The principles and practices for living a healthy life
A healthy body and mind enable an individual to make positive contributions to society in fulfilling ways. A fit physique instills confidence in one's ability to face physical challenges and adapt to new environments. Similarly, a healthy mind fosters a resilient mindset and positive drive, enhancing one's motivation to make a positive impact on their surroundings. As primates, we should not lose touch with our core biological nature.
When being and feeling healthy, you can enjoy the journey of life to a greater extent, because your daily existence is not significantly limited by disease and limiting beliefs constantly defining your experience of reality. You develop confidence in yourself, which then turns into empowering others around you with the confidence they need to pursue their goals and healthy life. You build confidence for yourself by pursuing the goals and dreams you wish you pursued in order to become the kind of person you wish to be.
This confidence in your journey can fuel intrinsic motivation, inspiring you to make positive contributions to the world around you. Since you've internalized systems for self-care, you're ready to expand your impact to those around you and the broader world. You lead by example; this is often considered the most effective way to inspire others.
This situation may elevate your egoic sense of self. You may start feeling superior—better—than other humans. You may feel some envy of people who are one or two steps beyond your current self—in your perception. You are able to accept these natural feelings and let go of them to return to your core focus: cultivating physical and mental health within you. This is an infinite game. In this process, you want to pay close attention to not become excessively immersed in yourself that you get constantly self conscious and hinder your ability to positively contribute to the world.
What being healthy means
Being healthy is largely a subjective concept, as it depends on your interoception—your own internal feelings. In my view, health encompasses flexibility, strength, mobility, intrinsic motivation, and a positive inclination to help others. When you're healthy, you feel balanced, complete, and in harmony with your human nature. You are mindful of your well-being and strive to share your energy with others, creating positive emotions in line with our social nature. You cultivate overt, high-integrity relationships while also being comfortable with solitude.
Scientifically, health refers to a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. It enables individuals to adapt to life's challenges and contribute productively to their community. Health is a dynamic and multifaceted state that extends beyond merely being free from illness (Sartorius, 2006; Bircher, 2005; Huber et al., 2011).
These definitions align well with the widely accepted notion that health encompasses multiple dimensions of human existence. This concept also applies to other primates and most other animals. Their well-being is determined not only by their physical prowess but also by their role in social groups (Novak & Suomi, 1988).
Our current understanding of health emphasizes its reliance on two broad domains: physical health and mental health. Maintaining health is an ongoing process throughout one's life. A natural follow-up question is: how does one maintain health? Given our two broadly defined domains of health, we can break each down into fundamental principles or practices that one can regularly follow throughout life. For those beginning to consider health and wellness, it might be best to start with one or two principles from the list below and gradually incorporate more practices, step by step.
Pillars of physical health
We begin with the principles and practices for maintaining physical health. It's not possible to stop negative thoughts simply by thinking more. Instead, one can focus on the body to detach from the mind. By developing physical resilience through disciplined movement practices, you can also foster mental resilience.
Move
Movement, a form of play innate to young humans, often diminishes as one matures, sometimes at the cost of well-being. Any movement is a better choice than no movement, given our biological nature.
"Moving" is a broad term that includes activities ranging from as simple as walking to more complex forms like dancing, running, resistance training, or practicing Movement (Ido Portal). The key is to make movement a daily habit, even if it's only for a few minutes initially. This habit can then gradually become a part of your identity, fully internalizing the practice without becoming overly attached to it.
Strength & muscle mass
Resistance training is a form of movement that, especially when done with weights, can be quite rigid. However, it can be balanced with more fluid exercises to maintain a well-rounded physique. In this discussion on the Huberman Lab podcast, Dr. Andy Galpin outlines the steps to creating a fitness program, particularly for resistance training. Having a program is advantageous as it provides a systematic routine to follow, eliminating the need to devise new exercises ad hoc for each session, which is cognitively demanding and acts as a barrier to action especially at the beginning of your journey when you may lack sufficient knowledge to even know where to start. The ten steps are:
Assess and Choose Your Training Goal. Ensure it's specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Focus on one or two goals per goal cycle to avoid confusion and mental overwhelm. The goal can be outcome-focused (e.g., reduce body fat percentage by 5%, increase lean muscle mass by 12 LBS) or process-oriented (e.g., resistance training following the program 4 times per week & cardio 3 times per week).
