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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Welcome back to the one day at a time podcast. So I've been ill, so no new ones for the last week or so. And it just made me think when I was ill, I was I was doing well. I was training, and things are going well to me since the jujitsu and you get ill and then you feel like you've got a step back and then other things go wrong and they compound and you start thinking, oh my god, like, why is this happening? You know?
Speaker 1:And this is fine to feel like I thought, I don't know if it's maybe half a day or even like, just like a few hours or whatever, but what I realized and I think it's important for all of us to realize is that being ill, getting injured or life getting in the way and slapping you across the face, and disrupting your kind of consistency is part of it. There's all of us go through different stages. All some of you might be flying high right now. You're on week three, four, five, six, seven, whatever, tracking, hitting the gym maybe, hitting your protein, getting your steps in. Some of you might be, you know, coming off an illness and you feel like it's hard to get back into things and you're like, oh, like I wish my momentum was back and things like that.
Speaker 1:Some of you might be injured, and that's a real test of patience because you got to think about the rehab, the slow progress, no push yourself too much to get reinjured again. So we all go through these stages and we should accept that right now, no matter what stage you're on, you go through these stages. And whilst it's important, like, to build momentum and consistency, understanding that, yeah, physically you might not be making progress when you're ill or injured, but you can make some mental progress, where you don't catastrophize, where you can look at other things. You can start, maybe you can understand the mindset more, like your cravings or learning how to deal with emotionality and stuff. You can make progress or at least understand things more.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to all be like doom and gloom. So I think I just wanted to share that because it's important. No matter where you're at, the answer is always one day at a time. Like from now into bedtime, now into bedtime, now into bedtime. You do what you can now into bedtime.
Speaker 1:If you're really ill and it's about recovery, now into bedtime, you're gonna take your medication, you're gonna make sure to drink, drink enough water, and you're gonna rest, and try you're going not to catastrophize too much. If you're injured from now until bedtime, maybe you call it three or four rehab exercises to do, and that's it. I'm going to do my rehab exercises and drink my water and try and eat well as well for my recovery. That's it. It's the same when you're feeling great and healthy.
Speaker 1:It's like, from now until bedtime, I'm going to hit my step target, going to eat enough protein today, make sure my energy intake is in the right place. And that's it. I'm gonna crack on and maybe my food choices are gonna be exactly what I want to be. Sometimes my food choices might not be exactly what I want to be, but we don't catastrophize and we keep it, we keep it like that. But I wanted to share today as well.
Speaker 1:There was a it's like a Japanese method of, interval walking training they got. And they wanted to basically develop it wasn't necessarily a workout, but like, okay. You can walk on a consistent pace. But what if you walked for three minutes at a faster pace and then three minutes at a slower pace? The fast pace is like when you're walking at that fast pace, you shouldn't struggle to have a conversation.
Speaker 1:That's kind of where the pace you want to get to. And then what they see is this was actually better. So instead of walking thirty minutes steady, what if you did three minutes quick, three minutes slower, three minutes quick, three minutes slower, you know? And what they found was that this was a really effective method of increasing the VO2 max. So, you know, increasing your cardiovascular kind of engine essentially, being able to do that.
Speaker 1:Also it's also improved adherence to training. So while some of these people couldn't do gym programs and stuff, and they would go maybe 40% of the time, over 80% adherence to this. So a lot of people were able to do this consistently because it wasn't so far out like what you're normally doing, you know? Okay. You got to go for a walk, but instead you're just going to walk quicker for three minutes and then three minutes slow down.
Speaker 1:Okay? And I think it's important that for most of you listening, like most of you may not have time to add in gym workouts or classes. Okay? And it's fine. You don't necessarily have to do this.
Speaker 1:There's definitely benefits of adding in strength training. I've talked about this at length. Even one or two strength trainings a week, thirty minutes each. Doing you could even use machines, whatever's comfortable for you is gonna have a big impact in your overall health. Okay?
Speaker 1:But you maybe you can't do it. You realize, Scott, listen. I'd love to. So busy. I can't get to the gym.
Speaker 1:It's a bit far away. I can't afford to add another cost among one few outgoings, but I want the health benefits of some kind of exercise and you can do this instead when you go for a walk. So the health benefits, the research was done in middle age and older adults, five months, studies, some were twelve months. And they had like, yeah, 10% increase in VO2 max, 13% to 17% improvement in knee extension and flexion strength. Blood pressure went down.
Speaker 1:And this was compared to normal walking. So this was benefits on top of if you were to just do normal walking. Okay? So there was also superior improvements in physical fitness, body composition, and glycemic control in people with type two diabetes. So there was a four month study doing interval walking versus continuous walking, and that's the only difference.
