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Strong Medicine

Exploring the Science, Art and Practice of Sustainable Health and Strength

motivation

Building Your Health Fortress, One Brick at a Time

December 24, 2015 By Dr. Chris Hardy 9 Comments

Health Fortress

The New Year is almost upon us and millions of people will be making resolutions to improve their health. Gym memberships are purchased, new diets are tried, and home exercise equipment is ordered. Unfortunately most of these resolutions are doomed to fail, often by the time March rolls around. The gym memberships go unused, the diets are not sustainable, and the exercise equipment becomes an expensive clothes hanger. The cycle will repeat the following New Year, with many of us starting over again, sometimes in worse health than the previous year. No long-term progress is ever made. Why do we set ourselves up for failure year after year?

The modern environment lays perpetual siege to the health of our body and mind. Fast food, nasty bosses, long work hours, financial worries, domestic conflicts, poor sleep, and pollutants/toxicants are part of the world in which we live. With these health-destroying enemies at our gates, we have to put in more effort than ever before to achieve and maintain optimum health. We have to build a health fortress to protect us from the modern environment.

The primary reason most resolutions go unrealized soon after they are made has less to do with the actual resolutions themselves and more to do with how they are implemented-the plan. Attempting to radically change your current lifestyle overnight is akin to building a huge wall with brick and stone and not using mortar. You can build an impressive wall quickly but it will soon crumble under the slightest outside pressure, certainly not siege-worthy.

An instant gratification mindset leads to this sad excuse for a wall.
An instant gratification mindset leads to this sad excuse for a wall.

To build an impregnable Health Fortress, each brick and stone has to be placed and then sealed with mortar for strength and resilience. This process takes time and effort, but the result is a structure that you can build on year after year, not a flimsy construct that has to be rebuilt from scratch every year.

Each brick/stone for your fortress is a small positive lifestyle change. Each change must be sealed in place with time as the mortar. When you can incorporate a small lifestyle change into your daily routine for at least 90 days, the chances of it sticking for life increases dramatically. This is the way you can slowly build each wall of your fortress, and the building process is sustainable.

There are hundreds of potential bricks (lifestyle changes) outlined in Strong Medicine. In the book, we call them defensive tactics. On New Years day, pick a couple of these that you think you need the most and incorporate them into your life for 3 months. By the time March rolls around, the new bricks are no longer changes but have become part of your wall, set in place and resilient. Then pick a couple more bricks and continue the process. Even if you just picked 2 changes every 3 months, by next New Year you will be well on your way to having an impressive wall. Instead of starting over again, you now have a structure on which to keep building. This is how a Health Fortress is made, and sustainable wellness is achieved.

Don’t fall into the New Year’s resolution trap. Start 2016 with a New Life Resolution and build your Health Fortress.

Strong Medicine Scroll

***

Chris Hardy, D.O., M.P.H., CSCS, is the author of Strong Medicine: How to Conquer Chronic Disease and Achieve Your Full Genetic Potential. He is a public-health physician, personal trainer, mountain biker, rock climber and guitarist. His passion is communicating science-based lifestyle information and recommendations in an easy-to-understand manner to empower the public in the fight against preventable chronic disease.

Filed Under: Motivation Tagged With: Dr. Chris Hardy, health fortress, healthy lifestyle, lifestyle change, lifestyle changes, motivation, New Year, new year's resolution, New Year's Resolution Alternatives, Strong Medicine

Rekindling the Fire: The Dragon Door Health and Strength Conference

August 20, 2015 By Dr. Chris Hardy 20 Comments

RekindledFire

I must admit to feeling burned out of late. Strong Medicine was released several months ago and I have just completed the final requirements of a two year fellowship in Integrative Medicine. Both of these have been monumental personal achievements for me following my passion and mission to improve the dismal state of public health, specifically the seemingly unstoppable spread of preventable chronic disease. Despite these recent achievements, I have felt very alone and isolated within the conventional medical system. My Integrative Medicine classmates are like-minded, but many are struggling to find a way to earn a living putting a holistic model of medicine that emphasizes prevention into practice within the mainstream. I have been disheartened to say the least, but this last weekend was a game changer for me.