Identify Your Defender. What is going to stop you from achieving your goal? These are your defenders, and you want to lay them all out in the beginning to shine the light of awareness on them. Know your potential points of failure (e.g., time constraints, recurring injury, travel schedule, limiting beliefs, fear of success/failure), so that you can make peace with them and incorporate flexibility into your regimen.
Goal Timeline. Set a timeline for achieving your goal. This could be a twelve-week cycle for nearer goals, or extend as needed for more distant objectives. Avoid excessive optimism, particularly during the planning phase when fleeting motivation may influence you. Motivation is transient and vague, and it doesn't guarantee steady progress, though you can certainly appreciate its presence when it arises.
Weekly Training Frequency. Determine the number of training sessions you want to have each week. Consider the previous three steps and establish a realistic schedule that you can adhere to over time. At this stage, you can also decide the type of training you'll perform each day. Remember to incorporate zone 2 (long duration, low intensity) cardio at least twice a week, and zone 5 (short, high intensity) cardio once or twice a week. These practices can be added to the end of your resistance training sessions or on separate days.
Exercise Selection Program. After defining your schedule, choose exercises for each weekly session. In resistance training, you can assign each training day to a specific split that targets certain or all body parts. A good practice is to target the same muscle group at least twice per week. This spreads the workload over multiple days, allowing for more volume and intensity, as the muscle group has time to recover. The best split depends on training frequency, your experience level, and preference. For a beginner (less than 2 years of consistent training) training 3 times a week, a Full Body split is likely most suitable. After determining the training split, select exercises for each session. Aim for 6-8 movements in resistance training sessions. The movements you choose depend on the training split. In a full-body program, you might select one exercise per muscle group based on main movement patterns (e.g., squat, hip hinge, vertical pull, horizontal push, vertical push, and some isolation exercises for smaller muscle groups like calves, biceps, triceps).
Exercise Order. After selecting exercises based on movement patterns, you can arrange them for each session. Strive to position the most demanding exercises, typically compound movements like bench press, squat, deadlift, that engage the most muscle fibers at the beginning of the sessions, followed by the rest.
Intensity/Load. At this stage, assign sets and repetitions for each exercise in each session. The intensity (percentage of 1 rep max) of the exercises depends on your training goals, experience level, and rep count. Generally, aim to train near or to failure (high effort, with the last rep feeling very hard, and you could only manage 1 or none more). Rep ranges below 5 allow for heavy loads, skewing the training adaptations towards strength. The 6-15 rep range is most suitable for muscle hypertrophy (developing muscle mass/toning). More than 15 reps enhance muscular endurance.
Volume refers to the amount of work done by each muscle group. Distribute this volume throughout the week to promote muscle recovery and growth. For resistance training, strive for 10-20 sets per muscle group each week, incorporating both lower and higher rep ranges to stimulate different training adaptations.
Rest Intervals.
Speed, Power, Strength (2 - 5 minutes)
Hypertrophy (1 - 2 minutes)
Endurance (20-60 seconds)
Chaos Management. Carry out a negative visualization practice to identify all potential points of failure that could hinder the successful implementation of a program that encourages more movement in your daily life. Become aware of these potential issues and formulate a plan to address them if they occur.
Nutrition. Food plays a crucial role in maintaining hormone balance and providing energy for daily activities. Its essence is simple: it's your energy source. Calorie intake is a vital aspect of food consumption, serving as a measure of energy each food provides. Strive to consume enough calories to feel well and energetic, but not so many that you quickly gain fat and feel sluggish.
Calculate your daily maintenance caloric needs (TDEE) here. Your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) is the number of calories you need daily to maintain your current weight. Consuming more calories than your TDEE will lead to weight gain, while consuming fewer will result in weight loss.
