One of my childhood heroes was legendary wrestler and coach Dan Gable. Dan is known for many famous quotes, but my favorite is this: “If it is important, do it every day. If it’s not important, don’t do it all.” Now, of course, we can take this too literally. But in fitness, having daily habits to improve holds up.
Fitness is not rocket science. Trust me, I’ve had too much success in this industry for that to be true. However, it’s not the difficulty of the subject matter that trips people up. Most of us know what we must do to get into better shape. If information were all we needed, everyone would be fit. Success is doing boring and mundane things every day. The secret lies in the execution.
So, how do we execute? We start small. We start simple. And we do it every day.
Before getting into the list, we must recognize that consistently executing these five simple tasks will not be easy. You will not hit every target. There will be days you miss. That is okay. The key is not batting 1000; it’s striving for continuous improvement.
1: Walk 8-10k Steps
Let’s start with an easy one: walking. You already do it daily, but I want you to do more.
I’m sure you have heard of aiming for 10,000 steps per day. It’s not a new concept. But do you know where that number originated from? It’s a funny story. It came from a Japanese marketing campaign from the 1960s. Yep. That’s it. A Japanese company promoted 10,000 steps a day as a goal to get people to buy a pedometer. More than 50 years later, it’s still the gold standard. Crazy, right?
Well, the number caught on, but the increased walking did not.
Recommending 10,000 steps per day is one of those things that would be a hard sell to our ancestors. There would be no point. Our sedentary lifestyle is a relatively new phenomenon. We don’t even have to leave the house to get McDonalds anymore. We can have someone pick it up and deliver it to our doorstep. While many of life’s modern conveniences are fantastic, the ability to “survive” without moving around is not one of them.
We need to be more active. And guess what? Those Japanese marketers were on to something. Now, there is quite a bit of research supporting accumulating 10,000 steps a day as a way to lower all-cause mortality, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and even dementia [1,2].
But, I have another benefit for you. It will help you lose fat and get leaner. There is research to support this, but if you let me, I will use an appeal to authority.
I have been a fitness coach for fifteen years, during which time I have worked with hundreds of people who wanted to lose fat. In my experience, nothing prevents fat loss more than a lack of daily steps. Let that sink in.
I want you to be relentless with this.
The goal is 10,000 steps daily, but you don’t need to start there. Any increase in activity will have benefits. However, I want you to aim for at least 8,000 steps.
As with all things, you can take it too far. It’s not a competition to get in the most steps. Can you walk more than 10,000 steps per day? Yes, of course, but that’s not our goal. You won’t earn bonus points from me for getting in 20,000 steps.
So, here is the real key. How do we do it?
The first step is tracking it. The good news is that we don’t need to buy one of those 1960s Japanese pedometers. Our phones have them built right in. Start being mindful of your daily steps.
Getting in more steps can be as simple as parking further away from the store, taking the stairs, walking the dog, walking with your friends, or going outside to play with your kids. Even walking on a treadmill counts if you don’t have a dog, kids, or friends. Look, I have a treadmill in my office for this reason. It’s my way of eliminating excuses for not getting in enough steps. That said, you do get bonus points for getting your steps in outside.
2: Eat 5 Servings of Fruits or Veggies
How many fruits and veggies do you usually eat daily? Think about it for a second. Be honest. Whatever the answer, I bet you could eat more.
I want you to eat at least five servings of fruits or veggies daily. It’s easier than you think. You can do it.
Let’s start with what a serving is. It doesn’t have to be complicated. A medium-sized apple, orange, pear, peach, or banana counts as a serving of fruit, as does about half a cup of berries or chopped-up fruit. For vegetables, about a cup of most veggies is a serving.
So, why should we eat more fruits and vegetables? Besides the obvious that our Moms all told us we should, fruits and vegetables provide an abundance of nutrients, like vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Plus, similarly to getting your steps in, eating more fruits and veggies will help you live longer [3].
With all the health benefits out of the way, here is my main selling point. Do you want to know my best nutrition tip for fat loss? It’s not following a special diet. It’s not even tracking your food. It’s eating a huge salad every day.
Whenever I start a fat-loss diet, I first run to the store and get all my salad essentials: a couple of big bags of salad greens, cucumbers, peppers, cherry tomatoes, chopped carrots, and light dressing. The secret to the daily salad is volume, meaning you can eat a giant bowl of vegetables without taking in a lot of calories.
When trying to lose fat, I make a huge salad loaded with vegetables daily for lunch. I throw on some chicken breast, and it’s a meal. It fills me up, and the entire thing is only a couple hundred calories.
Here is an easy way to get in 5 or more servings:
- A cup of blueberries for breakfast.
- Big salad for lunch with 2-3 servings of vegetables.
- An apple, banana, or orange for an afternoon snack with a protein shake.
- Another serving or two of vegetables with dinner.
3: Sleep At least 7 Hours
Okay, I have a confession. I need to get better at this one. In my defense, having a demanding work schedule and three kids doesn’t help. But, at the end of the day (literally), it’s just excuses.