Dragon Door’s first Health and Strength Conference was an incredible experience as both a speaker and participant. I have never seen so many incredibly talented people under one roof who were all freely sharing their experiences and diverse approaches to the betterment of our collective health and wellness. I am posting this on the Strong Medicine blog, because the conference presenters and participants exemplified the Strong Medicine mission statement found on the home page of this blog in their own unique way.

Health and Strength Conference Group Photo

Rolando Garcia gave an insightful presentation on the business of fitness, but made a key point that left a lasting impression on me. He rightly pointed out that a trainer will potentially see a client 100-200 times per year (as opposed to a handful of 15 minute doctors visits) placing the trainer in a unique position with an opportunity to have a tremendous impact on a person’s health, potentially far more than their health care provider.

Danny and Al Kavadlo gave informative and entertaining talks, reminding us again that your clients don’t need gym memberships or fancy equipment to effectively rebuild bodies ravaged by the inactivity rampant in modern society. Their amazing bodyweight progressions make strength training truly accessible to all.

Max Shank knocked it out of the park sharing his stripped down approach to training. While I gave a theoretical talk about using the concepts of allostatic load in training, Max showed us how he is already doing it with his clients and getting fantastic results and keeping them injury free.

Zach Even-Esh is truly a warrior for public health. He is training our kids, a group many are predicting to be the first generation not to outlive their parents. Zach’s life story, work ethic, and commitment to improving the sorry state of fitness in our adolescents and teenagers was inspirational for me.

Andrea Du Cane put the spotlight brightly on the importance of training our aging population. She gave a fantastic talk that emphasized not only why we should be actively seeking this demographic as clients, but safe and effective ways to implement real strength training and reverse the scourges of sarcopenia and osteoporosis.

Steve Holiner filled in brilliantly for Josh Henkin. His presentation of the DVRT system was outstanding, filling in the gaps many of us have with our movement. The potential applications to rehabilitation and “prehabilitation” are very exciting for me. I was also blown away be his brief offline discussion with me on his biopsychosocial approach to training.

Phil Ross gave a barnstorming presentation on training and combatives that peaked my interest as a fledgling BJJ practitioner. Jon Bruney and Logan Christopher gave fascinating lectures on harnessing the brain and nervous system to improve performance.   Mike Gillette showed us how to save our joints while building incredible strength and resilience with his masterful presentation on ring training. Mike Krivka showed his passion and expertise anchoring our introduction to CrossCore HardCore.

And finally my co-author Marty Gallagher gave one of the most poignant and inspiration talks that I have ever seen. I am truly honored to call that man a friend.

The participants were out of this world as well. My discussions throughout the two days with so many of them were just as educational for me as the formal presentations. There were so many trainers and even some other health care professionals sharing their knowledge freely. This was the most collegial environment that I have ever experienced.

I have come away from the Dragon Door Health and Strength Conference with my fire burning again. The epiphany for me was that I need to spend my energy bringing groups like this together to better our collective craft, rather than wringing my hands over my frustrations with our current health care system.   If we can keep building our collective and synergize our efforts, we can truly have an impact on public health. My sincere thanks to everyone involved for making this experience one of the best in my professional career, and especially to John Du Cane for having the vision to make it happen.

***

Chris Hardy, D.O., M.P.H., CSCS, is the author of Strong Medicine: How to Conquer Chronic Disease and Achieve Your Full Genetic Potential. He is a public-health physician, personal trainer, mountain biker, rock climber and guitarist. His passion is communicating science-based lifestyle information and recommendations in an easy-to-understand manner to empower the public in the fight against preventable chronic disease.

