Set the Tempo of Your Life With Diet and Exercise

Do hard things

I have been talking A LOT about doing hard stuff lately. A lot of it has been stimulated by all of the research I have been doing on GLP-1/semaglutide medications like WeGovy and Ozempic to understand their mechanisms of action, pros, and cons. Be on the lookout for a published white paper on the topic coming soon!

All of this thinking led me to the realization this weekend that our diet and exercise habits really do set the tempo for who we become and how we navigate through life. Here is a tweet I sent out Saturday on the topic:

I truly believe that how we move and feed our bodies determines who we become as people. Being healthy in our society is HARD! So many factors have contributed to a society that puts us in a predisposition to be unhealthy. Fighting it is hard as hell. But the fight is worth it because of the people we become during that fight.

There are millions of success stories of people who have been able to take control of their health. Let’s look at what that journey typically looks like.

Before you start a diet, you find yourself unable to resist many food temptations. The only “temptation” you have any success resisting is the one to go to the gym. Finally, you decide to get your act together and you string together a couple of weeks of good dieting and going to the gym. Then you have a weekend where you go on an absolute food bender. “Forget the gym, I’m eating pancakes all weekend!”

After that weekend, you feel a little down on yourself. You shouldn’t because you know a couple days of bad eating doesn’t negate all of the hard work you have been putting in, but you caught a glimpse of what feeling better looks like and you want more of that.

You decide to get back after it. Only now you are a little stronger. You’ve been eating healthier and hitting the gym. You can keep doing that. This time you make it a couple of months with a really solid diet and exercise routine. You’re more confident because you feel good and are starting to like the way you look. Then vacation comes and you completely throw the idea of healthy living out the window. Margaritas on the beach all day and one unhealthy (but delicious) meal after another.

You get back from vacation and you’re disappointed because you see the scale has gone up a few pounds and you’re not feeling as vibrant as you were prevacation. You’re discouraged but motivated to get back after it Monday. And you do, because you’ve done this before.

This time after 2 weeks of solid dieting and exercise routine, you get invited out to dinner with friends. While all your friends are crushing the bread bowl, fried food, and drinking alcohol, you opt for a steak and veggies and decide to skip the drink. After all, you do want to have the energy to get to that yoga class tomorrow morning.

Two months later, you have been crushing it with your diet and exercise and it’s time for another vacation. This vacation looks a little different though. Going into it, you decide that you want to feel your best during AND after vacation so instead of going off the rails, you wake up each morning and go for a walk, you opt for less alcohol and choose cleaner sources when you do, and the idea of a delicious steak or local caught seafood sounds like a vacation meal to be cherished.

You’ve changed. You’ve become someone who eats healthy and exercises. You are someone who can do hard stuff. And that carries over into other areas of your life. You find yourself helping out around the house more, having more patience with your children (and your spouse), and at work, you keep knocking out high-level project after high-level project out of the park. You are someone who does hard things. And you kind of enjoy it. And you are a better person for it.

So don’t look for shortcuts when it comes to dieting and exercise. Doing it the hard way is not the most popular but it is the way that allows you to go through the journey of self-development that leads to you becoming the person you have always dreamed of being.

Thanks for reading,

Chris Irvin

P.S. I’ve launched a paid version of this newsletter! Don’t worry, all of these short articles will still be FREE. The benefit of the paid version is that you will have access to exclusive podcasts and opportunities to ask any health questions you have. I am looking forward to taking this newsletter to the next level and I hope you’ll come along for the journey!