If you take your health, performance, and, most importantly, how you feel, seriously. Get your sleep.
The truth is, for years, I subscribed to the “I will sleep when I’m dead” mindset. It’s not healthy or productive. Are there times when you need to sacrifice some sleep for success? Yes, of course, but that can’t be the default.
We have spent a lot of time on fat loss already, so I won’t belabor the point. But sleep and fat loss go hand in hand, most notably with hunger signaling. The research is clear: lack of sleep makes you hungrier and prevents fat loss [4].
However, more importantly, I want to talk about performance. Everyone has experienced a lousy day of work after a poor night of sleep. Not to mention trying to hit a new PR in the gym after being up with a crying baby all night. Not that we need it, but a 2022 meta-analysis backs this up. Even short-term sleep loss negatively affects performance [5].
So, how do we improve our sleep? It comes down to both quality and quantity. Here are a few tips to help you get seven or more hours of sleep each night.
My 3 Best Sleep Tips:
Make yourself tired
I will start with a sleep tip that is not mentioned enough. Again, this is common sense, but let’s think about it briefly. I notice a significant difference in the time it takes me to fall asleep on days I work out versus days I don’t. Moreover, the degree of my workout matters too. What’s interesting is that it seems this is physical and mental. Days that are cognitively demanding cause me to fall asleep quickly, too. So, what’s the tip? It’s to work hard. Challenge yourself both physically and mentally. Put in a full day so your eyes can’t wait to shut when it’s time to go to bed.
Wake up and go to bed at the same time each night
Try to stay on a consistent sleep schedule, even on the weekends. Doing so helps regulate your body’s internal clock. A common issue people encounter is catching up on sleep during the weekend. The problem is that waking up later causes you to sleep later, and you are right back to where you started. It’s a never-ending cycle of insufficient sleep.
Be mindful of caffeine intake
I love caffeine – coffee, energy drinks, pre-workout, all of it. And, when it comes to supplements that actually benefit your workout performance, caffeine is on the shortlist. But caffeine is a double-edged sword. What wakes you up can prevent you from falling asleep. When it comes to caffeine, we need to think about two things – amount and timing. I generally recommend limiting daily caffeine intake to under 400mg. A Grande-sized coffee at Starbucks is 330mg, and most pre-workout supplements and performance energy drinks are about the same. So, if you have one of these, you have enough room for a 16oz of Diet Coke the rest of the day, and that’s about it.
Timing matters, too. Caffeine’s half-life is between 4 and 6 hours, meaning that up to six hours after consuming caffeine, half of it is still in your body. For example, if you have a pre-workout supplement on your way to the gym after work, you will likely still have 150mg of caffeine in your system as you prepare for bed. That is equivalent to a regular-sized coffee. To be safe, I like to cut off caffeine at least 8 hours before bed. So, if you go to bed at 11 pm, stop drinking caffeine around 3 pm. If you want to be extra diligent, adopt a no-caffeine after-noon policy.
4: Eat Protein At Every Meal
Getting into bodybuilding during my high school years had its advantages. It wasn’t popular then (or now), so it didn’t give me social clout. However, it did ingrain some powerful nutrition habits I have stuck to for 20 years.
Bodybuilding nutrition is all about protein intake. Some bodybuilders prioritize it too much, but they are on the right track overall. Protein helps build and maintain muscle, lose fat more effectively, keep you full, and more.
Regarding protein intake, how much you eat at the end of the day is most important. If you are someone who has any performance or aesthetic goals, meaning you want to be stronger, have more muscle, have less fat, and be an all-around powerhouse of a human being, the current research supports eating between .7 and 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight [6].
However, more than just saying to eat more protein is needed. So here is the prescription: every time you eat a meal, consume at least 30g of protein. If a meal doesn’t have 30g of protein, it’s not a meal. It’s a snack.
Here is what 30g of protein looks like:
- Chicken breast ~ 4 ounces cooked
- Salmon ~ 4 ounces cooked
- Eggs ~ 5
- Protein Powder ~ 1.25 scoops
- Tofu ~ 1.5 cups
- Greek yogurt ~ 1.5 cups
- Cottage cheese ~ 1.25 cups
- Edamame ~ 1.5 cups
Nutrition can be a confusing topic. If you ask five “experts,” you will likely get five different answers for what constitutes proper nutrition. We could cover more, but the tips I provided will take you far. Eating more vegetables and consuming protein at every meal are two things nearly everyone can agree with.
5: Exercise
I know what you are thinking. “This guy is nuts. He wants me to do all of this stuff, plus workout every day? Yeah, right.”
Well, first, let’s define what exercise is.
My three-year-old and I do “exercise” together every day. What is the exercise you ask? A couple of stretches, three pushups, a sit-up, and a lot of high-fives. It takes about two minutes from start to finish. It’s not really exercising, although that’s what she calls it, but it’s closer than you might think.
The goal is to be active daily. We have many options: lifting, cardio, and sports; I will even count yoga if it increases your heart rate.
According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, adults should accumulate between 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week [7]. Keep in mind that this also doesn’t include the two days of resistance training they recommend.
