Boost Your Physical Health & Fitness (Tips For Men) #548

Tips and tricks for boosting your health through physical fitness, mindfulness, and personal development. Learn how to take control of your well-being and live a healthier, happier life. join performance life coach Lachlan Stuart

10% Discount = TMTCP
Buy Now

Breathe Better, Sleep Better - Recover Rite

Trouble sleeping? Recover Rite's mouth tape and nose strips improve your sleep by optimising your breathing. Perfect for anyone seeking a restful night.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:51

Are you a male business owner struggling to find time to prioritize your health and fitness? It's time to take back your well-being and become mentally and physically fit. My name is Lachlan Stewart and I have been a men's high performance coach for the last seven years, and what I have recognized is that often men like you will sacrifice their physical health in the pursuit of success, when actually it is one of the key pillars to your sustained success. You know whatever success looks like for you, that is, you know a whole another podcast and conversation. In this video or podcast, I'm going to share with you five key steps to optimize your health as a man in business, or if you're not in business but want a better life, you can implement these five steps as well. So let's dive in. Firstly, you want to have a plan right.

Speaker 1: 1:41

Many men that I work with don't have a plan to achieve a desired outcome. We look at life in three buckets We've got our health, we've got our wealth and we've got our relationships. Now, wealth generally is where a lot of our focus and priority goes. From the moment that we leave school, it's like what are you going to do for your career? How are you going to sustain your lifestyle. How are you then going to provide for your family? So we're always focused on climbing, getting that next promotional, how we're going to earn our next dollar, but what we often overlook in the key to that is our health, as we've discussed already. Now, in order to make it a more holistic, well balanced and sustainable outcome for you, you've got to have a plan.

Speaker 1: 2:22

There's a great quote by Warren Buffett Someone's sitting in the shade sorry, someone's sitting in the shade today, because someone planted a tree a long time ago. And when I read that quote, I thought to myself well, I want to experience financial success, much like I'm sure you do. You have some dreams and some experiences that you want to have. You will have your family that you want to look after, but you need to be in tip top health in order to achieve that. So you need to have a plan in order to maintain that, because the tree you're planting is today to provide the shade for the future, meaning the way that you look after your health today is going to determine what you can or cannot do in your future. So when you have a plan that says, hey, I do want to grind it out and make some money today and set myself up, but I also want to invest in my relationships and I want to optimize my health. To be able to live a great life, spend time raising a family, have great experiences or adventures, then I need to do something every single day to put deposits away, to collect when I'm older.

Speaker 1: 3:27

I was listening to a video with Jesse Itzler the other day and he was talking about how he was thinking about. You know, I want to catch a train. Actually, this wasn't even Jesse Itzler, this was a book called Die with Zero. Okay, so really good book I'd highly recommend reading. But this book he was talking about, you know, this gentleman and his wife wanted to catch the train across Europe and, you know, have all of those experiences and they were getting very excited about that. You know, we're going to get a train, we're going to see all these beautiful places, we're going to go together as a couple and it's going to be amazing. And as they started planning this trip, the question popped up for him he's like dull, I think we'll actually be able to catch a train when we are 80. But what we won't be able to do when we're 80 is probably walk a lot of these places. So it helped them, rejig, I guess, the holiday and the experiences that they wanted to have for the now and push back what they will be able to do later.

Speaker 1: 4:28

And health is not one of those things. I know you feel that if you earn a lot of money now, you'll then be able to get your health back. But what happens when you earn more money? For those of you who've done it, you understand that you're probably taking on more responsibility. Okay, you've got a lot more stress in your life, so you're always, you know, kicking the can down the road. So, coming back to the plan, we need to look at your week right. Where will we prioritize time for your health? A really important thing with this plan is understanding what your ideal version of health is Now. Some of you are competitive athletes. Still, some of you are training for marathons, you may be training for hierarchs, you may be training for some specific sporting event, but if you're not, if you're just training for everyday well-being, it's still equally as important to have a plan, and I'll share why A plan is a good way, obviously one to be held accountable and to track your progress.

