30 Days To "The Best Me Ever" - Day 11 - Finding Balance

I’ve always been fascinated with the yin-yang symbol and the concept of balance and moderation that it represents. 

It’s a particularly powerful notion here in The West where so many aspects of our existence seem to be all or nothing.  Perhaps nowhere is this truer than in the area of health and fitness. 

On one end of the spectrum we have the “couch potatoes” that don’t exercise, eat whatever they want and sit back watching their waistlines expand year after year. 

On the other end are the “health nuts” that tyrannize themselves with stringent diets and exercise programs.  These folks use the words “always” or “never” a lot.  They’ll tell you in a self-righteous (and slightly accusatory) tone, “I always go running every morning” or “I never eat sweets”.   

As a personal trainer you might think I would applaud the latter group for doing all the supposed "right things".  But the fact is these “nuts” get on my nerves just as much (if not more so) that the “potatoes”.  Because my thought is that for every person that these extremists inspire to start working out and eating right --  they probably turn-off another 10 to the idea entirely.  De-conditioned folks usually point to these health freaks and they say to themselves, “Yeesh, they’re really obsessive -- I don’t want to live like that.”.  And I agree with them!! 

Ironically, many of these fitness-obsessed people are actually hurting their health in the name of wellness.  They often have multiple injures caused from training too much or not resting enough in between. Or they may have nutritional deficiencies from being on an extreme diet of one type or another.

I honestly don’t understand why people can’t find a middle ground between the two extremes.  A healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be an all or none proposition.  Why is it that over 95% of all diets fail?  Because they are designed to be so extreme that people can’t live like that for very long. 

They go on them, they may (or may not) lose some weight and then sooner or later they go “off the rails” because they’ve been living in a state of deprivation for so long.

My friend, Today Show Contributor and “Nutritionist to the Stars” (that’s my characterization, not hers)  Joy Bauer has a best-selling book called The 90/10 Weight Loss Plan.  It’s less of a diet and more of a change of perspective in the way that folks think about eating.  Joy’s basic premise is that you eat healthfully 90 percent of the time and 10 percent of the time you get a little crazy and make a conscious choice to eat some crappy stuff – just because it’s pleasurable.

The same is true with exercise.  You don’t have to be sitting on your duff watching or be training for the NY City Marathon.  There is something easier and far less extreme in the middle.  In fact, scientific research would suggest that from a health perspective you’d be better off taking a brisk 30-minute walk most days of the week then training aggressively for a few months for a specific event.  The habit of a daily 30-minute fitness walk would give you a great return on your fitness investment in terms of: potential weight loss, lowering of blood pressure, reducing risk of developing Type II diabetes and heart disease – with virtually no risk of injury.   Plus it’s free!  Open the door to your house, walk in one direction for 15-minutes turn around and walk back home.

Here are some other simple suggestions for small, simple changes that you can make in your daily life which payoff in looking better and being healthier.

 Cut down on non-nutritive drinks particularly regular sodas.

 Try to eat lower fat or fat-free dairy products most of the time.

 Spend five minutes while you’re watching TV gently stretching your hips and back.

 Do five minutes of deep breathing and meditation.

 Reduce your alcohol consumption.

 Do 10 minutes of calisthenics like a quick circuit of body weight squats, push-ups and dumbbell rows two or three times a week.

The point is when it comes to taking care of your body and your health, you can’t cram and a little goes a LONG way.

I challenge you to make a small shift in one thing that you’re doing that you know isn’t great for you in the long run.  Commit today to make one little change.  It doesn’t have to be major shift.  It doesn’t have to be an “I’ll never, ever, do that again” shift.  Just an “I’m going to “cut back on that” or a “do more of that” shift.  You’ll get results, you’ll see and feel changes and you won’t feel deprived.