Stage 5 - Learn What a Healthy Lifestyle Actually Look Like
With your exercise habits in place and focused correctly, we accept that exercise alone is not enough and now need to build our perspective on what a healthy lifestyle looks like. Hopefully, in this stage you will choose to adopt some things we cover, but stage 5 is more about about learning than it is about integrate everything you learn.
MovementLink Method - A Modern Exercise Philosophy
A major goal of The MovementLink Method is to make sure that as we help everyday people thrive in their lives, it comes with a perspective on self-improvement that aims to be universal and timeless. We realistically understand that at least some of the methods we have selected for use today will be obsolete at some point in the future. When new research, technology, equipment, supplements, medicine, etc. enter the market, the foundation of your journey should not be uprooted. Instead, your framework and understanding of your journey should account for these inevitabilities, so you can continue to upgrade and adapt the methods you choose to use along with the world around you. This perspective will not only add structure to your journey today, but will help integrate the most up-to-date strategies and weed out solutions that don’t holistically fit with the life you want to have in the future.
All self-improvement roads lead to the interconnectedness of our mind with our physical bodies. Improving and maintaining our physical health not only increases our energy levels, improves our immune system, and expands the physical options we have in our life, but it also improves productivity, brain function, and the symptoms of depression, anxiety, and addiction. Additionally, adopting, integrating, and sustaining healthy habits is without much substance if we are also not simultaneously prioritizing mental growth. Neither the mind or the body can thrive without the other.
For millions of years, our bodies have evolved while exposed to a range of physical, environmental, and mental stimuli and stressors and, in response, our bodies now use these as triggers to activate and deactivate genetic pathways, release hormones, and motivate us in ways that promoted survival, recovery, and adaptation for the vast majority of our existence. Throughout our journey, these abilities we have developed have allowed us to endure diverse climates, environments, and situations. We have developed brains capable of innovations that give us more control over how we experience these things, but these innovations have come with an ironic catch - the more technology we develop, the less our body understands the world in which we live. Consciously we can understand our reality, but our bodily processes react to our world more like cavemen who were frozen and awake in the future.
Technology advancements have created a large mismatch between the amounts and types of stimuli and stressors in our modern lifestyles and what our brains and bodies are evolutionarily used to (Supernormal Stimuli). Our body evolved to use a wide variety of different stimuli and stressors that organically occurred in our pre-technology lives as triggers, not just for knowing what to adapt to, but to set in motion normal bodily processes. For example, before light bulbs, high amounts of blue light exposure only came from the sun. Our body developed many start-of-the-day and end-of-the-day processes that get triggered as the amount of blue light increases and decreases, like when the sun rises and sets. These days however, because of light bulbs, we can continue to be exposed to high amounts of blue light long after sunset. Some strategies that have worked for us for practically all of our existence are being foiled.
As technology rapidly advances and integrates more seamlessly into our lives, it raises a critical question: what stimuli and stressors are currently essential for us to thrive in the life we want to live? As we inevitably embrace technology that changes our lifestyle faster than our bodies and minds can evolve, it is imperative that we additionally implement supplemental strategies into our lifestyle designed to fill the gaps. For example, a formal exercise program, at its core, is just a supplement for the amounts and types of physical activity that no longer organically occur in our lives.
Because self-improvement is a lifelong pursuit, we embrace the reality that, especially with technology, the world is going to change around us. Things we believe are true today may be proven wrong in the future. Strategies that work today, may become obsolete or ineffective in the future. How we perceive ourselves and who we want ourselves to be should evolve over time. We must stay open-minded and relentlessly question and upgrade our thinking to ensure our body is getting the stimuli needed to support the mind and thrive.
If you are going to read one article in this series, it’s this one: The Specifics of Healthy Lifestyle
Stage 5 Book Club
Outlive - The Science & Art of Longevity - Peter Attia, MD with Bill Gifford