Filed Under: Motivation Tagged With: Dr. Chris Hardy, Dragon Door authors, Health and Strength Conference, motivation, Strong Medicine

Breaking Down the Barriers to Exercise

July 9, 2015 By Carrie Hardy 6 Comments

Carrie Hardy Breaking Barriers for Exercise

Another day and another pep talk. I know that exercise is good for me but some days I find myself making excuses and rationalizing why I can’t exercise today. As a former scientist and current physician-in-training, I am well aware of the research that shows the benefits of exercise for health and wellness. I know that in addition to the physical benefits, daily exercise can facilitate protective, adaptive and regenerative responses in the brain. I am even married to the guy who co-wrote Strong Medicine, arguably the most important health and wellness book out there (I am in no way biased!), with pages filled with the reasons I need to exercise. So why do I have such a hard time sustaining a schedule that includes regular exercise?

From looking at the poor state of fitness in the majority of us, I know that I am not an anomaly. Most of us have similar struggles prioritizing exercise. Starting and maintaining a regular exercise routine obviously has many barriers in modern society. There are entire industries built around finding the latest “revolutionary” gadget or program to inspire us to exercise. The marketing gurus of the sporting goods and technology companies have tried to assist us (and take our money) by selling handy gadgets such as the Fitbit, heart rate monitors, and activity trackers all created to help motivate us to just move. Despite of all the latest technology at hand we still struggle.

SolidBrickWall2

Those who study this subject have looked closely at barriers to exercise (and lifestyle change in general). These barriers can be broken down into three general categories:

  1. Intrapersonal: time, knowledge, motivation, personal appearance, and overall health to initiate an exercise program.
  2. Interpersonal: commitment to self versus others, lack of support, and lack of workout partner
  3. Environmental: lack of equipment and lack of realistic role models.

Personal appearance! Who doesn’t want to look better naked? Some days it is really tough to face the mirror and many feel this way (whether they admit it or not). What can even be more taxing on self esteem is how we perceive we look both in our workout attire and while we are performing the exercises.   Before you launch into a rant about exercise not being a beauty contest, let’s take a closer look at these very real barriers (especially for women) to getting someone to start and maintain an exercise program. I came across a very interesting research article published by Bourn and colleagues that evaluated the effects of viewing “reality” weight loss television shows on body satisfaction, mood and snack food consumption. We assume that these reality TV shows are motivating for those watching, however Bourn’s published results show that “larger women experienced less body satisfaction and less positive mood in response to weight loss program” than a control group that watched a program on home renovations (the control group). Additionally, it was reported that a “greater percentage of women with higher dietary restraint ate food whilst watching the weight loss program.” In this study, not only was watching overweight people exercise not helpful for the viewers own body image, people whom normally have more restraint with snacking ate food while watching the reality weight loss show!

I know you are saying to yourself that this is a research group and perhaps they were almost expected to feel this way. But, let’s look at a snapshot in reality. Negative thoughts about your appearance can create a rabbit hole into which we chase our self-esteem. I want to share a story about appearance during exercise. A friend of mine and I were talking about exercise and clothing. The weather is getting warmer, but not quite warm enough for just shorts and t-shirts. I freely admit that I have moments where I am concerned about appearance while in workout attire. I expressed this to my friend, who has been an athlete since she was a teenager and has the lean body composition that one would expect with a life long athlete. I was shocked to hear her express similar insecurities with her own appearance in workout clothing. Logical or not, perceived self image and appearance is a river that runs deep!

Lack of time and conflicting responsibilities seem to be partners in crime for creating barriers to exercise. There never seems to be enough time and it seems that we have to make a choice to do something good for ourselves or take care of our family first. I know I think about this often!   I am a full time medical student and I feel that I need to carve out time for everything from studying, spending quality time with my family, and personal time for myself (mostly to workout).

BusyMind2

I scrutinize my schedule to see where I can fit in time for a 20-minute burst protocol (see Strong Medicine) or a 4-minute Tabata routine. It doesn’t seem like a lot of time but when you factor everything in, but even this amount of time can seem prohibitive. I have become creative and workout. When there is a short break in between classes or before I get dinner started (if I am home before Chris), I will pop into the garage to get some sort of workout in. Having a space set aside in your home to work out can really make a difference. Strong Medicine provided us with a look at some efficient exercises that can be done using either the burst or HIIT protocols, helping to eliminate the concerns of time being barrier while still getting in an effective workout. Using these two methods can certainly help overcome the barrier of time.

