recreational exercise and bodybuilding only started to catch on a short while back, with people like Arnold Schwarzenegger increasingly making the idea of “exercise for everyone” into a more attractive life pursuit.

At first, the only people who really got into this were people who aspired to be professional athletes, bodybuilders, and powerlifters. Their accomplishments are no doubt impressive.

The shrewdest of the bunch capitalized on the public’s fascination with their perfectly chiseled physiques to start selling supplements, equipment, and fitness protocols–the same things that helped them get into such great shape.

Yet most of us simply cannot devote the kind of time to working out that these guys did. During his prime, Arnold was working out 4 to 6 hours per day.

At this same time, the work lives of most people became more and more sedentary. Now most of us spend the majority of our days sitting on our asses in front of a computer, surrounded by grey cubes and bathed in fluorescent lights.

Not only can we no longer expect to get physical activity in our daily lives, but most of the fitness advice out there assumes you can spend at least an hour a day at the gym.

Counting Sheep

The increase in chronic stress can be seen in every part of our culture, and in no place more obviously than our current “badge of honor” that we give to people who deprive themselves of sleep.

I spent last year trying to reverse this affliction in myself, and although it is a constant struggle, I’ve definitely found that, paradoxically, I can get more done in a short day after a long night’s sleep than I could ever in a long day after a short night of sleep.

The high incidence of such afflictions as ulcers prove that our modern lives are far more stressful than they should be. Lack of personal connections, friends, and life purpose all contribute to this overall stress.

Instead of having lives that are primarily calm, relaxed, and self-fulfilled, the norm now is to live in a constant state of anxiety. To take a more kicked-back approach to live is considered overly-decadent.

The Ever-Changing Environment

The things that promote and sustain health and fitness in humans hasn’t changed in a long, long time.

Yet we seem to struggle so much in our attempts to look and feel better. How is it that something that should be so obvious is so difficult to pin down?

It’s simple: our environment is changing rapidly. And as a result the rules that will get us where we want to go are changing as well.

We need to step out of our comfort zones and try some unconventional things if we are reach our physical health and fitness goals.

Keep your eyes open. Think critically. Learn how to master your environment and learn new skills.

This is the only way you will ever learn the new rules and use them to your advantage.

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