Just a Little Bit Better
Just a little bit better
A good rule to live by with nutrition is to just make it “a little better.”
This actually applies to anything you are doing when it comes to
your health. I’ve seen so many people sign on to an extreme diet or
detox and then get overwhelmed by all the rules and advice they
get. Many of us feel like we must commit and jump all in on what-
ever we try. I get it. When you realize you must lose weight or get
back in shape or when something goes wrong with your health,
it feels urgent and it’s easy to overcommit. But this usually isn’t a
sustainable approach. Most of the time, the best place to start is
by making things a little better. Going from not doing anything for
fitness and being wholly sedentary to jumping into boot camp class
seven days a week isn’t a great idea. Instead, start with just going
for a walk. Nutrition is similar. Going from a diet of processed,
high-sugar, fast food for most meals to an all-whole-foods diet is
often not sustainable. Instead, think about making small changes.
Switching from a Big Mac to a Subway sandwich is a little better.
One of my buddies runs a huge real estate development busi-
ness. He also is the largest owner of a well-known
fast-food chain. He’s a busy guy who works in an environment that
doesn’t promote health. He gets up at 4:00 am and goes all day,
seven days a week. Most evenings are filled with client dinners or
social gatherings. At first, he could sustain this lifestyle by drink-
ing coffee all day long. Once that stopped working, he switched to
soda. It took about 10 cans of high caffeine and sugar to get him
through the day. After a year of this, he was pre-diabetic and had
put on almost 50lbs. When he reached out for help, he planned to
drop all soda cold turkey and start working out daily. (He hadn’t
worked out since college 20 years earlier.) His plan lasted a week.
Instead, we devised a simple plan for “just a little bit better.” He
had to try and get 5,000 steps in each day, and he would replace
one can of soda with a can of iced tea that had less caffeine and
less sugar. This was manageable, and he was able to keep it up and
slowly reduce his soda intake. After six months, he was off of soda
completely, he had lost 30lbs, and his blood sugar normalized so
he was no longer pre-diabetic. By re-evaluating his decisions every
couple of weeks, he was able to get to a much healthier place in a
sustainable way.
A little bit better applies to any part of your health and fitness.
It’s part of how you progress. As I mentioned earlier, eating whole
foods is part of the basics of nutrition, but if you aren’t there yet,
you can make things just a little bit better by having 50 percent of
your meal from whole foods or 20 percent or whatever is just a
little bit better than what it was before.
See you in the gym,
Aaron Leventhal CSCS, ACSM CS, PN1