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Look better.<\/em> Does that pretty much sum up what you want to get from your health and fitness?<\/p>\n As much as we\u2019d like to think we\u2019re above it, we all want to look good naked. It improves our prospects, relationships, and sex lives. It improves the way others see us and treat us.<\/p>\n It limits the time we spend sick or injured, keeping us on our feet doing the things that are important. It helps us spend more days on this planet doing them.<\/p>\n It helps us to wake up in the morning feeling good. It helps us go through the day without feeling like crap. It helps us feel excited about life and enthusiastic about our part in it. It helps us sleep soundly at night.<\/p>\n Sounds great! But how do we get there?<\/strong><\/p>\n The world\u2019s full of ultra-specific diets and exercise programs, all claiming to be the \u201cmagic bullet\u201d that will get you into the greatest shape of your life.<\/p>\n Most of them will fail in the long term, owing to their ultra-strict rules and inability to work in our modern world of harmful temptations.<\/p>\n Athletes, models, and actors aside, physical health should be a means to an end in your life, not an end itself. And as such, you should approach it with a sense of balance, and with open-ended principles rather than hard and fast rules.<\/p>\n After more than ten years of interest and experience in this whole health and fitness world, I think I\u2019ve found the \u201ctreasure map\u201d that can get you there as well.<\/p>\n And today, I\u2019m here to share it.<\/em><\/p>\n These are the three \u201cpillars\u201d upon which the LMVM philosophy of health and fitness is built, each of which are composed of three \u201cprinciples,\u201d as follows:<\/p>\n Eat Better<\/strong><\/p>\n Move Smarter<\/strong><\/p>\n Live the Good Life<\/strong><\/p>\n Think of this as \u201ceat less and exercise more\u201d for the twenty-first century. We\u2019ve evolved beyond the paradigm that had us starving ourselves, eating gross food, obsessing over shady supplements, and spending too much time at the gym doing exercises that did us little good.<\/p>\n Here is the nine-step guide to looking better, feeling better, and living better.<\/strong><\/p>\n Low-fat. Low-carb. Low-calorie.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to get paralyzed by all the conflicting dietary information out there.<\/strong><\/p>\n Most diets will give you results in the short term, if for no other reason than they force you to restrict your consumption of certain types of food that you are used to.<\/p>\n But to be successful in the long term, you need to focus on what has worked for others in the long run.<\/em><\/p>\n In the past hundred or so years, the human diet has undergone drastic changes. Where we once relied heavily on animal fats and plant starches for our calories, we have increasingly become dependent on things such as sugar, flour, and vegetable oil.<\/p>\n Instead of our food coming from farms and fields, it now comes from factories and laboratories.<\/p>\n The lowest common denominator between successful long term diets is that they limit \u201cnew school\u201d foods and promote the consumption of \u201cold school\u201d foods.<\/strong><\/p>\n If you are looking to lose fat and build muscle, there is no more fundamental change you can make than eating a diet of Real Food: minimally-processed meat, vegetables, fruit, eggs, nuts, and seeds.<\/p>\n If you know what you are doing, dairy, grains, and legumes can fit here as well.<\/p>\n But if your great-grandparents didn\u2019t eat something when they were your age, then that\u2019s a good sign that you probably shouldn\u2019t either.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIn order to lose weight, you need to consume fewer calories than you burn off.\u201d Mostly right. But the law of conservation of energy has been misunderstood<\/a> by everyone from scientists to diet gurus to Average Joes across the world.<\/p>\n While a caloric surplus leads to excess calories stored as fat (or muscle) and vice versa, it doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that calorie-counting is necessary.<\/p>\n In fact, the large amount of calories that humans consume and burn off, the relatively tiny amount of which is necessary to cause drastic weight changes, and the high degree of error with which we can measure calories all mean that it is impossible to count calories as precisely as needed to effectively be a realistic tool for weight loss (or gain).<\/strong><\/p>\n Instead of being as simple as the deposits and withdrawals you make with your checking account, it is remarkably difficult to quantify the energy that is truly going in and out of our bodies.<\/p>\n Rather, energy balance is primarily regulated by the body, with genes and hormones calling the shots.<\/p>\n Instead of stressing yourself out (and burning your limited willpower<\/a>) trying to count the grains of sand in the Sahara, it is much more efficient to give your body the fuel it needs to run efficiently without putting it into \u201cfamine mode\u201d or gorging on foods that are too good to ever stop eating.<\/p>\n If you are eating Real Food, your focus should instead be on balancing feasting and fasting. You should feel hungry as often as you feel stuffed.<\/strong><\/p>\n If you only eat one meal a day, you can safely gorge yourself every time, but if you do three meals plus two snacks, you\u2019ll have to be more careful about how much you eat (though you won\u2019t have to feel hungry too often).<\/p>\n By not trying to starve yourself or consume as much as possible, you reduce the stresses on your body that would otherwise get it to lose muscle and gain fat.<\/p>\n The perfect is the enemy of the good.<\/p>\n Unless you live in a metabolic ward in a laboratory, you will be tempted by an endless onslaught of unhealthy yet delicious food.<\/p>\n Pizza, burgers, fries, nachos, mac and cheese, soda, burritos\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n The temptation to \u201ccheat\u201d is never-ending. And you should occasionally give in<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Strict diets that give you no leeway are destined to fail for most people in the long run. It just requires too much willpower and requires too much sacrifice. Especially when there is no need to be perfect.<\/p>\n \u2019Round here we have a saying: 90% is perfect, 75% is good enough<\/strong>.<\/p>\n If you follow a super-strict diet, you will see no difference than if you fell off the wagon for 10% of your meals.<\/p>\n This little hack will allow you enjoy all the benefits of eating a diet of Real Food, while still giving you enough space to indulge and go out with friends and family without being a total pain in the ass.