The 2 Secrets to Successful Fitness
There are 2 secrets to a successful exercise and fitness plan. The first secret is in the doing. No matter your mood you must get off the couch and get active. The second secret is in your food consumption. That’s it, mood and food. You and I have an exercise and workout plan. Mine has me walking, swimming, weight training, and bike riding on alternating days. I am including some type of High-intensity interval training (HIIT) in each workout. Your plan should include activities you enjoy, mixed with some activities that are needed to maintain your health and fitness. On the days that you don’t feel the motivation to get up and move, remember that mood follows activity, not the other way around.
If I was forced to choose which is more important between diet or exercise, the answer is diet. I don’t mean a diet like, “I can’t eat that, I’m on a diet”. I mean a diet like a food plan for nutrition. A cow’s diet is primarily grass. A lion’s diet primarily meat. God’s creatures have a primary diet and secondary diet of items they eat as needed or as available. My diet has changed over time as I changed. My diet is now more plant based. I am not vegetarian or vegan, but it is “plant rich” as Dr. Mark Hyman of the Cleveland Clinic would say. I try to make 20% to 30% of my plate meat with the balance being vegetables and grain. There are plenty of debates about the best diet plan. Here are my starter rules.
Coach Brown’s Fitness Triangle Diet
DO’S
Eat Fruits or Vegetables with any meal or snack.
Eat Clean Whole Foods.
Eat Organic, in season, local when possible.
Eat Less Meat: grass-fed, free range, wild caught when possible.
Use Olive Oil or Coconut oil
Do keep to a calorie count appropriate for your goal.
Ask yourself: is this product God made or man made? Pick God.
DON’Ts
No Fast Food.
No Soda, diet or other.
No or limited Processed Foods.
Limit Starches, breads, and wheat based products.
Limit Dairy.
Watch out for Sugar, Nitrates, Sodium, High fructose corn syrup.
Watch out for any product with more than 5 ingredients or ones that have ingredients with a really long name.
How to get started
Recently I found a simple and easy way to rebuild my diet. I needed to refresh what I was doing because the Pandemic quarantine has changed my life patterns. I am cooking more for the family and my son’s needs are different from mine. I started to gain weight. Dr. David Katz and a team of nutritionists not backed by big industrial food, has designed software to help. The free website helped pick a diet program and build a sample meal plan for me including a shopping list www.dietid.com.
Dr. Katz also has another website of importance called True Health Initiative https://www.truehealthinitiative.org/ where many health and food rumors and sales pitches are debunked. I recommend that you check out both of these sites.
The quote for this post is from Michael Pollan: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
Be Healthy,
Coach Brown
HEALTHY AT 120 