150 to 300 minutes of activity is 20 to 45 minutes daily. Twenty minutes of daily exercise is the goal. We can do that. Here is a breakdown of different exercise intensity levels based on a max heart rate. Age predicted max heart rate is 220-age. So, my max heart rate is 188 bpm (220-32 = 188).
Heart Rate Zones
- 50-60%: Think of a walk in the park, a stroll around the mall, or your warm-up before lifting weights. It counts toward your daily steps but not exercise for our purposes.
- 60-70%: This counts as exercise. It’s zone 2 work, perfect for moderate-intensity cardio.
- 70-80%: This is moderate to high intensity. We want to get into this zone at least once a week.
- 80-90%: Training in this zone is best as High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). If resistance training is not your thing, this can replace that twice a week. Or, if you lift weights, HIIT can be your cardio once or twice a week.
- 90-100%: Occasionally, your high-intensity work will sneak into this zone briefly.
Let’s break down your options.
Resistance Training: 2 – 6 times a week for at least 30 minutes each session. If you need suggestions, here is an article going over the best 4-day workout splits to build muscle.
Cardio: Any cardio activity that increases your heart rate into the zone 2 range, 2 – 7 times a week for at least 20 minutes each session. Remember this statement: All exercise counts as steps, but not all steps count as exercise.
Sports: Any sports activity that increases your heart rate into the zone 2 range, 2 – 7 times a week for at least 20 minutes each session.
Other: Anything that gets your heart rate into the zone 2 range for at least 20 minutes. Use your imagination, but remember the point about 20 minutes.
You just need to pick one of those things and do it daily. My default is a 20-minute fast walk. Sometimes on an incline or wearing a weight vest. If I can’t do anything else, I do that to get my point for the day.
The 5-Point Checklist
I want to go back to something I wrote in the beginning. You don’t need to be perfect in hitting these five daily habits. There will be days you miss. Sometimes you miss it because you need extra rest. There are times when stress and fatigue build up to a point where even a 20-minute fast walk is too much, and you need a full-on recovery day.
Based on past data, my clients who achieve around 90% of the habits each week achieve great success. To help track this, I created a 5-point checklist. It’s black and white. You get one point for doing the habit and zero points if you don’t. I want you to review it at the end of each day and then again at the end of each week.
Bear with me as we do a little math. If we have 5 habits and 7 days in a week, there are 35 potential “points” to achieve in a week. 90% comes out to 31.5, so we want to be in the 30-32 range.
Everyone starts in a different place. The first step is to get into the 90% range. Once you do that, the goal is to stay there. Be consistent. Consistency is how significant progress happens.
Daily Habits to Improve Your Fitness Checklist
- 8,000 steps today?
- Five servings of fruits or vegetables today?
- Seven hours of sleep last night?
- Did every meal have 30g of protein?
- Did I do my daily exercise?
Author: Kyle Hunt
KyleHuntFitness@gmail.com
PS- I am not on social media much anymore. To stay connected with everything I have going on, sign up for my newsletter below. As a thank you, I will send you a free training program and my Flexible Dieting Manual nutrition ebook.
References:
- del Pozo Cruz, B., Ahmadi, M. N., Lee, I-Min., & Stamatakis, E. (2022). Prospective Associations of Daily Step Counts and Intensity With Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease Incidence and Mortality and All-Cause Mortality. JAMA Internal Medicine, 182(11). https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2022.4000
- del Pozo Cruz, B., Ahmadi, M., Naismith, S. L., & Stamatakis, E. (2022). Association of Daily Step Count and Intensity With Incident Dementia in 78 430 Adults Living in the UK. JAMA Neurology, 79(10). https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaneurol.2022.2672
- Wang, X., Ouyang, Y., Liu, J., Zhu, M., Zhao, G., Bao, W., & Hu, F. B. (2014). Fruit and vegetable consumption and mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer: systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. BMJ, 349(jul29 3), g4490–g4490. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g4490
- Nedeltcheva, A. V., Kilkus, J. M., Imperial, J., Schoeller, D. A., & Penev, P. D. (2010). Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity. Annals of Internal Medicine, 153(7), 435–441. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-153-7-201010050-00006
- Craven, J., McCartney, D., Desbrow, B., Sabapathy, S., Bellinger, P., Roberts, L., & Irwin, C. (2022). Effects of Acute Sleep Loss on Physical Performance: A Systematic and Meta-Analytical Review. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 52(11), 2669–2690. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-022-01706-y
- Morton, R. W., Murphy, K. T., McKellar, S. R., Schoenfeld, B. J., Henselmans, M., Helms, E., Aragon, A. A., Devries, M. C., Banfield, L., Krieger, J. W., & Phillips, S. M. (2018). A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength in healthy adults. British journal of sports medicine, 52(6), 376–384. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2017-097608
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2018). Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans 2nd edition. In health.gov (pp. 1–118). https://health.gov/sites/default/files/2019-09/Physical_Activity_Guidelines_2nd_edition.pdf