This week I’m breaking down the 10 Principles of Health as we have defined them at RxFIT.
- Health is synonymous with fitness.
- Optimal health is achieved by athletes who prioritize sleep, nutrition, exercise, mindset, and connection with others.
- Go to bed early.
- Strive for more plants, not supplements.
- Eat less to lose weight. Eat more to gain weight.
- Train to improve performance, not aesthetics.
- Constantly vary workouts with functional movements and high intensity.
- Dedicate time to think, read, and write without distractions.
- Loving relationships improve longevity.
- Doctors are experts in medicine. Coaches are experts in health.
#4 Explained
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. This is our nutrition prescription at RxFIT, taken from Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food.
Pollan couldn’t have summarized this any better. Let’s break this down.
Eat food. This means eat real food — the stuff your great great grandmother would recognize. Oreos, Capn’ Crunch, Diet Coke, Mountain Dew, red dye #40, BPA, BHT, caramel color, MSG… The list goes on.
Not too much. “Hara hachi bu” is an ancient Japanese saying instructing eaters to stop eating when they are 80% full. This is why we recommend eating meals without technology. It’s easier to recognize when you’re body is full when you’re not mindlessly scrolling through an Instagram feed. Stick to this age-old adage.
Mostly plants. #800 gram challenge! Get your fruits and veggies in. The eventual goal is to develop a habit of eating vegetables at every meal.
Supplements
Supplements do very little. And if you’re eating anything like the rest of America, they will run right through you with little to no effect.
If I were to guess, you eat well Monday-Thursday. But then you justify Friday Night’s “Date Night” as a cheat meal where you get Junior Mints and popcorn before the movie. Then, you drive to get some ice-cream and cookies after the movie.
Saturday morning rolls around and you find yourself sitting back down with pizza and sugar-coated buffalo wings for the football game. You justify the junk food because you ate healthy all week (and you worked hard in the yard that morning!).
Saturday turns into an all-day cheat meal.
Then you wake up on Sunday with a stomach ache. You swear not to eat any more junk food for at least another seven days… until you smell the brownies in the oven at night.
“Oh well. I’ll start with a clean slate tomorrow,” you tell yourself.
Supplements are meant to supplement a healthy diet; not replace a bad one.
Takeaway
Follow the 800 gram challenge.
If you can do that, then choose from one of these three supplements.
Tyler
For additional reading, check out our friends over at Step One Foods.