“I am Doug Resetar and I believe in fitness.” Even though I took the line from “Pain and Gain,” it is accurate. The major goal of OutdoorFitnessProject is to promote fit living through training outdoors. Training is only one part of the fit living equation. There are two other essential areas to a fit life. There are also countless ancillary areas that fall in various categories.
I focus on the big three. If they are in line, you will be fit. One major sideline to living a fit life is spending too much time focusing on the sub groups and missing the picture of the big three.
The key to living a fit life are Food, Sleep, and Training. That is it. If you have those three things dialed in, you will have no choice but to be fit. It is easier than you think. The following is a guideline on getting dialed in and living a fit life.
Food. The subject of countless books, articles, news stories, even government policy. It is easy to get paralysis by analysis when it comes to daily nutrition. I will make it simple. Eat whole natural foods. This is foods with one ingredient…the food itself. Stick with grass fed, wild caught, and organic when possible. Eat fermented foods a few times a week to help your microbiome. Cook with coconut oil, butter, ghee, and tallow. Don't overcomplicate food decisions by getting caught up in deciding which label containing several ingredients you never heard of is better for you, keep it simple, keep it one ingredient.
Stay away from GMO (most corn and soy), vegetable oils (extra virgin olive oil is good to eat, but has a low burn point, therefore not the best to cook with), artificial sweeteners, and anything refined or processed. If there is more than one ingredient on the label, do not eat it.
When you eat natural foods, it is much harder to over eat. Your taste also changes as you are not consuming artificial, hyper sweet flavoring.
What to drink in descending order from more to less. Water, tea, coffee, Kombucha tea, red wine.
Sleep. We all know that we need more sleep, however, we have a hard time convincing ourselves to prioritize it. For years I believed I could get by on 4-5 hours of sleep. In reality, I was doing just that, getting by, and by no means living a fit life. Even though I was training hard and eating well, I was constantly tired and ultimately had some serious adrenal fatigue.
In reviewing the research, everyone needs at least 7 hours of sleep. If you are reading this post, you are likely active and need some more. Getting a consistent 8 hours of sleep will do wonders for your training, mood, and will also help you eat better as you will be less likely to make poor food choices out of exhaustion.
A few years back I purchased the Dome, a white noise maker to help with my sleep. It is definitely a big help, especially when traveling with kids. Along the same line, Relax Melodies is a free app that produces background noise and is conveniently on your phone.
Training. I love to train, who doesn’t? Due to my love for training I get caught up in the minutia from time to time. I find myself worrying about perfect set-rep combos, time under tension, etc., etc. The most important thing about training is that you do it consistently. This means 3 or 4 days a week for resistance training very week. Mix in conditioning drills on your training days or do them on off days, either way, as long as you consistently do them.
As I have gotten older, two practices have made a big impact on my training and have helped me enjoy training more and have yielded better results. The first and most important is to avoid going to failure. While completing sets, always leave a few reps on reserve. Increase the volume of sets/reps and frequency of training as you advance. You will get stronger, recover faster, and are much less likely to get injured when not going to failure.
The second practice is to look at training as practice. I have really embraced this since I have been training outdoors. Working out should invigorate you and you should feel great after a session, not beat up and exhausted. When viewing training as practice, you focus more on your form, keeping your body tight, and the art of the movement you are doing. These are all essential and often forgotten at the gym.
There you have it, living a fit life decoded in under 900 words. Take action and start living a fit life today!
