No, not your bumper plates. I mean, like, bumpers in bowling. See, not only do I use bowling as a metaphor for swinging a kettlebell (keep your eyes on the arrows and project the bell to the pins), but also as an analogy for fitness in general.
In other words, where are your guardrails? Where are your boundaries?
As a child, it can be pretty difficult to get the bowling ball straight down the lane when you first start. This is true especially if you don’t go bowling very often. Even with those little arrows at the front of the lane, it can still be hard to manage a clean shot down the middle.
So your parents might order the bumpers be raised, effectively allowing you to hit the pins every time. No, it won’t make you an incredibly effective bowler, but it will help you to have a little bit of fun instead of throwing nearly every ball into the gutter.
Where do we stand?
As adults, our health and fitness demands that we set up our own bumpers to help keep us on track. It’s all too easy to let work and family get in the way of taking care of yourself and, before you know it, the person you see standing in the mirror in front of you isn’t the same one from a decade ago.
Even in younger adults, it’s pretty reasonable to expect 5-10 lbs of weight gain each decade alongside a 3-8% decline in muscle tissue. These numbers stack up to big body composition changes over time, but you’d hardly notice even after a few years.
Not only do these stats carry major implications when it comes to how we look, but significant body composition changes come with significant changes to our metabolic health. Ten years ago, one out of every three adults over the age of forty took some sort of cholesterol-lowering medication. And in a similar cohort, more than one out of every six had diabetes. Nearly half of all US adults have high blood pressure.
Now here’s the thing: fitness is not a cure-all. It’s certainly not within the scope of this email to promise that a few workouts and some vegetables are going to pull you off all of your medications. Some things are just a bit outside the reach of a normal wellness program. And sure, some things might be genetic.
But why not improve your odds?
What can I do?
Installing bumpers into your everyday life can be a great way to tackle health and fitness. And, of course, I’m here today to give you some suggestions:
- Let’s start with activity. Set a lower boundary for yourself in terms of steps (a great proxy for daily activity). If your weeks are a bit unpredictable, set a total week step count and be a bit more active on your least-busy days.
- Sleep is next. Set some guardrails for bedtime and for waking up. Going to bed a few hours before midnight is a great way to get higher quality sleep. But waking up earlier and more consistently is a great way to ensure that you’re tired by the time bedtime comes around.
- For nutrition, there are a few things. First off, make sure you’re consuming something good at every meal. Now good can be vague, so let’s call it lean protein or a fruit or vegetable. Instead of worrying about your calories or managing micronutrients, just get some protein or fiber into every meal and you’ll feel much better.
- Additionally, set a lower boundary for water intake. You can have a low water mark (pun intended) every day or even a weekly threshold where you play a little catch-up for the days you weren’t as hydrated. I would say 64 oz is probably a good lower threshold here.
- Lastly, set a lower boundary for weekly exercise. The CDC’s exercise guidelines are pretty low in terms of intensity, so you can cover most of the aerobic requirements through walking. But they do recommend two days of strength training, so that should probably be your lower threshold for workouts. These workouts don’t have to be excruciatingly long and they can cover some of your aerobic fitness obligation as well.
But, of course, these are just the bare minimum. Create a sleep schedule, get some steps in, eat some lean protein, fruits, and vegetables, drink your water, and strength train.
You can very easily complete these tasks even on many of your busiest weeks, throughout your busiest years.
Ok, That’s Not Too Bad
And you don’t have to stop at creating bumpers for your activities and habits. You can create metrics for yourself too. For instance, you don’t need to wait until your annual physical to find out how much you weigh or what your blood pressure is. You can easily find things like resting heart rate and even Vo2 max estimates on your Fitbit.
So go out and create some bumpers for yourself. Small guardrails installed in your everyday life can be an inexpensive way to keep your body on the right track, even when life doesn’t allow for your best effort.