<\/p>\n Like dieting, many people will get paralyzed by information before they even lace up their sneakers.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t do this!<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s more important to get moving in the first place than to try to find the \u201cperfect\u201d training program (if that even exists).<\/p>\n Stick to the basics<\/a> you already probably know. Start going for walks. Do simple bodyweight exercises such as squats, push ups, and pull ups in your home. Go for a weekly run.<\/p>\n Once you get more advanced, join a gym and start doing deadlifts, cleans, and presses. (They aren\u2019t as intimidating as you might think.) Do a few minutes of sprints each week.<\/p>\n If you want any guidance on finding the Perfect Fitness Program it\u2019s this: move your body the way it was meant to move<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Compound movements (like those mentioned above) are in, as well as full-body workouts. \u201cChest day\u201d and \u201carm day\u201d are out.<\/p>\n By doing these \u201cbig movements,\u201d you are saving time by working multiple muscle groups. You can exhaust yourself and give your central nervous system more of a stimulus to burn fat and build muscle.<\/p>\n You are using your body the way it was designed to be used, and therefore your body will look the way it was designed to look: lean and mean.<\/strong><\/p>\n Conventional wisdom has it that you need to make great sacrifices if you want to get into shape, and spending hours upon hours each week working out is the first casualty.<\/p>\n Conventional wisdom is wrong here.<\/em><\/p>\n If you are doing the \u201cbig nine\u201d exercises<\/a>, you don\u2019t need to live at the gym. You are giving your body the acute stresses it needs to get stronger without doing a bajillion bicep curls, crunches, or chest presses.<\/p>\n Another big win here is that you avoid the risks associated with overtraining. If you are an athlete, it might pay to push yourself to the limit, but if you\u2019re a regular guy with a day job, it just doesn\u2019t make any sense to risk injuring yourself.<\/p>\n Forget \u201ctraining to muscle failure,\u201d especially if you are doing big lifts like cleans and deadlifts. It\u2019s unnecessary.<\/em><\/p>\n What you should instead be focused on is pushing yourself as hard as possible, until your form starts to go bad, and then stopping.<\/strong><\/p>\n And instead of heading to the gym every day, you should learn how to take it easy. Three hours is the absolute maximum you should spend working out each week. Two is reasonable for most people. And the rock stars out there could probably do it in one.<\/p>\n But don\u2019t skip happy hour with friends because you need to go to the gym. It\u2019ll still be there tomorrow.<\/em><\/p>\n What exercise is more important than walking, jogging, sprinting, squats, push ups, pull ups, deadlifts, cleans, and presses combined<\/em>?<\/p>\n Doing something physical that you really enjoy.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019ll admit, there\u2019s a certain amount of fun that can be found in working out, but most of us, if we\u2019re being honest, will admit that it\u2019s not the most enjoyable thing to do.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t care if you never set foot in a gym, as long as you find some fun and physical activity to do regularly.<\/strong><\/p>\n Skiing, hiking, surfing, biking, and rock climbing are some great examples. Getting together with friends to play football, soccer, basketball, or ultimate is awesome as well.<\/p>\n One of the greatest benefits of being in shape is that it makes physical activities more enjoyable, and one of the best ways to enjoy physical activities more is by getting into shape.<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s circular, but it\u2019s so true.<\/p>\n Think of \u201cgym time\u201d as the concentrated part of your week where you push yourself to the limit in a systematic way designed to optimize your strength and fitness. Think of \u201cfun time\u201d as the part where you enjoy being fit to the fullest.<\/p>\n The biggest stressor that most people experience (and can simply change) on a day-to-day basis is sleep deprivation.<\/p>\n Until the invention of the light bulb, people got somewhere between eight and ten hours of sleep every night. These days, we get around seven.<\/p>\n Making room to \u201cgive up\u201d a couple of hours each and every day may sound like a fairy tale to you, but it\u2019s easier than you might think if you set things up correctly.<\/p>\n Worried that you won\u2019t be able to get everything done? You will<\/em> be more productive during your waking hours, able to more than make up for the time you\u2019ll otherwise be sleeping.<\/p>\n One of the biggest \u201ca-has\u201d I had during my year without an alarm clock<\/a> was how driven<\/em> I was in the mornings. Where previously I dragged myself into work, propped myself up in a chair, and half-assed my way through things waiting for lunch to roll around, I now hit the ground running as soon as I wake up.<\/p>\n Sleeping more will increase your energy levels and focus, allowing you to make more with the fewer waking hours you have in a day.<\/strong><\/p>\n You may need to learn some basic time management, but getting more sleep will bring stress levels down (keeping you leaner), make you more attractive<\/a>, and help you to simply enjoy life a little more.<\/p>\n Humans are a social species.<\/p>\n When compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, we characteristically always live in societies with others.<\/p>\n From the tribes of around 150 that characterized our pre-agricultural roots to the massive and densely-packed modern cities that most of us now live in, we never seem to be far from our fellow humans.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, we\u2019re now able to live lives that are pretty isolated, living by ourselves and getting all our social activity from whatever interactions we have at work, then going home to spend long hours in front of television and computer screens.<\/p>\n
\nFeel better.<\/em>
\nLive better.<\/em><\/p>\nEat Better, Move Smarter, Live the Good Life<\/h2>\n
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1. Eat Real Food<\/h2>\n
2. Balance Feasting and Fasting<\/h2>\n
\n-Every Weight Loss Article You\u2019ve Ever Read<\/p><\/blockquote>\n3. Cheat Occasionally<\/h2>\n
4. Move Your Body<\/h2>\n
5. Don\u2019t Overdo It<\/h2>\n
6. Make It Fun<\/h2>\n
7. Sleep More<\/h2>\n
8. Be Social<\/h2>\n