This list has five things on it: what's missing?

I wrote yesterday about how to tell if a workout was hard enough and mentioned in passing that if we’re not making progress it could be because of what we’re eating.  Working out is only one part of what it takes to have good health.  Here are the things I think we need to consider when we are figuring out how to be our best healthy selves.

Exercise.  Duh.  I have built my career on the premise that exercise is good for us.  I believe it.  We need cardio, strength, and flexibility exercise to be optimally physically functional.

Nutrition.  Healthy bodies need healthy fuel.  We can do zillions of crunches, but we’re not going to have beautiful abdominals if we are chowing down on sugar cereal and donuts all day.  When we eat our veggies and drink our water, we are helping our bodies work at their peak.

Sleep.  Workouts only work if we rest in between them.  Our muscles need time to repair themselves, to come back stronger than before.  If we’re not sleeping, our bodies can’t heal.  Also, our brains get nutty.

Connection.  We can’t do it all alone.  We need other humans to love us and pet us and listen to us.

Challenge.  We need the right amount of this one.  Too much and we become hair-pulling stress monsters.  Too little and we turn into boneless couch critters.  Ideally, we find our bodies and minds tired but not totally worn out at the end of the day.

What else should be on the list?

How to tell...

If I did not believe that working out was good, I would not be a personal trainer and Pilates instructor.  However, I do not believe that more working out is always better.  We want to do the right amount of work.  How much is that?  Here are some ways to tell:

We feel tired afterwards.  Not flat-out exhausted.  Not suffering intense pain.  But not like we could do it all over again, no problem.

We get sore, but not too sore.  Soreness usually comes on some time after the workout is over.  We might notice it the next morning.  Some of us hit peak soreness two days after the workout.  If we’re still really hurting after three days, we did too much and should back off a bit.

We make progress.  If, in general, we are getting stronger or faster or leaner, we’re doing it right.  We have to be careful not to obsess over this part, though.  All of us have off days when we are tired or slow or puffy or whatever.  Sometimes we hit a plateau and have to change something up to get past it.  The trend, however, should be positive.  If it’s not, we’re probably not doing enough of the right things.  (Note:  sometimes diet is the culprit here.  We may have a terrific workout plan and a terrible eating plan.)

We don’t hate every second of our workouts.  It’s okay to hate some parts (looking at you, burpees…).  It’s okay to prefer some workout days to others.  But if we spend the whole time miserable, it’s time to explore other options.  There are many, many ways to work out; nearly everyone can find at least a couple that are mostly fun.

We can do this.

As You Wish...

In theory, being a Fitness Professional, I know better.  One would think that I would be immune to laziness, junk food, and seductive couches.  One would be wrong.  I have the exact same struggles as everyone else.  What I do get, included with my Fitness Professional deluxe package, is more tools to use to attack those struggles and maybe a tad more experience with the wrestling.

When I’m there on the couch with my popcorn and my 27^th episode of some cop show or other and I feel gross, I have to kick myself in the butt (figuratively.  It is almost impossible to kick oneself in the butt while sitting on a couch eating popcorn…).  I know that I’m not going to feel immediately better if I go lift weights or hop on the spin bike.  In fact, I might even feel temporarily worse.  The thing is, I know that I get to choose.  I can stay there and continue to feel horrible, or I can get moving, feel horrible, and then feel better.  Maybe it doesn’t sound encouraging to say that feeling horrible is inevitable.  Feeling horrible in order to feel better seems more encouraging than just plain feeling horrible, to me.

Or, to put it another way, Wesley points out in The Princess Bride that life is pain and that anyone who tells you different is selling something.  We can choose pointless pain, or the kind of pain that leads to awesomeness.

How are we going to get awesome today?