Weekly Wisdom: Chase the Easy Wins First

When people begin to try and get healthy, they typically like to make drastic changes to their everyday lives. Maybe they begin a ketogenic diet where they are not allowed to eat any bread, pasta, or starchy foods. Or maybe they set a goal to work out five or even 6 days per week. While in theory this sounds great, oftentimes people drop out after just a couple of weeks. If you want long term progress, which everyone should, then you should look to make small easy changes. This may be cutting from three sodas per day to one, or maybe trying to get 5,000 steps per day verses your normal 2,500 (doubling your amount of movement for the day). While these goals may not be as sexy as the typical 10,000 step goals we hear about, they are way more attainable and therefore way easier to stick to. After months of stacking these “easy wins” you will likely be unrecognizable from your former self. And in the meantime, you won't notice much of your everyday life changing. 

Some easy wins you could start today:

• Skip the morning Starbucks order. Or at least, be more thoughtful with it. A medium Starbucks coffee can contain several hundred calories. If you must get that coffee ask for sugar free syrups and switch to skim milk, almond milk, or oat milk. 

• Try and get 1,000 more steps than you normally do. A common phrase in exercise science is “sitting is the new smoking.” With more office jobs than ever we move very little. Getting 1,000 more steps than normal is a great goal to start with. That’s less than a 15-minute walk. Anyone can do that right?? 

• Switch from full calorie, fat, and sugar options to low-calorie options. Are diet foods healthy? Probably not, but they’re a whole lot better than the full calorie options. Save cutting them out completely for another day and get good at choosing low calorie options first! 

• Perform a 30-minute weight training workout once a week. Are two or even three sessions typically better? Yes of course, but coming in once a week is a far more digestible baby step towards that. Find the time and make the habit for one day then build upon that. 

• Skip snacking. Walking by and grabbing a piece of candy or handful of chips adds up throughout the day. Most people snack out of convenience, not because they are hungry. Set a goal to not snack throughout the day and just eat three meals. 

While becoming healthier is never easy, uprooting your life and changing everything you do is unsustainable and not enjoyable. Instead, pick a couple easy wins in your life. Find some small goals and get really good at accomplishing those. Most people would be shocked to see how big of a difference small changes can make.

Food!

This week, along with several other weeks, I prepared tuna salad for lunch. I often spend lunch on the go, whether between classes or personal training clients. I find having food prepped ahead of time is the easiest way for me to eat healthy. I made three days' worth of tuna salad. For this I used five cans of tuna in water, five boiled eggs, five servings of low fat/low calorie mayonnaise and a couple spoons full of pickle relish. I chose to put this on high fiber multigrain bread and have two mandarins on the side. 

 Nutrient

• 702 calories

• 55 grams of protein

• 9 grams of fiber

• 80 grams of carbohydrates

• 61 grams of fat

Ways to decrease calories

• Eat less. This made a lot of food!

• Use low calorie bread. SaraLee makes a really good bread that is only 45 calories.

Ways to increase calories

• Eat a side with higher calories.

• Use regular mayonnaise.

What I Have Been Learning

This week I have been learning about endurance and cardiorespiratory fitness. I have learned this from a current class I am taking (Techniques of Strength and Conditioning) and a Huberman Labs Podcast. This type of fitness is crucial for a healthy heart and vascular system. These workouts might be thought of as making you out of breath and getting your heart rate up verses burning in the muscles. This can be broken down into four types of endurance. Muscular endurance (think a set of 15 repetitions on squats), long duration endurance (5k, half marathons, marathons), Anaerobic Training (football player sprints for a touchdown or a 15 calorie sprint on the Concept 2 Rower), and High Intensity Aerobic Conditioning (one mile timed run or intervals of fast and slow on a bike). All of these play different roles in our cardiorespiratory health and should be included in some way in our workout routines. Increasing our endurance and cardiorespiratory fitness improves our postural strength, increases our mitochondrial density, makes our bodies more efficient during the day, increases capillary beds, along with many other benefits. Good cardiorespiratory fitness can relieve all-cause mortality and especially cardiovascular disease. A meta-analysis over cardiovascular fitness and cardiovascular disease stated, “Behavioral lifestyle choices are consistently reported to be the single greatest determinant of premature death,” and that a short daily walk may just be the most important prescription a doctor could ever make.¹ 

1  Franklin, Barry A et al. “Physical activity, cardiorespiratory fitness, and cardiovascular health: A clinical practice statement of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology Part II: Physical activity, cardiorespiratory fitness, minimum and goal intensities for exercise training, prescriptive methods, and special patient populations.” American journal of preventive cardiology vol. 12 100425. 13 Oct. 2022, doi:10.1016/j.ajpc.2022.100425