Speaker 1: 5:19

Many people lose interest when they don't see progress, regardless of whether you know. A lot of men come to me for training advice and they go oh look, I don't really care about the numbers or putting on weight. But they're also the people who drop off, because if you're not seeing progress, you get disinterested. You start asking why am I actually doing this? So for me, I'm a big believer that if we can track your progress even if you're, you know, consistently doing a similar program, but you're increasing the weight or your frequency of training, or you might then go man, I'm actually just feeling better, I feel like I've got more energy. Or you might walk past mirror and catch a glimpse yourself and go man, I'm actually looking really good naked. They're all small wins that will continue to inspire and motivate you to do the thing which is exercise.

Speaker 1: 6:03

So when you have a program, especially if you're a busy individual like myself, it takes the guesswork out and the thinking out, because the less resistance you have in doing the exercise, the more likely it is that you'll do it. So if you ever catch yourself going, I want to go to the gym, I want to exercise, I want to get healthy. I just don't know where to start, or I just don't know what to do. Then get yourself a program. You can hire a coach, you can join our academy. You know all of our members get access to our strongman of value academy, which is, I guess, hybrid. So we're helping you get cardiovascular fit, but also building your strength, and it is designed for those who not necessarily time pool but have a lot of other priorities going on in their life as well.

Speaker 1: 6:47

But following that will take the guesswork out of it. You'll have some periodized program, meaning that you're aiming to improve your metrics, meaning you're aiming to push yourself. And you're listening to this because you understand the benefit of growth. Growth requires change, which also brings up obstacles and challenges. So your training will do that and, as a result, your body and your mind will adapt. So you'll build confidence, you will build your mindset, you will build resilience All things that are not only going to help you with your physical health, they will definitely help you in your career. They would definitely help you with your relationship. So it's a really good one to monitor.

Speaker 1: 7:24

So, as I was saying, with the what we do with our Academy members, as we set them up on their program, and it's all delivered through an app and all you got to do is open up your phone and see what you've got on today. Now we recommend doing four days a week. I personally believe in building the habit of doing something daily. Now, it's not always intense daily, but it's just moving your body, stretching, doing something that's going to prime your physical health and your mental health to be better. So recap point one have a plan. Ok, so we provide plans in the Academy, but if you're not a part of the Academy, just get yourself a fitness plan, something that takes a guesswork out, that you can follow and shop for day in and day out and you watch your motivation go and you watch how much you change. Just by having a plan. It's going to be an absolute game changer. Let's move to point two on how to optimize your health.

Speaker 1: 8:13

Eat well, very common and very overlooked, most people highly underutilized, nourishing food. Right, just like you know, you're fueling a car. There's our premium grade fuel and then there's our basic fuels. You understand that in order to fuel something that's of high performance, you have to give it the premium fuel, and I look at this as like the Prado principle, where it's like 80, 20. Look, I'm not 100 percent, always eating well and not enjoying Tim Tans and all that sort of stuff, like I have been the last week on this road trip, but it's really about understanding the food that's going in your body. One, are you eating enough fuel to help you get through the day to the level that you want? And, secondly, are you eating the right kinds of fuel that allow your body and your mind to feel energized and to feel fresh and to make progress?

Speaker 1: 9:09

Now there's I personally believe it's quite overwhelming with the amount of diets and nutritional advice out there. So how I've simplified it for myself and this may be helpful for you is eat for energy, right? You know, five days out of seven eat for energy. For me, it's Monday to Friday, the days that I'm working. I'm eating for energy. I'm eating for performance On the weekends, that's when I'm eating for enjoyment and for pleasure and for leisure. So when I look at like carnival diets, keto diets, you know, vegan, vegetarian there's so many different diets and this is what's going to put you in the ownership position.

Speaker 1: 9:45

Now, once again, if you're extremely busy, you may be saying to yourself I don't have time to look into all this nutritional stuff. I'm not interested. You're interested in the outcome right. You're interested in the high performance, you're interested in the good mood, you're interested in the energy. So if you're in a position to outsource that, do that. Grab yourself a nutrition coach or a dietitian. Or if you can afford a chef or get your meals prepped, do those right. That'll once again take restriction out and allow you to eat well for high performance. If you're not in that position, just slowly start listening to podcasts or tracking your food.

Speaker 1: 10:21

Now, the reason why we would track is you become more aware of what you put in your body. When you're aware of what you're putting in your body, you can then go hmm, yesterday I felt really good. Let me just go back through my fitness power. We log it once again through the my Fitness Power Connect so we can actually track all of that your calories, your protein intake, what foods you're actually eating because once again, it's patterns. It's around working out what works well for you as an individual. But the more you become aware of what you're putting in your body, the better decisions you can make to fuel yourself for optimum performance.

