What's On My Mind - May 2024
What’s On My Mind
What’s On My Mind
Non-Negotiable Fitness Goals
This Month’s Health Challenge
Center Your Diet Around Protein
Quote of the Month
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” -Laurence J. Peter
What’s On My Mind
Non-Negotiable Fitness Goals
I think the reasons most people are exercising are pretty simple: to look good, feel good, be physically capable, and to be healthy. Unfortunately, as people get started along their fitness journey, more specific goals tend to creep to the top of their mind. Maybe they want to run a marathon, back squat a certain amount of weight, get caught up in the sport of CrossFit, or just start hyper focusing on a weight loss goal. These types of goals are not inherently bad goals, but unless your livelihood depends on you reaching your goal (like a professional athlete), there should be a core set of goals that any health and exercise habits you choose to implement into your life should account for.
All too often I see people’s underdeveloped exercise and health perspectives lead to high effort, but narrow results that actually neglect aspects of health and fitness that are vital for a thriving body and mind across our lives. Short-term goals and interests will come and go, but with a perspective that bases our exercise habits in non-negotiable fitness goals, I hope to provide you a framework to help make sure that the efforts you’re putting are not accidently at the expense of what really matters in life.
The Non-Negotiable Fitness Goals
Functional Performance - A foundation of fitness and skills that allow you to easily perform everyday tasks and participate in anything physically you’re interested in, or may become interested in, in the future. At the MovementLink.FIT gym, we test our functional fitness in two benchmark weeks we do each year.
Healthy Body Composition - A body that is composed of amounts of muscle and body fat, distributed across our body in a balanced way, that supports the other non-negotiable fitness goals. A DEXA scan, bioelectrical impedance scale, and hydrostatic weighing as all reasonable ways to measure your body composition.
Tissue and Joint Health - A body that can move freely and pain-free through full ranges of motion reducing chances of injuries, boosting functional performance, and providing movement choice options. At the gym, we perform a series of movement tests to identify our ranges of motion.
Overall Health and Wellness - Balanced hormones, vitamins and minerals and well functioning body systems and organs, reducing the chance of disease and helping us thrive physically, mentally, socially, and intellectually. Getting blood work done through your doctor or a company like InsideTracker can provide valuable insights into how your body is functioning.
For most, once these are laid out, it’s easy to embrace how improvements in all of these areas would benefit someone’s life. Additionally, these are so essential that these do not change as we age (The Best Short Game IS the Long Game). These goals are timeless, could apply to anyone, and should be your top priorities when choosing exercise strategies and when reflecting on where those exercise habits lead.
The amazing thing that you’ll find when prioritizing these non-negotiables goals is they don’t detract from any other specific goals that may unfold. They are core, essential, and should be non-negotiable.
Negotiable Fitness Goals
Developing negotiable goals along your journey will mainly come from our interests - hobbies, sports, etc. You’ve got to get out, play, and enjoy yourself! Maybe you become interested in running and you set your sights on a marathon. Completing a marathon would be a negotiable goal - achieving it would be incredible, but, because it is not essential, your training choices and efforts should not come at the expense of any non-negotiable goals. What I’ve learned over the years is that although most people who run marathons adopt a running only workout program, even enormous challenges like a marathon does not require putting any of our non-negotiable goals on hold. There’s a major bandwagon issue with social media and the internet filled with running only programs. People adopt these not because it’s ideal, but because they are comfortable with it. Check out my article, Why All Professionals Cross-Train.
Our non-negotiable goals should be foundational and guide our decision-making when choosing strategies to reach our negotiable goals. Let’s look at another example - If weight loss is a goal of yours, there are many methods that could help you lose weight. A lot of the weight lost from many of these methods come from losing muscle along with body fat. This is a major concern with new weight-loss drugs like Ozempic that have hit the market recently. Losing muscle is a detriment to all of the non-negotiable goals. When selecting your weight loss strategy, your non-negotiables should stay top of mind. Check-out MovementLink’s Fat Loss Article Series to learn how to build a healthy lifestyle that prioritizes non-negotiable fitness goals.
