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This podcast is for people who want to feel fit, strong, and energised again – but haven’t found a way to make fitness hold when life is busy.
You’ve tried plans that work on paper but fall apart under pressure.
You’ve had periods of momentum, followed by long stretches of drift.
Not because you don’t care.
But because most approaches weren’t built for real life.
On this podcast, we talk about how to build strength, energy, and confidence in your body inside a full life – not an ideal one.
Training that adapts when work ramps up.
Nutrition that stays simple when attention is limited.
Habits that survive travel, stress, family, and changing weeks.
These are honest conversations about systems, mindset, and identity – and how fitness stops slipping to the bottom of the list and starts reinforcing the rest of your life.
Today is just one of those horrific UK weather days. Miserable gray, pouring down, dark, and depressing. But actually, other than that, feeling feeling pretty great. And that brings me nicely onto today's topic, which is really simple. And that is how looking after yourself, I guess, the trifecta of exercise, eating well, and rest or sleep can really reset the baseline of how you feel day to day.
Jake:And I am a very true believer that those things, we can call it health or self care fitness, I believe are the most powerful and underestimated prescriptions or remedy solutions for mental health, depression specifically. And it's this massive shame that they are so underutilized by the medical profession. We often look for things to solve maybe the symptoms through pills, prescriptions. Instead of actually looking at what's the root cause, like, do we prevent this in the first place? And in a modern world where the average person spends most of their day sedentary, behind a desk, doing a job that they hate, consuming food that poisons us, that makes us feel tired, sluggish, overweight, bad skin, sad, and staring at screens for the rest of the day.
Jake:Phones, scrolling, getting trapped on Facebook, on Instagram, watching Netflix, and really having no other purpose other than to wake up the next day and to do it all again. It's no surprise that we have more and more unhappy people on this planet. And I really do believe that simple interventions like focusing on eating whole nutritious foods, getting some kind of exercise. It doesn't even need to be crazy. It could just be going out for a twenty minute walk and prioritizing sleep.
Jake:Not eating late before you go to bed, not watching screens until you go to bed, not having your phone in your room, simple sleep hygiene. If everyone on the planet implemented this, I believe we would have a significantly healthier and happier population. And the reason I wanted to talk about this today is just because the weather today is so dull, so depressing, and it can have a drastic impact on your mood. Yeah. I do still feel generally that I wake up happy, ready for the day, motivated, energetic.
Jake:And I don't put this down to my personality, but I'll put it down to just the general, the really simple, straightforward, basic health or well-being habits that I've just discussed before. Because when you are doing those things and you feel good in your body and your brain chemistry is wired up right, you're not hooked on processed foods and sugars, you've got the energy that your bodies are supposed to have, you feel strong, you feel mobile, you're relatively pain free, you're fit, and you're well rested, then you are in a very strong position to go out and enjoy your life and grab life by the horns and feel focused and feel full of energy and feel productive with what you do. And don't get me wrong, we all have bad days. We all have those days where we feel low, where we feel like we're unfocused, where we feel like we're not as productive as we'd wanna be or maybe unhappy or dissatisfied with our lives. We all have those days.
Jake:But on the majority, wouldn't it feel so amazing to have them be the minority? And most days, you do feel full of energy. You feel happy. You feel focused. You feel motivated.
Jake:You feel productive. And I genuinely believe that the main thing we can do as individuals to give ourselves the gift of that is to focus on those three fundamental things. Whole foods, eating natural nutritious foods, exercising in whatever form and resting properly. By rest, I don't mean sat on the sofa scrolling through Instagram. I mean proper considered rest.
Jake:When it comes to the food side, I think the main problem with the food is that we look for the food for comfort when actually it provides us with that very short sensation of pleasure and then leaves us with this trail of fatigue, of low energy, not to mention the long term implications of carrying extra weight, being overweight, being obese, the way that it's altering our physiology over time. And this is not to mean that you have to live like a monk and eat perfectly all the time because I don't believe that's the right way either, and it's certainly not something that I follow. But with all of these things, we are really talking about the the overall average. Like, what does that mean choice look like? And there's the rule thrown around, like, the eighty twenty moderation principle.
