The Specifics of a Healthy Lifestyle
Written by Kyle Ligon - MovementLink.FIT Head Coach
So, what are the specific things we can do to boost our recovery (which is saying the same things as boosting our health), reduce muscle soreness, help us lose body fat, gain muscle, keep our joints and tissues happy, balance our hormones, and help us live a long and happy life? Sleep, Nutrition, Non-exercise Activity and Stress Management, and Exercise.
Mindset - Proactively Seek to Improve and Embrace Challenges
Sleep - Balances hormones and enhances recovery and brain power.
Sleep 8+ Hours a Night by Creating a Sleep Strategy, Pre-sleep Routine, and Understand how to Manage your Circadian Rhythm
Nutrition - The proper fuel, timed correctly, while reducing inflammation.
Consume all your daily calories in 2-3 meals all within a 6-12 hour Eating Window. For those looking to bias performance, you can expand your eating window up to 12 hours.
Center Your Diet Around Protein - Consume about 0.7g - 1g of protein per 1lb of ideal body weight each day.
Eat mostly real food: meat/fish/eggs, fruits and veggies, and nuts and seeds.
Cook With and Consume these Oils: Extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil…avoid the rest.
Extremely limit:
Processed Foods
Foods for which you are allergic or sensitive.
High-Sugar Foods, Added Sugar, and Sugar Substitutes
Alcohol - Did you know consuming just 1 alcoholic drink a week can increase your risk of cancer with statistical significance?
Time high carbohydrate meals well - Save any high carb meals for your first meal of your day and/or your first meal post-workout.
Update your diet and which supplements you take by talking with your doctor and analyzing biomarkers. Personally, I get my blood tested through InsideTracker.
Common and General Supplements to Explore:
Vitamin D3
Omega 3
Electrolytes
Creatine
Whey and Casein Protein
Understand that these are Myths:
You have to Count Calories or Macros to Lose or Maintain Weight - False.
To Lose Weight You’ll have to Feel Hungry All The Time - False.
Fats are Bad - False.
Carbohydrates are Bad - False.
Protein causes cancer - False
Meat is Bad - False
Eggs are Bad - False
We think your approach should evolve over time with you and the life you want to live and don’t think there’s one rigid solution that’s best for people. Even though we do not think the listed programs below are perfect, we think that if you are looking for something with more support than the information above, they can be a great start and have the benefit of having tons of resources and recipes to help you along your journey. Note: we are not associated with these companies and have our own unique approach to nutrition that is different from these when we are working with individuals and groups.
Daily, Non-Exercise Activity - Recovery/Health is boosted with blood flow and non-fatiguing muscle contractions which push waste fluid through your lymphatic system.
Break sedentary hours with movement, aka Workout Snacks - If you can get your heart rate up, even if it’s just for 5 seconds, you can increase blood flow and push lymphatic fluid in a way that can have a major impact on your health, recoverability, and results. You can also think of achieving this by accumulating 10,000 steps across your day. Where the 10k steps falls short however, is when it is accomplished in just a few giant chunks paired with a mostly sedentary day instead of breaking sedentary hours.
Take 10min Walks after meals - This is a threefer: 1) it improves blood flow and pushes lymphatic fluid, 2) it helps your body regulate blood sugar as it will help muscles take in glucose from your bloodstream lowering the amount of insulin your body needs to release to manage blood sugar levels, and 3) removes you from where you ate which can have a profound impact on curbing additional cravings and overeating.
Perform 10min of Mobility every day (morning if you workout in the PM and evening if you workout in the AM) - Your body needs some love and 10 minutes a day in addition to what we do in classes accumulates in a major way over time: 10 minutes x 7 days a week, 10 minutes warming up for each workout, and 5 minutes cooling down from each workout x 4+ days a week = 2+ hours of mobility work every week. This is easily enough time to improve recovery, develop full and functional ranges of motion across our whole body, and resolve nagging pains. You do not need multiple, heroic, hour-long yoga or mobility sessions…consistency always wins and a little bit here and there goes extremely far.
Understand the power of your breath. To some it may sound like woo-woo, but science has taken this out of woo-woo and shows that you can actually influence your physiology through different breathing patterns. Experiment with:
Exhaling twice as long as inhales or Box Breathing to calm down, enhance effectiveness of mobility work, and right after workouts to get out of fight or flight mode that comes from intense exercise and into rest/recovery mode. Note, the structure of our classes include mobility work in our cool-downs with a major reason being that mobility work and cool-downs can both benefit from the same breathing pattern.
Hyperventilating to rev up for intensity by taking 5-30 very big, quick inhales and exhales.
Double inhale(s) to dump carbon dioxide. Most people think that the only thing that matters is getting oxygen in, but getting carbon dioxide out is equally important.
Hyperventilating + breath holds to reset emotionally during the day. Lay down and perform 1-3 rounds of:
30 Hyperventilating Breaths
Exhale all of your air and hold your breath. For me, the first 10-15 seconds are the toughest, but then I settle in and over time I have been able to hold my breath like this for 3+ minutes.
When you can’t take it anymore, hold on just a little longer and then take a big breath in and hold that for as long as you can.
Recovery Gear - Yes, unfortunately for those of you who are fashion conscious, those compression tights and shirts you see some people wear actually can move the needle.
Compression tights/sleeves/socks actually work. You can wear them in workouts and/or while traveling or sitting at your computer to promote quality blood flow. I’m always reaching for my compression gear after I’ve really overreached on a workout like Murph, a really long run, or an event like a Spartan Race or a GORUCK challenge to get that extra little boost of recovery.
Wear Barefoot Shoes. They don’t have to be the toe finger shoes, but they should be flat on the bottom, have no heel to toe differential, and have a wide toe box. They will train you to use your body like it was intended as opposed to how traditional shoes resemble wearing a cast on your feet, weakening them, causing upstream issues. If you feel like you “need” arch support, super cushioning, or anything like that, that is a sign that you really just need to work on strengthening your feel. The irony is that the people who resist the most are the ones who need them the most. Take it slow, but start a transition plan.
This is the wrong section, but while we are on gear, what about exercise gear like weight belts, weightlifting shoes, running shoes, knee sleeves, wrist wraps, etc.? The MovementLink Method prescribes specificity of training. The reason these things are popular is that people wear them in their respective sports and that has carried over into gym culture. I do not do anything in the real world that uses this equipment and because I want my training to have maximal transfer to the life I want to live, I train without this junk. I want my core to be able to brace properly in the real world. I want my feet to act like feet, especially if I find myself on a beach or playing sand volleyball. If I am having joint pain, I want to find and fix the root cause. Article: Why We Don’t Wear Supportive Gear
Heat Exposure - We recommend appropriate doses of heat stress to elevate heat-shock proteins, increase growth hormone, increase catecholamines (hormones correlated with happiness), improve our immune system, cardiovascular endurance, and muscle mass, all while promoting fat loss. Heat exposure actually has a net cooling effect, so if we are participating in heat exposure, we like to do it in the evening, so our core body temperature will drop, which is needed for sleep.
Cold Exposure - We recommend appropriate doses of cold stress to also, ironically, release heat-shock proteins, help recover our central nervous system, build our mitochondria, increase catecholamines (hormones correlated with happiness), while also promoting fat loss. Cold exposure has a net heating effect on our core body temperature which is great for the AM. Cold exposure does have a slight impact on reducing the effects of strength and muscle building training, so we want to be strategic about when, relative to our workout types, we accumulate our cold exposure.
Exercise
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