TL;DR: Our daily habits are going to build the foundation of our health and fitness. (about 7 min read)

“Foundation Five” habits for a healthy metabolism:

1. Get 6.5 - 8 hrs of sleep per night!

2. Stay hydrated!

3. Build your nutritional base: get PROTEIN (0.34 - 0.55g protein/lb body weight; ~1g/kg BW) and FIBER (minimum 25g) every day.

4. Fuel your exercise: eat simple carbs in proportion to the exercise you’re going to do.

5. Move your blood: exercise and massage both help improve blood flow, nutrient delivery, & immune function. Adjust your movement based on your fitness goals.

We have three resources: our time, our money, and our health. We can use time to get more money or spend money to save ourselves time, and we can put both time and money into our health. But we cannot buy our health back completely. We sometimes sacrifice our health when we’re short on time or money, and we aren’t completely in control of our bodies (genetics, random accidents, prior life experiences we didn't have control over). But we literally wouldn’t be alive here if our bodies stopped working.

It’s important to invest in our health the same way we invest quality time with people we love and we invest money to be financially healthy and stable in the future. Keeping our bodies in good working condition is not something we can do a “cleanse” for and bad habits are not something we can supplement our way out of. “Cleanses” (ie, taking stock of our habits and making adjustments) and supplements definitely have their place - but they are like sprinkles on a cake. They are not the batter. They will not be able to give you the delicious base you are looking for. (note to me: don’t write analogies before lunch…)

The majority of our health and fitness is determined by our daily habits. The good news is that “messing up” on these foundational 5 habits on any one day isn’t going to make a big difference in our overall health. Eat an extra donut in the break room after an important (boring) work meeting? Not a big deal. Stay up late catching up with a friend you haven’t seen in a while? A great use of your time. Make a big stack of pancakes with your kids on the weekend and don’t immediately get up and do jumping jacks? Sounds like a great Saturday.

The better news is that setting good habits as part of your normal routine is going to really be the deciding factor in whether or not your other efforts in the kitchen or at the gym are successful. It does not matter how much cardio you do if you don’t eat enough during the day and then binge right before you go to bed. It does not matter how much you lift if you aren’t getting enough protein or sleep. You can eat the same amount of total calories and do the same amount of work and get totally different results if you ignore your metabolism and work against your body.

The “Foundation Five” habits will help you maintain metabolic balance and reduce stress. Stress = metabolic imbalance, and this leads to feeling crummy in the short term (tiredness, headaches) and disease in the long term (insulin resistance, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cognitive dysfunction, cancer). We can’t cure disease by diet alone but we can give ourselves the best shot for preventing it, slowing it down, and recovering when things do inevitably happen to us.

Build your nutritional base with protein and fiber. A good rule of thumb to plan your diet around is “greens, beans, berries”. “Greens” are greens (obviously). “Beans” can be actual beans, but this can also be any food that is high in protein + fiber. If you like chicken as your protein, make sure to add something with fiber to your plate like quinoa, nuts, or sweet potatoes. “Berries” are sweet things you can add to your plate, like adding blueberries to greek yogurt. I mention “berries” instead of fruit in general because berries tend to be more nutrient dense and lower in simple carbs than other fruits so they’re a good option to incorporate if you are stuck at your desk at work/in a car or plane while traveling/some other situation you can’t move around and you want to reduce simple carbs.

Eat simple carbs in proportion to the movement you’re doing. Less active = less simple carbs. More active = simple carbs before your activity to fuel your movement, then simple carbs + protein after your activity to fuel your recovery (glycogen, healing, muscle growth).

Simple carbs (which raise your blood glucose levels quickly, so your body sees them as “sugar” even if you don’t think of them as sweets) definitely have a place in our nutrition plan, but if we eat them when we’re not moving or we already have full glycogen stores, then we will store them as fat. When we eat simple carbs too quickly and don’t bring our BGLs down with movement, the biochemistry of how we store excess simple carbs can cause inflammation. So timing when, and how fast, you eat simple carbs has a HUGE impact on your metabolism even if you aren’t eating extra calories.

Move your blood around. Your blood carries all the nutrients your body needs AS WELL AS the signals your different organs use to communicate with each other. Moving your blood also helps your immune system because it increases the exchange of signals and biological molecules between your lymph (the liquid in your body that isn’t in your blood vessels) and your blood. You cannot get rid of biological waste or fight infections without moving things from your lymph into your bloodstream.

If going to the gym or running around town is not your thing, simple bodyweight movements throughout the day, stretching and yoga, and massage can move your blood and help with lymph exchange. This can also be a really helpful thing to remember for times when we have limited mobility. At some point in our lives, we will all deal with limited mobility - maybe we’re recovering from an injury, or have a pre-existing condition, or we’re pregnant. Knowing what our options are for getting our blood moving and making circulation a priority will benefit all of your other health efforts!

“Foundation Five” habits for a healthy metabolism:

1. Get 6.5 - 8 hrs of sleep per night!

2. Stay hydrated!

3. Build your nutritional base: get PROTEIN (0.34 - 0.55g protein/lb body weight; ~1g/kg BW) and FIBER (minimum 25g) every day.

4. Fuel your exercise: eat simple carbs in proportion to the exercise you’re going to do.

5. Move your blood: exercise and massage both help improve blood flow, nutrient delivery, & immune function. Adjust your movement based on your fitness goals.