Jake:And I think the same is true for actually application of these things as well. Like, 80% if 80% of what you're doing looks pretty good, you're gonna be in an insane, insane place. And the beauty of it is that that 20% actually might be the thing that keeps it sustainable for you and keeps you consistent. Because if you're trying to be a 100% all the time, you're setting yourself up for failure because the smallest situation, scenario can throw you off track. So that's one of the powers of the eightytwenty.
Jake:So with the nutrition, you know, just really just focus on the fundamentals. We don't need one of these extreme diets where you're trying to be in ketosis all the time or every carb is bad or every fat is bad or one drop of seed oil is gonna kill you, right? Like, I think there's some truth in all of those things and there's some merit in some of those protocols, but the stress of trying to do that all the time is probably gonna contribute more to your demise than actually the benefits of doing so in the first place. So really with the foods, just focusing on those fundamentals, eat whole foods most of the time, try and get a good source of protein at every meal. And I think for most people, you will be 90% of the way there compared to following like any kind of crazy diet and significantly better than following the traditional Western diet.
Jake:Then when it comes to the training, exercise has many components and the benefits come from many different directions. I think walking is a great place to start, especially if you can do it outside because you're getting the benefit of like being switched off, being in nature, like our natural habitat of being outside. And it's an opportunity to be away from those screens and be away from the artificial lighting and those noisy distractions that we typically surround ourselves with. And then from there, I believe there's the three main components, the three disciplines in my opinion, the strength, the mobility, and then the cardio as well. I personally believe, and I've come to realize this more and more over the the years, it's in my opinion, it's best to be average at all of them than really focus on one of them unless you're some kind of professional that's trying to be an expert in that field.
Jake:Because if you're strong but you're stiff and your joints hurt and you can't get up a flight of stairs, what's the point? If you're fit but you're weak and you can't lift anything, you can't, you know, your joints hurt all the time, your hamstrings are tightened up, then what's the point? And if you're bendy as hell, but you can't run a 100 meters or you can't do any strength training or lift anything that's useful, then again, it's pointless. So I really believe the jack of all trades approach is I love that for health and fitness. So that might be doing a few strength training sessions a week, few runs, a bit of daily mobility.
Jake:I really believe that is the formula to success and that's what we use with our clients, at least when they've been with us for some time and we've built those core habits to begin with. And then finally with the sleep, touched on it before, but really, really simple techniques for sleep hygiene. I believe making sure your last meal is at least two hours, if not more, before bedtime. Same with drinking as well, like, as in what even water. If that's gonna make you wake up during the night, it's good to actually, like, pull that back so that you're not breaking up.
Jake:Trying to be away from screens close to bedtime. I actually think something like a movie on a low light setting isn't so bad, but something that's actually active like gaming or scrolling on your phone where you're actually interacting with it, I think that's the thing that really gets us work would be included in that as well. But in my opinion, I don't think watching a movie on a low light setting, especially with like a an orange tinted screen, I really don't think that's much of a big deal. Just giving yourself a little threshold between then and when you go to bed. I think reading with a Kindle is absolutely fine.
Jake:It's never been something that's that's impacted me. And then, obviously, basic room settings like room as dark as possible, cool, and, obviously, if you live in a noisy area, earplugs. I wear earplugs every night anyway. So it's just something that helps me get a good night's sleep. Now, really believe if you implement those three things in terms of let's forget aesthetic body, let's forget fitness, let's forget health, let's just literally think about you waking up happy and energetic and focused every single day irregardless of your surroundings.
Jake:That is the best thing you can do to set yourself up for success and build a strong baseline to jump from. Because if you're waking up feeling unhappy, feeling unenergetic, feeling unfocused, feeling unconfident or bad about yourself every day, just to bring yourself back up to normal and then function in this world is a massive leap every single day to do that. So imagine if you could start from this baseline of feeling ready to go and ready to seize life and feeling strong and confident in your body. It's an amazing place to be and really you you do feel unstoppable. So if you have any questions about that, guys, the three protocols there, really straightforward.
Jake:And if you do, obviously, suffer from unhappiness. And, you know, I wanna be careful talking about when it becomes an actual mental health issue, like proper severe depression. You know, obviously, that's your bag, speak to a medical professional. But I do think a great place to start for anyone, if they are feeling unhappy in any way or suffering or struggling with life, then the trifecta there, I believe, is one of the most powerful ways to start. Thanks for listening, guys.
Jake:Peace out.