Speaker 1: 10:53

There is no quick fix. I'm not going to sit here and say there is a quick fix. It isn't. It is really just understanding and awareness. Now, like I said, if you can outsource that and have external help, definitely do that, if you'll focus on other things, but if you don't have the it's luxury of that, this is where, if you really want the outcome, you have to start investing in your own education and becoming more aware of it. So, if you're stuck here, like I said, get a coach or just start learning. We allow our Academy members to track that. We start with the awareness piece and more so for you, taking responsibility so that you can make smarter nutritional choices. Okay, once again, from all the diets that I've looked at and I've tried a lot of them myself just to understand them is the main things that they've done is they've reduced sugar intake like dramatically and also reduced alcohol intake. One of our Academy members in my group my name he's dropped what I think he's down 10 kilos since the start of the year, since he's cut out alcohol and cut out sugar. Right, that's it. So it doesn't have to be fancy, but once again, start noticing from your body so that's eat well. Number two, so let's go.

Speaker 1: 12:04

Number three this is a big one for people who like routine and like structure, like myself, is you've got to be flexible with your routine. So I try to plan out my weeks, plan out my days for optimal, I guess, progress in regards to business and also getting things done that are important to me. So that means in my exercise. It means my personal development, it means time with my family. It also means work. Now I understand things pop up. That's life. You might have a sick child, you may have a flat tire, you may have an emergency at work. Things happen. So when we understand that and we can accept that, we can now start to work with it. So for me, flexible with the routine would look like I still need to get the thing done and the thing in this instant is exercise. What is going to help me move the needle on my health today? So I would look at.

Speaker 1: 12:57

You know, I did this the other day when we were on the road. We had a massive road trip this week and one day I was so tired by the time we got in it was like maybe 9pm, it was dark out and if you've watched any, you know I'm Australian here and I'm living in the United States. At the moment A lot of the TV programs are like probably shouldn't be going out in the dark in a city that you aren't familiar with. So I had all those stories in my head but I was like I still need to exercise. What I'm going to do is just a one kilometer as fast as I can. That's going to be. So. I warmed up, did my one kilometer as fast as I could. It took me about 15 minutes, right, like not for the 1k but for that whole process.

Speaker 1: 13:33

So I was just flexible with the situation and what was happening, because once again I'm training not only for, let's just say, for optimizing my health, and I know that moving every day makes me feel good. I went to bed going. I'm glad because I kept my word. I feel confident and I feel really comfortable in who I am because I did that, regardless of how big an impact I would have had physically Like still awesome to get moving, because most people don't do that but it really helped me in other areas. So I understand that things pop up.

Speaker 1: 14:04

But what can you do today to strengthen your mind, body and confidence by doing those things, even if it's only small? And some examples for those of you who get stuck here why don't you just do? You could do a five minute run, or you could do X amount of pushups or X amount of burpees or X amount of squats and just move, because what you're conditioning your mind to believe is I move every day, I look after my health every day, I invest in myself every day. That's why I believe it's important to be flexible with your routine. And, once again, if you're someone who struggles with, you know having an excuse around it's cold out, I'll do it this afternoon and you keep missing the exercise component, but you want to do it. Minimize the time between when you wake up and doing the exercise. So the longer you leave it, the more you can overthink it, the more that can pop up and you're giving yourself more reasons or excuses as to why you can't exercise. So if you struggle with it, get up and do it first thing, even if it's cold, even if it's a. You know you prefer to read the paper or do your morning routine first. Just minimize it, because you will feel satisfied that you've done and you'll start building a new habit. So that's number three. So far, we've covered having a plan. We've covered eating well. We've covered be flexible with your routine. Once again, all of these things we teach our members inside the academy, because we want you to be in control. We want you to be a high performing man who understands how you can get the most out of your life.

Speaker 1: 15:24

Number four move more. Like this is simple, but how do we do that? The general rule is 10,000 steps. As someone who is active, if I'm not running, I struggle to get my 10,000 steps, and I'm more active than the average person, so I can almost guarantee that you're not getting your 10,000 steps. Why is it important? Because it's burning calories and it's getting more calories and burning more energies. Okay, so here's the simple way to look at it For me, if I know I'm struggling to get it done, and these are all things where, if you're only focused on getting as many meetings in, or you're always rushing, you're not going to do these things.