To avoid consuming excessive calories and to ensure you get all the macro and micronutrients needed for survival, aim to eat minimally or non-processed foods. These are foods that generally don't have a long shelf life, with some exceptions like rice. For a more in-depth overview of nutrition, read the post I wrote here.
Cardiovascular Health. Resistance training alone may not significantly develop one of the most crucial muscles, which is the heart. To achieve this, incorporate cardio training into your sessions or hold separate sessions throughout the week. Strive to perform zone 2 cardio at least twice a week and VO2 max cardio at least once a week. Zone 2 cardio is steady-state and maintains a heart rate percentage of 50-60% of your max heart rate. You can roughly compute your max heart rate by subtracting your age from 220, or more precisely by doing a dedicated test. For instance, a 25-year-old's rough max heart rate is 195. You can then calculate your heart rate percentages from this number. Following this example, zone 2 cardio would fall within the 158 - 171 heart rate zone. VO2 max cardio involves reaching your max heart rate (195 in this example) for short periods of time, through HIIT, for example.
Read more about zone 2 cardio here. Read more about VO2 max here. Calculate your heart rate zones here.
Mobility & Flexibility. Mobility, as defined by Moulton et al., 2019, involves the dynamic movement of joints through their full range of motion, requiring muscle strength, control, and coordination. Flexibility, on the other hand, is static, typically improved through static stretching. Both mobility and flexibility naturally develop with regular movement and strength training. To further enhance these skills, you can incorporate specific practices into your training routine. This might include dedicated sessions each week for mobility and flexibility training (like yoga), or incorporating active and passive stretching exercises at the start and end of your resistance training and cardio sessions. For an example warm up routine that also enhances mobility, click here.
Pillars of mental health
Once you have taken care of your physical health and effectively improved its condition (which is a lifelong process), there are essential practices you can adopt to enhance your mental well-being and improve your overall fitness.
Sleep
Sleep consistently for 6-9 hours per night. If needed, adjust your mindset about sleep, viewing it not as an obstacle to success, but as one of the keys to long-term well-being and success. Maintain a consistent sleep schedule, going to bed and waking up at the same time each day (a variation of +- 30 minutes is acceptable) to align with your circadian rhythm. Use an alarm if necessary; if not, avoid it.
Light/dark
Expose yourself to sunlight soon after waking up in the morning (5-10 minutes is enough). If the sun is not out yet, you may turn on all the lights in your indoor space or use a dedicated light source that mimics sunlight energy. Still, you may expose yourself to sunlight when the sun comes out. This is valid also on cloudy days. Sunlight is always present, just with less intensity on those days. In the late afternoon, expose your eyes to afternoon sunlight to provide a clear signal of the time of the day to the body, which helps align its rhythm appropriately and get ready for sleep. At night, minimize your exposure to sources of light (including bright screens), because those would disrupt the natural physiological shift toward a sleep state and/or the quality of sleep, as defined by time spent in the different sleep stages.
Social connection
Some interactions and relationships with other humans feel taxing, some are neutral, and others make us feel more energized. Become aware of the different physiological responses you draw from social interactions with other people, and consider removing ongoing negative interactions and fostering positive ones. The nervous system regulates our well-being and it is influenced by interactions. This doesn't mean you should only seek out people with whom you always agree, thus reinforcing your confirmation bias. Rather, it is about the ongoing emotions (affect) and state of being caused by your interactions with other humans.
Stress control
Stress is broadly perceived as a negative state of being characterized by negative affect. However, according to research by Dr. Alia Crum and colleagues, your mindset towards stress is more impactful than the stress itself. Firstly, you can adopt the stress-is-enhancing mindset, a term coined by Dr. Alia Crum. This mindset suggests that short-term stress can actually improve your resilience and can be a stepping stone towards improved well-being and life circumstances.
One physiological method to manage acute stress response is the physiological sigh. This involves one large inhale through the nose, followed by a shorter, stronger inhale to expand the lungs, and a slow, long exhale preferably through the mouth.