While engaging in regular exercise can help increase energy, improve mood and improve your physical appearance, make sure you start at your ability level. You may have to start with just walking. That is OK, just make sure you do it. You may not feel that is enough but it is a starting place to build your foundation. Strong Medicine has a walking program for the absolute beginner that starts out very slowly and builds gradually.

Lack of social support from family or friends and lack of partner for exercise are less discussed barriers. We touched upon conflicting responsibilities as it overlaps with time in the intrapersonal barriers but how do we overcome lack of support? Let’s look to our family first. Getting a family member to join us in exercise can increase the time we spend with loved ones as well as provide support and a workout partner for us. Here are a few ideas to start:

  • Find a family member or friend willing to go for a walk with you regularly. Once a routine is formed you can try out alternate exercises and intensities together. Building the exercise relationship first this the is key.
  • Instead of a ladies or guys night out at some bar, how about 30 minutes of exercise with your friends before dinner? Make exercise a part of the social bonding of a night out.

So now that we have made a time commitment to ourselves and found a workout partner, let’s look at our final group of barriers. These can include:

  • Lack of facilities/equipment,
  • Lack of role models for physical activity

Gym memberships and equipment can be expensive, and choices of where to join and what to buy can be overwhelming. If you are a beginner to exercise, you are born with all the equipment you need to get a good workout, your own body! Learning simple bodyweight exercises can be a great beginning. If this is where you are starting you are probably pretty safe working out on your own. The safety concerns should be minimal but if you are ready to attack advanced moves, you will want to consult a professional (Dragon Door’s PCC is an excellent place to start).

Finding motivating exercise role models can be extremely difficult. All of the images on TV or the Internet are of extremely buff individuals with bodies that appear unattainable. However, it is this image that sells products with the promise that you also can look like this. Uh oh! We are back to body image.

Perhaps we should stop looking for role models and just find motivation first. Personally, I find this quote by physician and athlete George A Sheehan helpful for motivation (maybe not so inspirational): “Exercise is done against one’s wishes and maintained only because the alternative is worse.” The fear of poor health can kick you in the butt to get you moving, but once you start making exercise a habit in daily life, you will find that the good feeling you get after a workout is its own reward and will keep you coming back for more (endorphins are wonderful!) Become your own inspiration instead of looking for it in others.

This article was originally written to discuss both barriers and motivations for exercise. Motivation, like exercise, is not one size fits all. The quote from Dr. Sheehan above should be enough to set your body in motion but you will need to find what motivates or inspires you to take control of your health and your life. Obtaining a better body and health is achievable if you prioritize exercise and make it a habit. The barriers you perceive are not insurmountable. Besides, who doesn’t want to be really, really, ridiculously good looking…

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Carrie Hardy, M.S. is a former biochemist, 4th year medical student at Bastyr University, mountain biker, amateur photographer and a neophyte in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Her passion is combining science with individualized medicine to empower individuals to lead a healthier life.

Filed Under: Motivation Tagged With: barriers to exercise, benefits of exercise, body image, health motivation, improved mood, motivation, overcoming barriers to exercise

Kaizen and Strong Medicine

May 14, 2015 By Michael Krivka 8 Comments

Kaizen Strong Medicine Lead Photo

Strong Medicine has over six hundred pages of text and illustrations that will dramatically change how you perceive nutrition, training, and how you can effectively manage the stressors in your lifestyle. The concepts and how they can be applied are laid out in such a manner that, with the some simple planning, discipline and implementation, you will have no choice but to be successful.  This blog post is going to provide you with some tools and strategies that you can use in order to implement the concepts presented in Strong Medicine in such a way that you will not only succeed, but will be able to do so with the least amount of stress possible.

Change… Sucks!

