Attacking your health and fitness hard and fast in the beginning of your journey is a great approach.

You stay active multiple days per week.

You are on point with your nutrition seven days per week.

You do everything to the letter in order to ensure optimum results in that initial 3–18 months.

The purpose of this time period is to get you near your “main goal” in one hard swipe. I fully encourage this and for different time periods depending on the person.

The problem is, no one tells you how to handle the next 20–75 years of your life.

Anyone who has intensely progressed in health and fitness knows it takes a lot of work to truly make large strides. This is true physically, nutritionally, and mentally.

How do you pull back the intensity reigns a bit to relieve some of the strain, yet still keep the vast majority of your progress?

The Line

Going after health and fitness with full intensity is very uncomfortable. It’s good for everyone to experience this at some point, but it needs to be stepped away from to some degree here and there if you are going to adopt the lifestyle for good.

But what is the line?

The intention here is not that you stop being active and eating well. It is to find out how you can tailor back to gain long term momentum.

You need to find a position of slight discomfort that keeps you mostly on point with your nutrition, staying active multiple days per week, and taking care of your mental health as well.

Balance

You can’t work out seven days per week to make up for eating like garbage.

You also can’t eat perfectly and expect zero activity to keep you physically fit.

But what if you found the balance of staying active multiple days per week as well as eating well the vast majority of the time.

Someone with a healthy lifestyle won’t fall apart if they happen to miss a workout or go out to eat an extra time one week.

Finding contentment is key.

Let’s say you are a relatively lean 200 pound male who holds your weight with a few workouts per week and a sound diet. Perhaps you found that if you hit your nutrition really hard and step up training you can drop ten pounds and really lean up, but it affects your lifestyle more than you prefer.

Should you drop the ten pounds for the summer if you want to be lean at the beach? Sure!

Should you care the other nine months out of the year. Not at all.

Furthermore, the increased calories in those other nine months will put you in a better position to build lean tissue.

This is the difference between a lifestyle and a short term run at health and fitness.

Countless times I have seen guys and girls in an example such as above who seek out that lower number for years on end. Guess what happens after a few years? They burn out and go to the opposite end of the spectrum. Not just putting on ten pounds, but going much farther.

You have to find your balance.

Remember, this is for life. Push yourself to advance your health and fitness, but make sure you can do it for the long haul. Extremes can be great, but they rarely last forever.

Make this the year you solidify your healthy lifestyle.

Do you want me to help you get set up? Let’s do this together.

Email me at: JwaltersPT@gmail.com

JonWalters.co