The second step in cleaning up your life after deciding to start at all is cleaning up your health. As promised, this week we’re going to over the simple but not easy steps to cleaning up your health so you can have a strong foundation for attacking the rest of your life. Let’s get started.

Your Health and Why it Matters

Everything in your life is impacted by your health. Your physical health impacts your mental health, and vice versa. Both impact your energy levels, your personal and professional life, your hobbies, and anything else you can think of.

When you body and mind are operating at the best possible chemical balance, everything in your life is easier. You sleep better and more easily. You have more energy and focus for your career, your passions, and relationships. You are less prone to emotional highs and lows. Studies have even linked proper exercise and nutrition to reducing the effects of depression and anxiety.

In short, there is absolutely no reason to not start taking your health seriously immediately. There are no downsides to doing so, whereas the negatives of NOT doing so are numerous.

What to do

The methods I outline here are designed to be effective and get you the greatest results in the shortest span of time. If you choose to take smaller steps over a longer span of time, that is up to you. Your results will come slower, but if that comes with the trade off of you actually doing it instead of giving up, then it’s worth it. The good plan you stick to is better than the perfect plan you give up on.

Before we get started, a few ground rules:

Simple, not easy

What I lay out here is designed to make major changes to how you live your life. These changes are not complicated, but they are difficult. It’s not “fun” to give up things that are bad for you but feel good. The fun comes later, when you see the results. This going to be hard, pure and simple.

I am doing this

Everything I am going to tell you to do is something I am already doing. If it works, I do it. If it doesn’t, I don’t. I will never tell you to do anything I have not personally done.

Make your own food

One of the best ways to both get healthier and save money is to buy and cook your own food. When you control what goes on your plate, there are no excuses.

Yes, you get a “cheat day”

No one can be perfect all the time. It’s not realistic, and it leads to unplanned binges and skipped work outs. When you know you can have that treat or rest for a while day each week, you have far fewer excuses. Pick one day a week where you don’t worry about what you eat and where you don’t work out. Take a day off. Simple.

Eating

Your physical health is 80% nutrition. The idea that you can eat that horrible food and then just “burn it off later” is flawed and does not work. If you want a healthy body, give it healthy fuel. It can be hard to know what’s healthy these days, what with how the nutrition and fitness industry machines are always trying to get you to try this new supplement or that diet version of the thing you like that tastes the exact same we promise. You get the idea.

So as promised, we’re going to make this very simple: You’re only going to eat and drink real food. If it comes in a box, has ingredients you can’t pronounce, or contains sugar or high fructose corn syrup, you’re not putting it in your body. Don’t worry, we’ll discuss some examples of both real and fake foods.

Fake: Soda

There is absolutely no reason for you to drink soda or any other processed drink. There are zero health benefits, only drawbacks. Don’t be fooled by things like Gatorade or “clean” energy drinks, these are not much better. Read the labels, and you’ll see that most bottled and canned drinks are just trying to get you to drink way too many calories. Stay away from it.

Real: Tea and Coffee

Before you get excited, this doesn’t mean you can keep having your morning mopa frappa garbage coffee flavored milkshake latte. This means you drink coffee. Black. If you need some flavor, add a little ground cinnamon. No cream. No sugar. The same thing goes with tea. No sweetened iced team. Just water and a tea bag or leaves.

When it comes to milk, it depends on your goals. If your goal is purely to lose weight and get healthier, avoid the dairy altogether. There is merit to it when trying to gain muscle weight, but that’s not what we’re after here.

Fake: Processed and Fried Foods

This is a broad brush to paint with, and sadly that’s appropriate. I cannot speak for the food industries of other countries, but America’s food industry has loaded us down with a significant majority of fake, processed, sugar infused foods that have very little if any nutritional value at all.

While this is a shame, it makes things incredibly simple for you. You avoid all of these things. You stop eating fast food. You stop eating breaded, processed meats. You stop having cake and ice cream every other day. You stop having pancakes, muffins, and hash browns for breakfast. As with the drinks, read your labels. If you’re food shopping properly, there shouldn’t be many labels to read anyway.

Real: Meats, Vegetables, Nuts

The bulk of your food intake should be real meats and vegetables cooked in your own home. Yes, this involves some time. If you don’t want to cook every night, start getting into bulk food preparation. The important thing is that you eat real meat from animals and real vegetables grown in the ground. These are what provide the nutrients your body needs. Throw in some nuts if you want some variety or really need a snack once in a while (you usually don’t). Almonds are your healthiest option. Get the kind with sea salt if they are too bland for you on their own. Read the labels carefully and avoid the ones coated in sugar or dark chocolate.