Making drastic changes in your life does not lead to dramatic results–it usually leads to dismal failure and a lot of brow beating! Anyone who has made a New Year’s resolution only to have it crumble within a matter of weeks (or in some cases, a matter of hours) knows that making changes (big or small) in your life is hard to do. Everyone starts out with good intentions and a wealth of willpower only to see the good intentions crumble and the willpower dissolve like a puff of smoke at the first impasse. With all of these bad past experiences surrounding change, I’m sure you’re convinced that you can’t make any changes in your life and might as well just quit now. Wrong! Just because you failed in the past doesn’t mean you’ll fail this time–especially if you are honest with yourself about the plans and tools you need to succeed. So… how do you begin making changes? The same way you’d eat an elephant–one bite at a time!

Kaizen = Continual Improvement   Kaizen Diagram

Kaizen is a Japanese term that has been borrowed by the business world. Roughly translated, it means “change for the better” or “continual improvement”. As a business major in college (many, many, many years ago) I learned about the concept of “Kaizen” and how it was successfully implemented in the Japanese automotive industry. Kaizen gave everyone–from the guy sweeping the floor to the VP in charge of making million dollar decisions–the power to change how things were done on a daily basis. In other words, the power was placed in the hands of those who could make the most difference. Since then, the concept of Kaizen has been applied to banking, healthcare, government and other areas where complicated processes need to be considered and improved to increase efficiency and consistent outcomes.

How does this apply to you and how will it impact the implementation of what you’ve learned from Strong Medicine? You need to develop a simple but effective plan for implementing the nutritional and training guidelines presented in Strong Medicine. Your plan should be created and executed in a way so that changes can be small, easily managed, and built upon. Remember that the best plans are the simplest effective ones that also have the latitude for change and modification on the fly.

NOTE: Understand that these plans are best implemented one at a time. Trying to make too many changes too soon and with too much accompanying stress will make this process a lot harder than necessary. With this in mind, I feel that the concepts behind Kaizen are the best common-sense approaches to implementing any nutrition, training or lifestyle modifications.

“Eat like an Adult”

Strong Medicine goes into great detail about what and how you should eat–and how those choices are will effect you over the short and long term. There are many scientific theories and big words involved–which can be daunting to some people–but you will need to absorb it to understand what Dr. Chris and Marty are trying to do. They successfully make many complex ideas and concepts simple to grasp, and that’s vitally important for the subjects of nutrition and training. I admire people who can take complex problems and explain solutions in simple terms everyone can understand.  For example, when Dan John said, “Eat like an Adult” during a lecture a couple years ago, it really stuck with me. His comment was simple, direct and to the point. Those four words make choosing, preparing, and eating the right foods a lot easier! I know those four words help me get in the right mindset when I’m preparing, ordering, and even shopping for food.

Start with the Beginning     Small Daily Improvements

“Eating like an Adult” will help you succeed with the Strong Medicine guidelines. But first you need to know where you stand. The easiest (and the most eye-opening) method I know is to keep a food log for ten days. (Before you start grumbling and groaning, hear me out–the food log will give you some great intel into what’s going on and how to fix it!) Keeping a food log is as simple as folding a piece of paper into sections, then writing down everything that goes in your mouth. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, drinks, etc.–it all goes in the food log. Once you have all this information you’ll be able to create a baseline for what kind of food you are eating, how much you are eating, and what is missing from your diet. Remember, keep this as simple as possible and don’t stress out about what you are writing down. It’s just information you’ll use to create a plan!

Once you have ten days of information, what do you do with it? First, find the gaps in your nutrition. For example you might notice that during those 10 days the only time you ate any vegetables (not counting the lettuce and tomato on your hamburger) was with dinner. Over ten dinners you had a handful of salads, a couple baked potatoes (not to mention French fries), and several servings of broccoli. If that was the case, then introducing more vegetables into your evening meals AND including them as part of breakfast and lunch would be in order.

