What Does It Actually Take to Get Healthy?
Getting healthy has become way more complicated than it needs to be.
Decide that you want to improve your health and it doesn't take long before you're buried in questions. Should you lift weights or do cardio? How many days should you work out? Should you fast? Do you need to track your macros? Which supplements should you take? How many steps do you need? Should you be using a sauna, cold plunge, fitness tracker, or some other tool that promises to optimize your health?
There are thousands of things you could pay attention to, and the more fitness content you consume, the easier it is to feel like you're missing something important.
But the truth is much simpler.
You don't need to do everything to get healthy. You need to consistently do the handful of things that matter most.
Stop Optimizing Things You Haven't Built Yet
There's nothing wrong with wanting to optimize your health. Once you have a solid foundation, small details can absolutely make a difference.
The problem is that people often start with the details before they've built the foundation underneath them.
There's not much value in worrying about the perfect supplement stack when your nutrition is poor. The perfect workout split doesn't matter very much if you only exercise once every couple of weeks. A sleep tracker can give you all kinds of useful information, but it can't make you put your phone down and go to bed at a reasonable time.
It's like worrying about what color you're going to paint a house before you've been approved for the loan. There are other, more important actions to take first.
The details can matter eventually, but the fundamentals matter first.
So What Actually Matters?
If you strip away all of the trends, products, and conflicting advice, most of what matters for your health comes back to a few basic areas.
The first is regular exercise. Your body needs to be challenged. Strength training helps you build and maintain muscle and physical capability, while cardiovascular exercise helps improve your heart, lungs, and endurance. You don't need the world's most complicated training program, but you do need to use your body in ways that challenge it enough to adapt. We'll get deeper into what actually makes a workout program effective next week.
The second is reasonable nutrition. Your body needs enough quality food and nutrients to support your health, while your overall intake needs to match what you're trying to accomplish. There isn't one diet that everyone needs to follow, and you don't have to eat perfectly. You need a way of eating that provides what your body needs and works within your actual life. We'll spend an entire post on that later this month.
Daily movement matters too. As we talked about throughout August, exercising a few times per week doesn't mean you can lay around the rest of the week. Walking, taking the stairs, doing yardwork, playing with your kids, and generally using your body throughout the day are all part of living a healthy life.
Then there's sleep and recovery. Your body needs time and resources to recover from both your workouts and everything else life throws at you. You can have a great exercise program and good nutrition, but if you're constantly exhausted and never recovering, you're making everything harder than it needs to be.
Finally, all of those things depend on consistency.
A great workout done once doesn't make you fit. One healthy meal doesn't fix your nutrition. One good night of sleep doesn't erase months of poor sleep. None of these fundamentals need to be perfect, but they have to happen often enough and for long enough to actually matter.
The Fundamentals Aren't Exciting
Part of the reason people overlook the basics is because they're not particularly exciting.
"Exercise regularly, eat reasonably well, move throughout the day, get enough sleep, and keep doing it" isn't a very exciting headline.
A new diet is more interesting. A new supplement promises something different. A workout method you've never tried before feels like it might finally be the thing you've been missing.
There's always going to be something new promising to make the process faster or easier.
Some of those things may genuinely help. But none of them replace the basics.
Most people don't need a secret that nobody has told them yet. They need to get better at consistently doing the things they already know matter.
Boring doesn't mean ineffective.
In fitness, the boring stuff is usually what works.
You Don't Have to Fix Everything at Once
Of course, listing all of those fundamentals can create another problem.
Now you might be thinking that you need to improve your workouts, completely change your diet, walk more, sleep eight hours every night, and somehow become perfectly consistent with all of it starting tomorrow.
You don't.
In fact, trying to fix everything at once is one of the easiest ways to make sure none of it lasts.
You probably already have parts of your foundation that are fairly strong. Maybe you exercise consistently but struggle with nutrition. Maybe you eat reasonably well but spend most of your day sitting. Maybe you know exactly what you should be doing, but every time life gets stressful your routine disappears.
The biggest opportunity is different for everyone.
Instead of trying to improve everything simultaneously, figure out which part of your foundation is currently holding everything else back.
Start With Your Biggest Roadblock
This is where improving your health becomes more personal.
Two people can want the exact same result and need completely different solutions.
One woman might assume she needs a harder workout program when the real problem is that she can't stay consistent with the one she already has. Another might think she needs a stricter diet when an all-or-nothing mindset is what keeps causing her to quit every time she has a bad day. Someone else may genuinely be putting in the effort but lacks the structure or support needed to turn that effort into progress.
That's why doing more isn't always the answer.
First, you need to understand what's actually holding you back.
If you're a woman over 40 who has been trying to improve your health but isn't getting the results you want, we created our free Find Your Biggest Roadblock Assessment to help you identify where you're getting stuck.
You'll answer a few questions about your habits, mindset, and daily life to uncover your biggest roadblock and get a 30-day action plan to start working through it.
Build the Foundation First
There will always be another fitness trend, diet, supplement, workout method, or optimization strategy promising better results.
Some of them may be worth exploring eventually.
But they're additions. They aren't the foundation.
You don't need to know everything about fitness to become healthier. You need to understand what actually matters, identify where your own foundation is weakest, and start improving it.
Get the fundamentals right first.
Then worry about the details.
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