Speaker 1: 16:03

You're not going to park that extra block away from a meeting, or you're not going to take phone calls on the walk, or you maybe even look at active meetings, things where you can get those in, and it's called habit stacking. One thing I've really started doing lately is, if I'm doing meetings in person, I'm making sure that I try and make them active. Hey, let's go for a run for the meeting, unless it's obviously like a boardroom style, but most of them, meetings that average person's doing are not, so make them active. Or if you've got to be on the phone or whatever, walk, go for a walk while you're doing it. There are so many people that I know that are buying treadmills that they can walk on in their desk. But if you don't have that luxury, once again get outside, go for a walk and do your calls, and it's so powerful and it's going to help you move more throughout the day. Okay, there's a few tips there.

Speaker 1: 16:49

Finally, number five, which is a big one manage stress. Stress is our response to challenge. Okay, so it's a fight or flight response. We want to balance that out. Stress is important. Stress comes with growth. You are trying to be better, which means you are growing, which means you will be stressed. But chronic stress, long-term stress, is not healthy, so you need to find ways to balance it out. There's the yin and yang philosophy. We've got daytime, nighttime. You've always got to have the complete opposite. So if you notice that you're burning the candle at both ends, so to speak, you need to start learning some ways to manage stress.

Speaker 1: 17:27

Some things that have worked well for me and I use a whoop and I've also got an Apple Watch. If you're watching on YouTube you can see I've got both of them, but they're only about 75% accurate from what I've read. So don't get obsessed with the data. But what I really enjoy about it is it just keeps me aware of how I'm sleeping, the stress that I'm experiencing and a few other things that I believe are important to my performance. So what I then use once I become aware of that is how can I you know if I'm in a highly stressed state? What can I do to bring that down? So some things that I do is I do breath work, and that could be some simple box breathing. So box breathing, once again, you can Google it or there's plenty of apps, but you might just look at a four second in how a four second hold, a four second exhale, a four second hold and continue to repeat for you know, one to two minutes.

Speaker 1: 18:16

But it's just centering yourself and really activating that parasympathetic nervous system which is your rest, or digesting, calming things down. Okay, there's a great saying that you've probably heard me say a lot on this podcast when emotions are high. Intellect is low, and I do truly believe that. So if you need to calm yourself down before you walk into the home or before you walk into a meeting, that's a great one. That's really easy to do. Some other things I do is go for a walk, I train, I journal or I just brain down my thoughts, because it helps me make sense of the stress that I'm experiencing, and I also do I see a psychologist. Since I've been in America, I haven't been doing that, but if you need that professional help, it's such a great tool and a great resource there.

Speaker 1: 19:03

So just to recap how you can optimize your health okay, especially as a male business owner, but even just a man who wants to live a better life, make sure you have a plan for your health right, something that integrates well in your life. So when you look at your overall week, make sure that you're allocating time and you remove as many of the excuses as possible. So whether it's travel, or it's cold out, or you don't have accountability or you don't have a program, just get those things ticked so that then there's less friction. You get up and do what you know you need to do. The second thing is eat for performance. Eat well okay. Start being aware and mindful of how foods make you feel, so that you can perform at a higher level more regularly. Thirdly, be flexible with your routine. Things pop up. That is life. But in order to be a high performer, you can roll with the punches right, you can be malleable and you're still focused on getting that outcome. So what could you do with what's in front of you to deliver that outcome? The fourth one is move more. Find more ways in through sorry, throughout your day to just be active, whether it's stretching, moving, getting your heart rate up, phone calls on the run you know all of that sort of stuff. Do more of that. Finally, manage your stress. Stress is part of life, so don't try and completely avoid it. Develop tools that you can utilize so that you can manage your stress, so that you can continue to grow at the pace that works well for you.

Speaker 1: 20:28

Thank you for listening to the episode. I do truly appreciate you being here, especially if you've stuck around to the end. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes, and make sure you look out for next week's episode with Jeff Duncan. It's going to be an absolute ripper on Monday. So, as always, we do our guest episodes on Monday and our solo episodes with me here on Thursdays. If you do want to ask me any questions, or if you would love some topics or you have guest recommendations, you can reach out to me at Instagram, at Lachlan Stuart, or you can just head over to the website TheManThatCanProject and get in touch with me. Then, as always, do something today to be better for tomorrow.