How to Build a Sustainable Health and Fitness Plan

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What if you didn’t have to stay on the hamster wheel of always trying to get healthy?

What if you could just always be healthy, fit, and confident no matter what was going on around you?

What if you could easily discover a sustainable health and fitness plan, that keeps you feeling (and looking) great year round?

If that sounds too good to be true, it’s not.

The biggest lie that health and fitness sells you is that you should always be doing something to get healthy, stronger, or lose weight.

Yes you want to be making progress — but do you believe it’s possible to become someone who is always healthy?

I know lifelong health is possible, and you’re not as far as you think.

First I want you to think back to the healthiest you’ve ever been.

Was it…

High school or college athletics?
When you got addicted to CrossFit or running?
Right at the end of a 75 Hard?
That time you got on a kick of actually meal prepping your food each week?

Once you’ve identified that, I want you to think about what made it so successful for you.

Pause right now and see if you can answer that.

If you don’t feel like actually thinking today, don’t go ask ChatGPT, I’ll just give it to you:

It provided a clear system and gave structure to one (or more) areas of your health and fitness.

Here is what this means in basic terms:

You knew exactly what to do when it came to your fitness or nutrition.

Showing up for daily CrossFit workouts, jumping on a Peloton, or working out with a personal trainer a few times a week takes the guesswork out of what to do for exercise
Going carnivore removes most of the easy to consume junk you eat on a regular basis
75 Hard forces you to stick to a diet, work out a couple times per day, and not skip days
Being in a sport requires you to show up to practice and workouts, and adds extra accountability of not wanting to show up to camp or a game out of shape or not prepared

None of these are magical programs.

I’ve tried all of them, and I’ve seen people get great results on them.

But I haven’t seen too many people get lasting results on them.

Why is that?

As soon as there was a part of the system that couldn’t be maintained, everything went out the window.

The system either wasn’t built for success across every scenario (usually due to being too strict), or you didn’t fully learn how to apply the system once the accountability was gone.

Here’s what I mean:

Even if you wanted to maintain the habits from 75 hard, there was no way to keep working out twice a day. Life eventually got in the way
When you traveled, suffered a minor injury, or couldn’t make it into the CrossFit gym, you weren’t able to find the motivation to push as hard or follow a workout program on your own
After playing a sport, you lacked brotherhood and were burned out from following any workout or diet — so you ate whatever you wanted and stopped working out (blaming the weight gain on a slower metabolism)
When you were out at a restaurant, at a social event, or on vacation — you said ‘screw it’ when you realized you couldn’t (and didn’t want to) just eat steak for every meal. I know people have done great on carnivore, but I’m not about giving up carbs for the rest of my life

This is the problem with most gyms, coaches, and programs.

They provide accountability, but they lack education.

You get great results while doing these programs, but there is no education of how to maintain it once you’re done, let alone for the rest of your life.

Education is a cornerstone of my coaching program, because I believe that learning what works for you is far more valuable than simply following workouts and a generic diet.

Accountability without education will only lead to short-term results.
Education without accountability will lead to not enough action (and therefore no real results).

It’s not either/or. You need both.

Popular workouts and diets will come and go — but knowing how to apply important principles to your health and fitness never will get taken away from you.

You will change your approach from time to time — but being able to hold yourself accountable (even without a coach or gym) will make you healthy for life.

Sustainable Health and Fitness. Fit for every season:

The goal isn’t to get healthy or get fit. It’s to stay healthy, regardless of what life season you’re in.

A few weeks ago, our baby boy was born.

It’s been such a fun time for my wife and I, and for our family.

But as anyone with kids knows, a newborn is not the ideal scenario for getting in the best shape of your life.

I’d be lying if I said my health hasn’t taken a couple steps back.

Poor sleep, inconsistent workouts, friends and family helping us out with dinners and meal prep.

It’s not about perfection — I’m far from that.
It is about having systems in place — both when things are ideal and when things are far from ideal.

I’ve gained a few pounds over the past few weeks, but that doesn’t concern me at all.

Because I know exactly what to do (education), and I know how to get right back on track (accountability).

Sustainable Fitness Made Simple.

If you want to become healthy and fit across every season, at a minimum you need to…

Be following a strength program that focuses on building lean muscle mass. This will improve metabolism, body composition, and make you more resilient.
Have some structure in place for calorie management. For me, this involves a combination of eating high quality/low processed foods and tracking calories.
Be consistently maintaining a high step count, ideally 12,000+ steps per day. This works wonders for your overall health, and is a great way to increase calories burned without increasing hunger.
Increase quality sleep and be aware of stressors. This is by far the toughest thing to manage in a crazy season of life, but getting these two things right will make everything better from how hard you can push (and recover) from workouts, and avoiding wild food cravings or stress eating

There’s much more that goes into each of those — but I wanted to give you a starting point.

If you want specific details on any of those, sign up for the Body [re]Building Playbook and I’ll walk you through everything you need step by step.

Set the Standard,

Dave

P.S. If a lack of accountability or education is the missing piece to your healthiest year yet, click here to fill out a form to apply for my coaching program. This is not a generic program or 90 day reset. This is high level accountability that guarantees body transformation.