Fake: (Most) Sauces and Dressings

Once again, we come back to reading your labels. I’m not going to say that every single sauce and dressing out there is bad for you. Just most of them. You’d be surprised how many of your favorites have sugar or high fructose corn syrup. Learn to make your own alternatives at home, find options that are clean, or do without.

Real: Home Made Alternatives

While this is mainly aimed at the sauces and dressings, it can apply to practically anything. If you’re making it yourself, you can make it healthy. The internet is full of healthy alternatives to plenty of things.

Real but not Good: Grains and Starches

I am not advocating zero carb crash diets. You do need some carbs in your diet, especially if you are going to follow the most efficient plan and starting lifting weights as your primary form of exercise (more on that in the next section).

That being said, breads and other grains and starches should be avoided. When or if you get to the point of wanting to bulk up, come back to these. For now, avoid them.

Exercise

You need to work out in order to be healthy, it’s just that simple. An average of three days a week is sufficient for most people, provided you do an actual workout. You don’t need fancy advanced routines or machines. You don’t need a personal trainer. You just need to put in the work and do the movements properly.

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is what the “best” workout is. The best answer to that is “the kind you do consistently.” There is a most EFFICIENT form of exercise, to be sure. However if you hate it and rarely do it, that efficiency doesn’t mean much.

Contrary to a an extremely out-dated fitness perception, long duration cardio is actually one of the LEAST efficient ways to lose body fat. I’m not saying not to do it if you enjoy it and find it easy to stick to. I’m just telling you it’s one of the least efficient ways to lose fat and “get toned.”

Heavy lifting is by far the most efficient form of exercise there is. Study after study has been done, and the science has proven and re-proven it. Not only does it burn fat more efficiently than any other form of exercise, it also creates strong, lean muscle for that toned look. Contrary to another fitness myth, lifting heavy weights alone won’t make you huge and bulky. You actually have to eat caloric surplus (take in more calories than you burn) for that to happen. The king of heavy lifting tools is by far the barbell. Complex multi-joint movements using progressive overload (gradually increasing the weight as you complete goals) are some of the best things you can do for your body.

The most important thing of all when starting to exercise is being safe. Especially if you are going to start lifting, it is imperative you practice proper form extensively, and start off VERY light with the weights. If you are new to exercise or even just to weight lifting, it is HIGHLY recommended that you start off with just the empty barbell. A standard Olympic barbell weighs 45 pounds on its own, that is plenty to get you started. If that is still too heavy, practice perfect form with a dowel rod or piece of PVC pipe. Perfect form will go a long way towards preventing injuries as the bar gets heavier, and will save you the time of having to fix it later.

An honorable mention definitely goes to kettlebells, which I have talked about before. Kettlebells can be everything from a supplement to a stand alone fitness option. Work them into your routine, even if it’s just doing some swings one or two days a week like I do.

As for other forms of exercise, they all have their merits. Other than a bit of body weight core work on my non-lift days along with my kettlebell swings, I don’t use anything else. If you find something that you enjoy and that your body responds well to, I will be the last person to discourage you from doing it. Just don’t neglect the basics.

Suggested Equipment

Full Power Cage

My strongest recommendation is going to be a full power cage with an Olympic barbell + standard Olympic plates. This is the setup I have been using for years, and it has never once failed me. Below is the cage I have had sitting in my living room since day 1:

This entire setup fits easily into my living room, weights, bench, cage, and all. I have zero excuses for not working out each day, because I literally have to walk past it to leave the house. For a home gym setup, it’s hard to beat this.

Kettlebells

As I mentioned previously, kettelebells are quite possibly one of the most cost effective pieces of exercise equipment you could ever own. I have these in several weights, starting with 20 pounds for guests and beginners, up through 80 pounds for advanced users.

If you are just starting out, begin with the 35 pound at most and work your way up. Once you can do 50 two handed swings in a single set, you can move up to the next weight.

How’s Your Health?

As always, I want to hear from all of you. I hope that what we covered today has given you some starting points for you can change your health and therefore change your life. Share your stories in the comments. You just might inspire someone else to start making their own changes.

Life Clean Up Step 2: Your Health