Getting Started

Does this sound like a big step and a major hassle? Not really! It just takes a little forethought and preparation and you’ll have it nailed. Prepare by having the food you need on hand, and by creating and using shopping lists. Your shopping list will guide you through the grocery store. For the most part you’ll stay in the periphery, where the vegetables, meat and dairy products are found. (Stay away from the middle of the store where the Mountain Dew and Fritos are located!) Grab your list and shop either once a week or several times a week, whichever is more comfortable or convenient for you. Remember, you’re only shopping for the things on your list! NOTE: if you don’t have a shopping list, you can Google “shopping list” for plenty to choose from and modify as needed.

Now that you have all this food in the kitchen, what do you do with it? Well, you will need to start making your own meals based on the nutrition gaps in your food log. It will be easy for the most part–in the above example, we simply need to increase the amount of veggies throughout the day. We need to make this change as simple as possible. Think about this: it only takes a minute or two to cut up some peppers or cucumbers and throw them into a plastic bag or Tupperware for later in the day. Grab some veggies and prep them for the day while you’re standing around waiting for your coffee to brew in the morning!

I can hear the whining and moaning already! “Veggies for breakfast and lunch? How am I going to do that?” Easily! Just add vegetables you like to meals you are already eating. Still confused? Here’s some ideas to help you jump start the process!

How to add vegetables to breakfast:

  • Add avocado and salsa to your scrambled eggs
  • While frying your eggs, sauté some spinach in bacon grease and serve it on the side or as a bed for the eggs
  • Warm up some sauerkraut for a tangy side (or kimchi for something spicy) with your eggs
  • Brown onions, tomatoes and mushrooms and make an omelet
  • Slice up some hard boiled eggs with ripe tomatoes
  • Slice red or yellow peppers, clean out any seeds and whatnot. Put the slices in a frying pan and add an egg inside the gap for peppers and eggs over easy
  • Grab a container full of sliced veggies (that you prepared the night before) and a container of yogurt for a quick and easy breakfast on the go
  • Chop bacon into bite-size pieces and toss them in a frying pan. Add onions and peppers then simmer everything together. Drain the excess oil, then toss the bacon and vegetables on top of scrambled or poached eggs

Small Steps Lead to Big Results

I guarantee that if you take a little time and mental energy and apply it to filling in the gaps of your nutrition, it will pay huge benefits in the short and long term. I’m not proposing massive changes. On the contrary, I think the best and most effective way to ensure your success is by making small changes that you can easily adjust to before moving onto the next step. Remember what you learned in Strong Medicine about how stress (in all its forms) adversely affects the body. Adding stress by making big changes in your nutrition will be counter-productive. Keep the concepts of Kaizen in the forefront of your mind–small changes leading to big results–and you will not stress out at all!

NOTE: The training for life guidelines will be in part two of this blog post. In the meantime, I want you to start improving your nutrition. Small increases in nutrients will have a major impact on how you feel and move. By getting your nutrition plan in place now, you will establish the foundation for a successful training program.

 ***

Michael Krivka is a Senior RKC with Dragon Door and has been training with, teaching, and sharing the gospel of the kettlebell for over a decade. As a life-long martial artist, he is a Full Instructor under Guro Dan Inosanto in Jeet Kune Do (JKD); the Filipino Martial Arts of Kali, Escrima and Arnis; and Maphilindo Silat. He lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland with his wife and two sons. He owns CrossFit Koncepts where he runs strength and conditioning classes with an emphasis on kettlebell training, mobility and longevity. Follow him on Facebook.com/CrossFitKoncepts or Instagram.com/Michael_Krivka

 

Editor’s Note:

Where the Strong Medicine book is the template for lifestyle change and taking charge of your health, Mike has the beginnings of a Strong Medicine Operational Manual with this first post. The philosophy of Kaizen melds so well with our philosophy of lifestyle change that I am kicking myself for not including it the book, but this is why I try to surround myself with talented people like Mike Krivka.

In keeping with the mission of the blog for a two-way exchange of information, please share your perspective on lifestyle change in keeping with the Kaizen philosophy. Fantastic job, Mike!

Filed Under: Motivation, Nutrition Tagged With: developing a plan, fitness, fitness strategy, fitness training, Kaizen, Mike Krivka, motivation, nutrition, planning, strength training, stress management, Strong Medicine

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