It’s important to recognize that these non-negotiable fitness goals should not limit your negotiable fitness goals, but instead set standards for the methods you choose when targeting goals and when reviewing your exercise habits to ensure that your efforts are not at the expense of aspects of fitness that can be extremely valuable to your life.
Non-Negotiable Exercise Stimuli
To make progress on all the non-negotiable goals, adequate exposure to a broad range of specific exercise stimuli is crucial. Continue Exploring Here: Non-Negotiable Exercise Stimuli
This Month’s Health Challenge
Center Your Diet Around Protein - By Kelly Dodds
Proteins are nitrogen-based nutrients made up of combinations of amino acids, and are critical for all life. There are 9 essential amino acids which our bodies cannot make on their own making it vital that humans consume large amounts of these proteins in our diets.
Consuming adequate amounts of protein is central to my diet recommendations as there are not only major fat loss benefits, but protein plays a vital role in achieving our non-negotiable health and fitness goals. Protein curbs appetite by having the highest satiety factor (compared to fat and carbs) and can rev-up metabolic rate after ingestion due to the thermic effect of digesting proteins…meaning, you don’t have to be hungry all the time to lose weight! Optimal amounts of protein consumption also benefits muscle recovery and growth, proper function of hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters, cell receptors/transporters, hemoglobin, immune system, sleep, etc.
As of this writing in 2024, the current USDA daily protein recommended amounts are outdated when compared to the most current research. To optimize our non-negotiable goals, our protein recommendations are to get 0.8-1.2 grams of high quality protein per pound of body weight. These requirements can go up to 2g per pound body weight for athletes/active people. To better promote the actual absorption of the protein being consumed, people should consume protein serving amounts of 20-40 grams per “meal” as opposed to just small amounts of protein at a time.
Animal protein, egg protein, and dairy (whey/casein) protein seem to be the highest quality –they have ideal proportions of amino acids and a high absorption rate. Although all animal-based proteins are high quality, consming lean (low fat) meats will help limit excessive saturated fat intake. Although chicken is very lean, surprising to most, red meat is much more nutrient dense and is actually one of the most nutrient dense foods that exists. And don’t forget about fish! Eating fish two times a week has been shown to reduce disease and increase lifespan.
Soy is the only plant that contains all 9 essential amino acids. Therefore, if you are on a plant-based, vegetarian, or vegan diet, when trying to meet your protein requirements, it is especially important to pay attention to the types of protein you consume, not just the total amounts. Even though soy is the only complete plant-based food, plant-based diets can provide humans all 9 essential amino acids by combining quality proteins from eating a variety of legumes, WHOLE grains, nuts, and seeds. As an additional note, vegetarians/vegans also need to pay attention to vitamin B12, omega-3 fats, iron, zinc, and calcium intake as these are also less prevalent without animal sources.
This Month’s Challenge:
Create a goal for your protein intake to be a minimum of 0.8 grams of protein, per pound that you weigh, each day. Ideally, you would aim for 1g per pound daily. For instance, if you weigh 150 lbs, you would target 150g protein per day. I recommend logging food (protein) intake for 3-4 days so you can get an idea of how much protein you are currently eating. Depending on your current diet, it may be a little harder than you think to reach this goal, but most find the added protein to be incredibly filling, actually making reaching weight loss goals much easier. MyFitnessPal or Chronometer are easy apps to use for tracking.
Challenge Summary:
Eat 0.8-1.2g of protein per lb. bodyweight daily
Each meal, shoot for at least 20-40g for optimal absorption. For foods which are primarily protein, consuming a portion approximately the size and width of the person’s palm would provide about this amount per meal.
Good sources of protein are fish, seafood, lean meats, poultry, eggs, legumes/pulses (i.e. soy, beans, peanuts, etc), some grains (i.e. quinoa), dairy (i.e. greek yogurt), and some seeds & nuts.
Sometimes protein supplementation is necessary to meet daily requirements. Whey and soy are good choices, but there are lots of different kinds that might work better for you. Make sure you find a quality supplement and especially avoid added sugars a long ingredient lists.
Track protein intake for 1-5 days this month to see current intake and make adjustments as needed.
Interested in more nutrition information! Regardless of whether your goal is performance or fat loss, check out MovementLink’s full article series here: Lifestyle and Fat-loss Protocols.