Speaker 1:And it's a very safe thing to do, right? So it's not exactly If you can walk, it's not like, I understand, you know, like Bruce Lee had a really good quote and he was an expert martial artist and stuff. And his daughter wrote a book in 2020, like going through his diaries and she had a lot of trauma when he died, so she couldn't face going into this much until recently. And she was saying he had a need that he graduated as a philosophy, major, as you say, in America. So he's a philosopher, martial artist, a lot of philosophy involved in martial arts as well.
Speaker 1:And he had this thing called skillful frustrations. He was like, for you to improve your skill at something, you've got to get to the limit where you're slightly frustrated, but it's not too frustrating where you want to quit or you want to leave it. So you have to do it from your own abilities. And I think for you listening, you know your body better than everyone. Okay?
Speaker 1:And I think interval walking is a great place to push it to a skillful frustration for a lot of people who are only walking. So interval, high intensity interval training is a form of training where it's really hardcore. Okay. Like you're pushing your body and at the end of these types of trainings, you are gasping for air. Like I'm talking, you know, you're thinking, why am I doing this?
Speaker 1:It's very tough and it's half benefits of high intensity interval training. But for most people, it's too much. It's too much, it's too hard, and it's not something you're going stick to. So in terms of like following the Bruce Lee philosophy of of going through skillful frustrations, it's interval walking for three minutes pushing it, and you can push at the pace that's comfortable for you. You can get uncomfortable and you can hit minute two, and half minutes and you go, this is hard, or there's a hill coming and you decide to do it on the hill, you start thinking, oh that was tough, know, but I enjoyed it because I manage, I can manage it.
Speaker 1:It's not too panic, it's I'm not panicking, it's not I'm not laying on the floor today, know, I'm like, ah, that was tough, But let's keep going. And I think that's such an important point when it comes to training. When it comes to your own training and your fitness and stuff, you have to be able to push yourself, but it's gonna still be enjoyable. And a lot of PTs go around there where a PT will have a new client and then she'll reverse. And they say, I'm gonna start training.
Speaker 1:And the PT will absolutely kill running in the first workout. Because they think if they can show them how hard it is and the toughest workout, they think, wow, I'm gonna get loads of benefits from this. But what actually happens is the opposite, going that's too much, too hard, I'm too I got too much muscle soreness for days, I can't have my normal days and that is too much for me, you know? And they lose defiant, It's, they've gone too hardcore. And there's no need to go hardcore.
Speaker 1:You start from where you are now, which is A and you want to get the B. Okay? You don't want start at A and start thinking about Z right now. This is for the entire health journey. So moving many of you through the cycle of managing your calorie intake, hitting your stat count, getting protein consistently, once you've got those fundamentals done, okay, you've done an a to b to c, okay, which is the biggest benefit you're to get to your health doing those fundamentals, you can start looking into the walking training.
Speaker 1:Now that's the d. I can do that. I think I can do that. I'm already walking 8,000 steps a day. Can I have, Can I push it some of the walks and push it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can do that, no problem. And you start doing that and you get extra benefits like I've just mentioned, you know. And then you start thinking, okay, I'm really confident in this now, I can do it, my fitness is definitely better. Maybe now I can go to the gym or do a fitness class, but I still stop at the beginner's level. I still say, I want the most basic simple workout, I want to do some machines, I want to do something that I can do that I enjoy, and I want to be able to, you know, do it consistently, I want do once a week or twice a week.
Speaker 1:And then you're able to do that and you start doing those things and you build in on your routine. And over the next one, two, three years, you've gone from not doing any of the fundamentals for your health to energy intake is great, you've lost weight, You've improved your body composition. Your protein is higher and all the benefits that come with that. The benefits of walking, you've increased your VO2 max, you've increased the strength in your knee flexion and stuff like that. Your back pain is going because you're walking easily, you don't have no upper right posture, you know.
Speaker 1:You're more confident, you're like not going out to breath so much when you're walking. You walk up a hill and you're you know, I can walk up a hill now. I'm walking up a hill and it feels great. You can go on those like hikes on the weekend where you can go around some coastal paths, wherever you live. You know, in The UK there's loads of them and people love these hikes.
Speaker 1:And so I think, I enjoy doing it now because I'm not dying, you know, I'm not struggling so much. That's a good base to work from and do other things. But it's up to you at that point, know, you can go and do strength training, you can go into fitness classes, pilates, yoga, some of you have seen the high rock stuff, you might as go try that stuff in the future. But to get very far, you must start very near. And don't be, there's no shame to say that I'm starting from I'm starting from the start.
Speaker 1:I'm starting from the fundamentals. Most people don't have the fundamentals. There's the amount of people that come through the programs that the amount of people who've helped so far, and the amount of people that have really just kind of unlocked a new lease of life with results from just doing the fundamentals after years of trying complicated stuff, is there's so many stories, know? Like I've tried this, especially menopausal women. The main menopausal women come, listen to a simplified program, doing the fundamentals, weight goes down, they're eating the foods they enjoy, they're not perfectionists anymore and they think how the hell this is working, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:And I was trying all super complicated stuff people were trying to sell me before this, where super, super like, complex meal plans and training plans and the whole, like supplement intake and all of these things that sound great, but you couldn't do them or sustain the fundamentals doing them. They just didn't didn't deliver anything. The results didn't get delivered, you know, because the fundamentals weren't there. The fundamentals are the answer to everything. In martial arts, fundamentals win all the time.
Speaker 1:Even at the top black belt level, the fundamental moves end up winning competitions for guys. In business, do being able to do the fundamentals right. You know, having a product that delivers something that gets you a return, having the fundamentals of, you know, being able to get customers, without losing money, you know, as a fundamental concept of business. But you'll see some people will go into the business world and they'll have super complicated business advice and these like 25 page web funnels and this and this and that and that, and they'll go into all these like technical, really hardcore branding things and all of these complicated marketing campaigns. And then they think, what's going on?
Speaker 1:What's wrong? It's like, you haven't done the fundamentals. You don't learn the fundamentals. When you learn a new language, you go through the fundamentals. You want to learn how to speak in sentences, but you have to learn the basics of good morning stuff.
Speaker 1:You have to build off So it's obvious, man. It's just so obvious how to become, like, skilled and, like, really expert level, you have to be the fundamental master. It is that simple in all aspects of life And get excited about that fact because it's something we can achieve today. From now until bedtime, I can do the fundamentals. All of us can do the fundamentals.
Speaker 1:You know, some people, obviously, there's some injuries or disabilities and maybe sepsis isn't something that's possible physical activity wise, or maybe you've got to use some machines and move the arms or there's other things. Okay? So I don't know. Obviously, you can't blanket coat everything there because I know some some members, struggle there and look at workarounds. But just in general, the the more movement, the calorie calorie intake is in the right place, proteins are fundamentals, and we nail it.
Speaker 1:What we're not following the rest of the world. The rest of the world is over optimizing, more complications, stressing themselves out. They talk to you in the social scene and you talk to them and like, yeah, I've got sweet trackers on me, I'm looking at this and I get up and this whoop will tell me if I'm ready to work out or walk or not, I stressed, my score is too low, blah blah blah. All of these things they stress themselves out over, overall it's not aiding them. It's cool, but it's not really benefiting them and it's cool to talk about.
Speaker 1:But when you're on your own sitting on the couch and you're thinking, I'm free from my shit. I'm free from all that. I'm doing my fundamentals and going to sleep in happy days and I'm getting on with the rest of my life. I'm not overly analyzing everything. I'm not downloading the app Yukon taking photos of every package good in my house and it's telling me red, red, red, this is blah blah blah.
Speaker 1:You know, building this kind of really terrible, terrible relationship was pretty much anything you interact with. You know, like, come on. We we don't wanna live that way. We wanna do the fundamentals so it can free us, free our mind, crack on with other things in our life because we've got other things too we want to improve. We want to have our health obviously done and dusted there, and we work on there every day because it's something you've got to pay.
Speaker 1:It's a deal you've to pay now or you pay another type of bill later down the line. So we're willing to put in at least the fundamentals now, and then, yeah, we crack on. And I think that's really the deeper benefit of this kind of philosophy about health and training and stuff, is that we're not falling for ourselves. So from now until bedtime, do what you can with the fundamentals, enjoy yourself, you're gonna make mistakes, you're not perfect, nothing is perfect, be happy with sometimes, you know, the food is not bang on, sometimes, oh, you've scanned the label and on the label it says 172 calories, but when you scanned it, it says 175 calories. Don't be the type of person that freaks out about three calories, goes in the group, comments, gets annoyed about it.
Speaker 1:The answer is simple. Just let it go, three calories, tap and edit, reduce it down. Technology is not perfect for sure when it comes to food tracking, and no company can claim that. And just don't be just don't get annoyed at the smaller details. You're missing this you're missing the point.
Speaker 1:You're missing the point if you focus on that. The point is the overall lifestyle change. Remember this, the fundamental overall lifestyle change, not perfection. We don't wanna go in five years' time, look back and go, do know what I did? I tracked every gram of food, but they really stressed me out and I hated it.
Speaker 1:And actually I binged myself, tracked it all and I hated it and I just like felt super anxious every day. What's the point, man? Like, oh, you've tracked perfectly. We're not here. The goal isn't to track perfectly.
Speaker 1:The goal is to use these tools to free us, to get the results we want without being perfectionists. So we don't need perfection. The goal is that. So don't be led down the false path of the goal being, I need to be a perfect tracker. Cause that's what the traditional apps have been telling people for years, and that's not the answer.
Speaker 1:If it was the answer, we'd see far more improvements in society than we have now with all these apps and the money being spent on getting users on them. But anyway, I'm ranting on. Need to get on my day. So have a good day, guys. I'll speak to you tomorrow.